Searching For Summer: A Zombie Novel

by Midwood, Peter

  Danny stepped through the door and fired the machine gun in a sweeping arc from right to left, dropping a semi-circle of zombies. They were immediately replaced by more of their kind, gnashing their teeth and drooling as they advanced. “Keep right behind me, girls and stay close,” he said and instantly, felt his shirt tighten as all three of them grabbed hold of his shirt tail.

  Zombies surrounded his vehicle, slapping and pawing at the windows, but Danny daren’t use the machine gun with Summer and Simon inside. He knew there couldn’t be many bullets left in the weapon, so he fired into the oncoming mass until the magazine was empty. He slung the gun strap over his shoulder, drew both of his pistols and started clearing the car of zombies, confident of the accuracy of his aim with handguns. He walked around the vehicle, dispatching them with precise headshots, the girls following him like ducklings.

  The last to fall was a nightie-clad zombie with a javelin, and Danny thought it was about to thrust it at him before he put a bullet in its brow. He hoped he was wrong, the last thing humanity needed was these things learning to use weapons. Another wave of zombies came towards the vehicle from behind him; Danny was relieved to see they were unarmed. “Get in, girls,” he said, opening the door.

  Two of them joined Summer and Simon on the back seat while the other girl bounced across onto the passenger seat. Danny unslung the machine gun and draped it over the back of his seat. He ducked inside and turned the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered but didn’t start. “Come on, come on,” Danny said and tried again.

  The engine sputtered again but still failed to start.

  “They’re coming,” the girl in the front seat said. “Look.”

  Danny looked up and saw the undead horde coming from the right meet up with those approaching from the rear, and the united army swamped the vehicle. Daylight was blocked out as every piece of glass on the Land Rover was covered by dead flesh. The vehicle rocked from side to side, and the girl beside him screamed. He turned the key in the ignition again, and this time, the engine roared into life. “Yes,” he shouted, and the girls cheered.

  He was about to stomp on the accelerator when the wheels on the passenger side left the ground. Danny couldn’t put his foot down because he would have no control of the Land Rover on two wheels. If he rolled it, there could be no escape, and it would almost certainly bring about their deaths. The same would happen if he did nothing. If the zombies tipped the vehicle all the way over, they were as good as dead.

  The girl in the passenger seat screamed and rolled into him. Summer pleaded, “Dad, do something.”

  “I’m thinking, darling, don’t worry. We’re all going to be fine.”

  The car dropped back down onto four wheels, the girl in the passenger seat thudded into the door, and the other occupants bounced in their seats. Just as Danny was about to floor the accelerator pedal, the car tilted over again, and he pulled his foot back. This time, the vehicle was suspended almost at a right angle to the ground, the occupants of the back seat squashed together behind Danny. The girl in the front almost landed in his lap.

  “Ok, people in the back, I need you to pull down the backrest so that you can access the boot. There are two catches, one at either end of the seat, just flick them up; that’ll let the backrest come forward, have you got that?”

  “Yes, Dad,” Summer said, “Kirsty, Roberta, give me a hand with Simon.”

  The three girls laid the boy down in the space between seats as carefully as they could at the precarious angle, and Summer scooted over to the elevated side. After a minute of fumbling, the back cushion fell forward, revealing Danny’s arsenal behind it.

  “Good girls. Now, Summer, I want you to reach inside and pass me the biggest gun you see and that long belt of bullets.”

  She handed them across, struggling to lift the heavy weapon and Danny rested the L7A2 on top of the steering wheel. The general-purpose machine gun was normally set up on a tripod and belt fed by a two-man team, but Danny didn’t have the option. His plan was simple to the point of being reckless, blast out the windscreen, kill as many zombies as it took to drop the car and speed away. “Pass me that little grey bag as well please, darling.”

  She passed over the parcel and Danny held it between his knees. Inside the bag was a box of six hand grenades in polystyrene moulds, an eggbox of death and destruction. If things didn’t go well, Danny would pull the pin out of one of them and put it back in the box with the other five. Then he would take Summer and her friends in his arms and hold them until they left the world together.

  “No!” Frankie yelled, bursting into a run again. “No, don’t leave me.” He ran towards the Land Rover shouting and waving his hands.

  “Shut up, Frank, for Christ’s sake. You’ll get us all killed.” a young man wielding a nine-iron said.

  The men following him were expecting Frankie to head into the clubhouse for the guns; the sole purpose of their mission. They were not expecting him to bear right, towards the Land Rover. Seven men followed him, thinking he had a new plan, and six men ran indoors to get what they came for. Two men stood still, undecided and were mobbed by zombies.

  “Wait for me,” Frankie hollered at the tilted vehicle. “Get me out of here.”

  The back row of zombies surrounding the Land Rover turned at the sound of his voice.

  “You’ve lost your mind, Frankie,” one of the unlucky followers said. “I’m out of here.” He turned to leave, along with the other six men but a wall of drooling ghouls blocked their way. In an instant and as a pack, they charged.

  The screams of Frankie’s last men drew the attention of the living dead surrounding Danny’s vehicle, and they dropped it to join in the kill. For a fleeting second, Frankie still held on to the idea of escaping in the Land Rover, but an intense stabbing pain in his chest shut off his train of thought. It felt as if icy fingers were squeezing his heart. A tingling sensation started in his left shoulder and spread inwards, numbing the entire left-hand side of his body. He tried to take a step, but his leg trembled, and he dropped onto one knee. His bottom jaw snapped shut with such force that he bit off the tip of his tongue, and at the same time, the ice in his heart turned to fire.

  Frankie’s heart attack didn’t kill him outright, but he was already in his death throes when the first of the zombies to reach him wrenched his mouth open and bit out the rest of his tongue.

  28: Endgame

  “They’re going,” Summer shrieked.

  “Shhh!” Danny said, putting a finger to his lips. “Not a sound,” he whispered. “Not a sound from any of you.”

  The zombies left Danny’s Land Rover for something to his right. He assumed the screams came from a group of survivors under attack and the creatures surrounding his car had left it for them. It would be suicide to try to help them and probably too late anyway, the best he could do was make use of the distraction they had created. He stamped down on the accelerator, and the car screeched away.

  Zombies scattered as the bulldozer blade ploughed through everything in front of him. Bones crunched below them, and the girls were almost bouncing with delight at the gruesome sounds heralding their escape. Two hundred meters short of the gates, the Land Rover hit a pack of six ghouls head-on, cutting them down like a lawn mower. As they disappeared under the front blade, the car stopped moving. The wheels spun, unable to find purchase in the stream of body fluids and pulverised entrails.

  The first of the zombies to reach them slapped the window beside Summer, leaving a bloody handprint on the glass. She shrieked and joined the back-seat girls in a huddle. Simon was still out cold on the floor.

  Another creature had picked up the javelin and rammed the point into the window beside Danny’s head, shattering the glass into a spider’s web of cracks. A second blow sent the point through, and the window disintegrated, showering Danny in a hail of broken glass. He yanked the lance into the vehicle, where it lay awkwardly across his body with the tip of it in the passenger's foot well. He shot the spear-
wielder through its right eye, and it fell away.

  Another zombie replaced it and thrust its arm inside the car. Brown wizened fingers, snatched at the air in front of Danny’s face before grabbing hold of the steering wheel. The tyres finally found purchase on the road, and the Land Rover lurched forward, ripping the intruding arm from its owner. It lay across his body with the javelin like a grisly seatbelt.

  He tossed the severed limb out of the car and followed it with a hand grenade. “Block your ears girls,” he said, accelerating away.

  The explosion obliterated the zombies chasing the car, and others fell into the crater left by the explosion. Block paving, tattered clothing and fragmented body parts rained down around them, and Danny whooped as he raced out of the macabre deluge. The girls whooped along and hi-fived each other.

  Danny drove towards the wrecked main entrance and looked in the rear-view mirror. Only a few zombies were coming after him; the majority sought out more readily available prey. He looked left and right and satisfied that he was a safe distance away, he stopped the car and got out, much to the horror of his passengers. “Relax, folks,” he said. “I’m just having a clean-up before we leave.” He brushed tiny pieces of glass out of his hair and dusted down his clothing. “I can’t drive sitting in a pile of broken glass and this thing in here with us.”

  He dropped the javelin on the ground and with a swipe of his hand, cleared his seat of fragmented glass. Just as he was about to sit back down, the passenger-side rear tyre blew out. “Everybody, get down,” he said, and the children laid flat inside the listing vehicle.

  “It has to be the Preacher,” Summer said. “I saw him run away.”

  “Good,” Danny said. “I’ve got some unfinished business with him.”

  He ducked down and crept along the side of the vehicle, a second bullet clanged off the front digger blade. He peered over the top of the bonnet and saw the shooter, hiding through a partially-raised roller-shutter door. He was dressed in a long white robe, similar to the ones the girls wore, like an oversized shepherd in a school nativity play, and Danny had to stifle a laugh.

  Another shot skimmed across the top of the bonnet, and Danny dropped down behind the wing. He reached back inside the car and grabbed the machine gun and bullet belt off the dash. “You’ve picked the wrong guy to have a shoot-out with, Preacher,” Danny said, sliding the belt into the ammunition feed. “Let’s see how you like this.”

  He jumped to his feet, rested the barrel of the 17A2 on the roof of the Land Rover and opened fire. The children covered their ears, and the bullet belt danced across his palm. Twelve rounds per second hit the brick pillar on the corner of the building, obliterating the masonry into dust. The roller-shutter guide fixed to it buckled inwards with a screech of twisting metal. After a twenty-second volley, Danny eased his finger off the trigger and assessed the damage.

  The brick dust cleared to reveal a meter-square hole in the single layer of brickwork. A loose brick dropped out of the top row, like a rotten tooth in a gaping maw. A shot rang out from within the garage and Danny ducked behind the car, cursing. He was about to return fire when he saw a reflection of movement behind him in the gloss finish of the Land Rover. He whirled around, snatching the gun off the roof and blazed away at a line of zombies, two meters away. He chastised himself for letting his guard down and vented his frustration by spraying the incoming ghouls with a barrage of bullets until the empty belt slid out of the ejection port onto the floor.

  At the sound of a powerful engine, Danny turned towards the garage, just in time to see a big green motorcycle zoom out of the open door. He grabbed his Glock from inside the car, and as the bike pulled onto the road in front of him, he squeezed the trigger. A metallic click told him the clip was empty. He fumbled through his pockets, looking for a replacement, but they were none. The nearest one was in the boot, and by the time he got to it, Summer’s kidnapper would be long gone. “No!” he roared in frustration.

  The Preacher stopped the motorbike just inside the main entrance and looked over his shoulder at Summer’s father, standing twenty meters away. He smiled, touched a finger to his head and rode off towards the gate.

  Moses laughed as he left the stranded group to the mercy of the monsters. It was a shame about Summer, she was such a pretty young thing, but far too much trouble. If he could have killed her father, he would have taken her, and she would have been bride number one, but he was too dangerous and the risk too great to take. There would be other girls. In a world without parents, there would always be orphans, and he would gladly take them in. He smiled at the prospect of a bright future and wound back the throttle.

  Sudden pain flooded his insides, and he was thrown over the handlebars. While he was in airborne, the bright green motorcycle sped past him and crashed into the wall to the right of the gateway, bending the front forks and buckling the wheel into an oval. Moses bounced on his side, screaming in agony as he twisted in mid-air and landed on his knees. He slid across the block paving, shredding his gown and patellas, before coming to rest in front of the remaining gate.

  A meter-long metal spike was sticking out of his stomach and from the weight on his spine, he knew the rest of the javelin was sticking out of his back. He tried to get to his feet, but he couldn’t move his legs. He turned his head to the right and watched the Land Rover limp towards him on three wheels.

  The vehicle pulled up alongside him, and the policeman got out. “Hey,” Danny said, crouching down beside Moses. “You must be the Preacher.” He took an exaggerated look at the javelin that skewered him, by leaning from side to side. “That looks nasty. Does it hurt?”

  He grabbed the end of the javelin protruding from the Preacher’s stomach and shook it, turning the trickle of blood seeping from the wound into a raging torrent. Moses’ eyes rolled upwards, and he made a strange bleating noise; he no longer possessed the ability to talk. He clutched at the makeshift harpoon to stop it moving, all he could do to alleviate the pain.

  “If you really are a preacher, now would be a good time to say some bible stuff, but just in case you’re a phoney, here’s something I remembered from Sunday school. I think it’s from the book of Exodus, but don’t quote me on that: you shall not mistreat any widow or orphan.” He pointed at the children’s faces pressed up against the Land Rover windows. “If you do and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword.

  “So, it seems God has taken my side, and when I threw that javelin, He steered it into you, a metaphor for His sword. Who knows? There are many questions left unanswered, but it might be something to think about before your time’s up.” Danny snapped his head up at the sound of a loud snarl. “And believe me, it won’t be long.”

  The Preacher tried to turn his head towards the sound, but the effort was too much, and his head slumped forward, his chin resting on his chest. He made a mumbling sound and coughed out a spray of blood.

  Danny got to his feet and opened the car door. “Just to show you that I’m not completely heartless, I’m going to leave you with an option, but don’t think it’s a get-out-of-jail card. You’ll die here on your knees, and that’s more than a narcissistic, child-molesting, deluded psychopath like you deserves.” He tossed a hand grenade onto the grass. “How you die will be up to you.”

  He dropped down into the driver’s seat, and the car rolled past the crumpled motorbike through the gateway. With great effort, Moses raised his head and saw Summer staring at him, her pretty face pressed against the rear windscreen. She looked around to check if her dad was watching, smiled and stuck two fingers up at him. Moses felt the vibrations of a thousand approaching feet and heeding the final piece of advice he’d ever hear, he said a prayer.

  The explosion made the Land Rover vibrate, and when Danny looked in the rear-view mirror, he saw the Javelin shoot up in the air like a rocket. Limbs and entrails followed it like an afterglow. He shifted his gaze to his daughter’s face and at the sight o
f Summer’s beautiful smile, his eyes welled up. “My eyes are burning, Summer,” he said. “What did you do in this car?”

  “You know that guy who just blew himself to smithereens?” she said. “Well, I maced him.”

  “That’s my girl,” Danny said, smiling through the tears. “That’s my girl.”

  29: New Home

  Danny looked around from the top of Tan Hill and deeply inhaled the fresh Yorkshire air, the views across Swaledale were breath-taking. Miles upon miles of rolling hills dotted with sheep and crisscrossed by dry-stone walls. As he marvelled at the panorama, a small hand slipped inside his own, and he looked down to see Simon smiling back up at him.

  The boy still had his arm in a sling, but his wound was healing fast. The bullet had passed straight through his body just below his right shoulder and had miraculously missed his lung. The near miss was a relief for everybody, especially Danny who would have been the surgeon doing the bullet extraction and internal repairs. He knew that invasive surgery administered under less-than-clinical standards would almost certainly lead to bacterial infection, which would cause gangrene to set in, which would ultimately mean the boy’s death.

  Danny was confident that Simon would make a full recovery with nothing but a small mark on his chest and the mental scar of having been shot. Time is the greatest healer for something of that magnitude, and the girls also had their crosses to bear. Sometimes on a night, Danny would hear one of them wake up screaming and admired how the other girls immediately rallied around their stricken friend, Simon, too.

  Danny chose Tan Hill Inn as what would hopefully be the permanent residence of his new family because it was the highest and remotest pub in England (once made famous in a double-glazing advert). Being eleven miles from the nearest village and situated in the middle of nowhere, Danny hoped it would be free from zombies, and up to the present, he had been right. The towns and cities were no longer safe; they belonged to the undead.