by TW Brown
“And how were you planning on getting one back home?” Melena snorted.
The doctor produced a leather mask with a metal plate where the mouth should be as well as a long coil of leather that looked to be some sort of leash. “I had a plan.”
“A bad one,” Kas muttered.
Simon opened his mouth to say something when there was a sudden explosion down the road towards the direction of what would be the heart of the New Micklefield part of the village. A pillar of black smoke and flames roiled skyward. A moment later, the shouts and screams of people in fear and pain could be heard.
“What the—” Simon opened his mouth, but the rest of his question was cut off by the foreign sound of automatic weapons being fired in short bursts.
11
Staring Over the Edge
“Just relax,” Caron called. “They can sense your feelings and will take complete advantage.”
“Maybe this is not such a great idea,” Shadiyah hollered back as the horse gave just a little bit of a buck as she tried to squeeze the animal with her knees as Caron had instructed. “Besides, we have more of those wretched creatures gathered on the other side of the fence.”
Shadiyah had a perfect vantage point to be able to see over the fence that ran along the rear of the property and cordoned off the open riding area from rest of the world. Tall trees ran the length, and beyond that were some train tracks running east and west and then more trees before another expensive home and large farm. There were only a few feet of space between the trees and the fence, but it was enough room for a few hundred of the undead to gather if they were not diligent in taking them down.
At first, the two young women had considered just leaving them be and seeing if they would wander off on their own, but by the third day when the numbers had increased to well over a hundred, a section of the fence made a terrible crack and they both rushed over, climbed up, and began to hack and spike the zombies that had gathered.
And that was the other thing that they both kept track of, but neither dared speak. Caron still showed no sign of being infected. Her eyes were still clear with none of the dark tracers. The wound was actually healing and had even reached the point where it began to itch.
Caron reached out as Shadiyah and the devious Buttercup trotted up. She grabbed the reins and it was as if a switch flipped in the powerful equine demon.
Eyeing the horse with absolute mistrust, Shadiyah started to climb down. Just as she swung her left leg over and was about to get clear, the horse took a sideways step that sent her falling hard on her rear end.
“You did that on purpose,” she snarled up at the creature that regarded her with its large brown eyes that did a marvelous job of feigning absolute innocence.
Climbing to her feet and dusting herself off, she accepted Caron’s hand, grateful for the help. Together, the women walked over to the tall fence and climbed up.
“This group gathered quickly,” Caron observed as she stabbed down with her pitchfork, driving two of the tines into the head of the closest zombie.
“Yeah, and look at those poor buggers,” Shadiyah grunted as she jabbed with her scimitar with one hand while pointing to their left with the other. “Nasty burns on them. I bet that lot is from the city.”
“The cloud seemed to be getting worse for a while,” Caron said as she paused to look to the west in the direction of Leeds. The horizon was washed out with a sheet of solid smoke that looked much denser than any old-time London fog. “But I think it has begun to dissipate.”
“I am just happy the wind has been to the west these past few days.” Shadiyah kicked a zombie in the head to knock it back from where it was about to try and grab hold of her leg. “An east wind would have sent us on the run for sure.”
For the next several minutes, the two took down one zombie after another. Shadiyah was marveling at how it had almost become normal. The last zombie for Shadiyah was a young girl in her late teens. As she stabbed it in the face with her scimitar, she was reminded of Simon. More specifically, she remembered his sister Miranda. The man had done proper by her; leaving her with her sword as well as a note that said where he and the others were headed. She had set out with the idea that she would let the man know she had taken care of his sister so that Miranda would not walk about as one of those horrid creatures.
At first, she had thought him a coward for not dealing with Miranda on his own. Yet, she had started to think that perhaps that same good heart that had done right by her had a lot to do with why he had not been able to take down his little sister. Also, as the days passed and Caron continued to show no signs of changing, she believed that just maybe every bite was not necessarily fatal. She had seen the blood on Miranda’s mouth and knew who the likely victim had to be. Simon had not shown signs of infection that she had been able to discern. His eyes had been clear…sad, but clear.
She climbed down from the fence and wiped off her blade; she was so lost in thought that it took Caron calling her name three times before she snapped out of her haze. Her head snapped up and she saw Caron’s expression change instantly.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked as she approached, setting down her pitchfork.
The woman held out her arms and Shadiyah fell into them. She started to cry. What made it worse was the fact that her mind could not lock on to any one single reason. It felt as if all the events of the past few weeks were landing on her heart with tremendous force in this single instant. Her crying grew more intense until she was sobbing in great hitching sounds that echoed in her ears. Through it all, Caron simply held her, stroking her hair and staying silent. Shadiyah was thankful that the woman was not whispering something insane like “things will be alright.”
Things would never be alright ever again. The world was done, and in the process, she had become something broken. Those crevices in her soul were closing up, but the scars were permanent, and they had changed her.
“I have to go,” Shadiyah finally managed through the tears.
“Go where?” Caron stepped back and held Shadiyah at arms’ length.
“I need to go to Micklefield. If nothing else, I must tell Simon about his sister. After that, I can come back.”
“Do you really think you are going without me, you silly cow?”
Shadiyah wiped the tears from her eyes and sniffed. She felt a complete mess…she felt detached from the world; but in this moment, there was a fragile tether that held her fast to her own humanity.
The two returned to the house after Buttercup had been brushed and stripped of all her gear. It was quickly decided that they would travel on foot.
“Maybe someday you will make life easier on us by being able to ride,” Caron quipped over Buttercup’s back during the brushing.
Shadiyah regarded the animal that seemed to be looking at her with the equine equivalent of contempt. She leaned over to the animal’s perked up ear and whispered, “If nothing else, you will keep me fed through the winter, you four-legged demon.”
Buttercup snorted.
***
Simon moved along the walls that ran the length of each house that bordered the Great North Road. Some were simple rock walls, others hedges, but they were high enough to provide him with adequate cover. He could hear the others behind him and he felt a series of mixed emotions.
When the gunfire had erupted, only he and Melena had wanted to investigate the source. The others, led by Nelson who did all the talking in those brief seconds, wanted to return home and let everybody know.
“I would bet they can hear all this just fine,” Simon had retorted. “They will be wanting an idea of what is happening, and I intend to give it. If we don’t know what we might be facing, we will fare much worse.”
That had been all Simon cared to say on the matter. Standing around discussing it might lead to him losing his nerve, and so he took off at a jog. He reached the junction where the train tracks passed overhead and stopped so suddenly that he was knocked forward when Melena co
llided with his back.
He held up his hands for everybody to halt as soon as he regained himself. He swore that he’d heard voices from up on the tracks. Turning to the others, he pointed to the high wall on their left that separated a series of two-story flats.
“Wait over there. I want to go see what’s up on the tracks,” he whispered.
“You aren’t going alone,” Dawn insisted.
Nods from the others let him know that it would be wasted time if he tried to debate the situation. Since she was closest, he waved for Melena to join him, and they both hopped up on the waist high wall that bordered the brush and tree-covered slope that led up to the tracks.
He made his way through the brush as silently as possible. As they reached just below the top of the rather steep slope, he began to make out the voices and what they were saying.
“…not much in the way of supplies. If we have to go door-to-door, it will be a big waste of time,” a man was complaining.
“The sergeant says that he plans to keep a few of these folks alive to handle that. He will have them unloading everything out to the street and we can take what we want afterwards,” a second voice said, sounding far too cheerful for Simon’s liking considering the topic.
“Trevor said that they got a bunch of the stiffs in a fenced in pasture at the south end of this piss pot. Said that folks actually tried to stop him and the boys from putting the damn things down. Even after he grabbed that one bloke and tossed him over the rail and made everybody watch as those things tore him apart, they still insisted that it weren’t zombies but just some sort of sickness,” the first voice said with disbelief clear in his tone.
“I still don’t think we should have shot them all out of hand. Folks that live outside of the main cities always seem to be a bit off in the head.”
“It put the rest in line.”
Simon reached the lip and crept up on his belly to get a look. Sure enough, there were only two men here. Both were wearing the uniform of the British Army. One was taking a deep drag of a cigarette while the other seemed content to continue to stare to the south in the direction of the small pillar of smoke that coiled skyward.
Simon winced as he recognized the weapons slung over the shoulders of the two soldiers. Each was carrying the SA 80A2 machinegun. He knew the model simply by reputation, having never actually fired any sort of gun in his life. And the only reason that he knew anything about this weapon was because of a BBC documentary on the troops that he’d seen a few weeks before all this madness began; otherwise, all he would have known was that those men were carrying machineguns which were substantially better than his mace.
The two men had stopped talking, but their attention was still directed away from where he and Melena were positioned. What he needed was something that distracted the men if he was going to have any chance at all of overpowering them. As it was, he did not give himself much chance of success. These were soldiers in full gear, and he was just a regular man.
He was about to give up and signal Melena that they should retreat when one of the soldiers spoke up. It was the one who had been smoking, and he flicked his butt away and took a drink from his canteen.
“I’ve got to have me a piss,” the man grumbled. “I don’t think anything will appear out of thin air in the next few minutes.”
Simon held his breath as the man started directly for him! He knew that any movement he made at this point would give them away; all he could hope for was that the man remained oblivious until it was too late.
Simon felt Melena stiffen beside him and now he had to hope that she would not bolt. Just as quick as it came, he dismissed the thought and kept his focus on the approaching soldier.
“You think we will be heading up the road and hitting that other little dump just north of here?” the soldier called over his shoulder as he approached the brush.
Simon could not believe his luck. He decided not to take it for granted and rose up. For just a second, his mind warred with what he was about to do. Taking down the undead had been one thing, but this was a living, breathing human. When his target’s partner spoke, it made Simon’s choice just a shade easier.
“I hope so, we was watching one of their patrols come in and I saw a few fine birds I wouldn’t mind plucking.”
Simon brought his mace across in a fierce, two-handed swing. The head of the mace connected with the man’s cheek just as he was turning back. It was unclear if the man even realized he was about to be struck since he had no chance to react before the side of his face was crushed; the blow to the temple causing a cranial rupture that shut the brain down and the body with it.
Unfortunately, that attack did not take place in a vacuum. The sound of the skull cracking, coupled with Simon’s grunt as he swung and connected along with the peculiar gurgle that the soldier emitted, was more than enough noise to cause the other soldier to start and spin around.
“What the blood—” he started to curse. Those words stuck in his throat along with the knife that now jutted from it.
“Holy crap, it worked!” Melena hissed as she scuttled past to retrieve her weapon.
“Strip the gear and let’s get out of here,” Simon breathed as he looked down on the man lying dead at his feet.
He watched as a dark, liquid stain began to ooze out through the rocks and gravel beside the train tracks. The soldier’s eyes were still wide open, but the man was very clearly dead. Still, Simon could not help but kneel down and feel for a pulse at the man’s throat. There was nothing.
Without warning, Simon vomited. The viscous stream splattered the corpse, bits of the morning meal sticking to the skin of the man’s dead face. For some reason, Simon could not look away until Melena grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.
He was still in a bit of a daze when he emerged from the trees at the bottom of the hill. Nelson and the others were hurrying over, and Kas was saying something, but all Simon heard was the roar in his ears. He was suddenly beginning to feel very dizzy.
“Don’t you dare,” Nelson’s voice cut through his fog and a hard slap to the face brought him to his senses in a quick, albeit unpleasant, manner.
Simon shook his head a few times to clear it. He quickly related what they had heard.
“But did you see how many?” Dawn asked.
“No, they were not able to be seen from the tracks,” Simon replied as he rubbed his cheek and shot a nasty look at Nelson who did not seem to notice in the slightest.
“I believe we should hurry back home.” Doctor Asan said, giving her brother a gentle shove for emphasis. “I have noticed that sound draw those things like moths to a flame. All that gunfire and such should bring them for miles, and I don’t want to be out like this if they come in great numbers.”
“I thought you were trying to nab one for experiments,” Kas said, only half teasing.
“That is correct, but I am not a fool. I have seen a few of those mobs roaming about that numbered well over a hundred. One or two…that is manageable. Ten or twenty, things get a bit sketchy. When you are talking about a hundred or more, that is just suicide.”
The doctor’s statement received nods from the group. Simon hated not knowing what exactly they might be facing, but he was satisfied that they had reduced the number by two. And, he thought as he gave the machinegun draped over his shoulder a little pat, they were at least a little better off in the realm of defense.
***
The two women had each loaded a pack with enough food to last five days. The trip to Micklefield should actually be able to be made in one, but there was no telling what they might encounter out there. The downside to their load out was that they only had two canteens each. They each plucked ten bottles of water as well, hoping that they would be able to find more as they traveled.
As the day gave way to evening, the two women sat in the upstairs bedroom that looked out at the horses grazing in the small riding area. Both were busy sharpening their weapons with the gear that Caron had br
ought in from the stable and work shop buildings. Neither knew if they were doing it exactly correct, but they could only do their best and hope. That was also why each woman had fashioned a weapon from some of the tools found out in the shed.
Shadiyah had chosen a hammer that had felt rather heavy when she had picked it up from the tool bench where Caron was busy inspecting her pitchfork, as well as a sturdy little axe, ensuring that the handles were in good condition. It would not do for them to be out and in a situation only to have their weapons break with zombies all around.
Together, they sipped on a bottle of wine that Caron brought up from the cellar. She had insisted that it was quite expensive and made a big fuss while opening it. Even more peculiar, she had poured each of them a glass and then said that it could not be consumed for a while so that it could breathe, decant, or some such nonsense. By the time she was able to actually take a sip, she had to admit that it was rather tasty, but certainly nothing worth a few thousand pounds like Caron insisted that the bottle would sell for.
That was another thing about the zombie apocalypse, Shadiyah thought as she sat staring out at a sky that was all sorts of oranges, purples, and reds with the setting sun turning the smoky haze of destruction from Leeds into something beautiful, those bottles of water sitting on the counter will be worth ten times that bottle of wine before long.
The world was changing, and the things that meant so much just a few weeks ago were now just a bunch of useless rubbish. If you couldn’t eat it, drink it (for replenishment, not to just get pissed), or kill with it, then it held no real value. Even this beautiful house would be worthless if not for the sturdy wall that surrounded it and kept the undead at bay.
She sat, continuing to watch until the sky became dark and a sliver of moon peeked in and out of the overcast sky. It looked like rain was going to greet them as they started this journey. Briefly, she considered putting the trip off, but she knew that every day she did so was another day where it would become less important to her.