by Frank Tayell
Nilda backed away, changed her grip, and swung at the creature’s legs. The bat smashed into its kneecap, and the creature fell forward. Nilda jumped to get out of the way, pivoted in mid-air, and brought the bat down on the zombie’s spine. There was a sickening crunch of bone. She brought it down again on its neck and then on its skull, again and again until she was beating blood and brain into the asphalt.
Then she stopped and backed away from the twice-dead creature. Taking long slow breaths, trying to calm her racing heart, she looked around. She listened. Nothing. She was alone.
She looked at the bat. It was covered in gore. Splinters of wood stuck out from the side, and that brownish pus had seeped into the cracks. There would be no way of cleaning it. She tossed it aside.
Her hands were covered in spots of that same red-brown blood. So was her jacket. She ripped it off, wiped her hands clean on the lining, and threw it away. Cold air cut through her as she returned to the bike and headed back to the school. She’d made it a street and a half before meeting Jay and Sebastian heading back towards her.
“Are you alright?” Jay asked, relief mixing with embarrassment.
“I’m fine. Running was the right thing to do. You just ran a bit too far, a bit too fast.”
“And you?” Sebastian asked. “What happened?”
“It’s dead. But when they said destroy the brain, they really meant it. You have to cave their skulls in. The creatures are impossible. They have no right, no reason to live. It’s…” She saw the look on her son’s face. “I had to,” she said. “We couldn’t leave it there. It’s between the house and the school. It had to be done. And better it were done quickly. Now, let’s get this stuff to the school.”
There was no sign of Mark or Tracy when they arrived.
“You unpack those bags,” Nilda said. “I want to find some bleach and clean my hands properly.”
“What now?” Jay asked, when she’d returned and they had stacked the tins inside the pavilion.
“Now we go back. We have to get that food.”
When they returned after the second trip, they found the other two walking along the road towards them; each wore an overloaded backpack, with another bag in one hand, and a crowbar in the other.
“You didn’t cycle?” Sebastian asked.
“I don’t know how, alright?” Mark said, testily. From his tone they guessed this was a topic the couple had discussed a lot that day. “And I didn’t think this was the time to…” He finally noticed Nilda’s expression “What happened?”
“Zombies,” she said. “Or one of them. About a mile from here.”
They looked around the school, at the vast buildings they had yet to ensure were empty, then at the gates. They suddenly didn’t seem as high as they had a moment before.
Part 2 - Fortification
Cumbria, and Dumfries & Galloway
13th March
“We need weapons,” Nilda said.
They had spent a fraught two hours the previous day going through the school, room by room, confirming it was empty. They’d then had a frantic three hours going back and forth collecting food from the terrace. Even with the five of them - Mark pushing himself along as much as he was pedalling - they’d not collected it all.
“Where do we look?” Mark asked. “A farm? I doubt there will be any left in the police station. Though since they had the police all kitted out with Army rifles there might be.”
“No,” Nilda said flatly. “Guns would be useless once we ran out of ammunition, and where would we find any more? That’s not to mention the noise. I was thinking more like spears and swords.”
“Or bows,” Jay suggested.
“They need as much practice as a rifle does,” Sebastian said. “More, really, as you’d have to be good enough to get an arrow right through a creature’s eye socket.”
Jay nodded slowly. A small voice inside Nilda cried at how quickly her son seemed to have embraced the violence of their new world.
“Swords and spears, where do we find those?” Tracy asked. She looked at Sebastian; so did everyone else.
“Well,” he said slowly. “Museums and country houses are the two obvious places. But those are antiques. They may be more rust than metal. We could spend a whole day searching and not find anything actually usable. I think we’re better off sticking with what we know.”
“Tools,” Tracy said. “That’s what we know. Axes and crowbars. And a manual pump would be useful for when the batteries die. Seems like the obvious place to try would be the fire station.”
The fire engines were gone. The station appeared hurriedly abandoned.
“This coat,” Nilda said, taking a jacket from the peg. “Do you think it’s bite proof?”
“Probably,” Sebastian said. “If it’s designed not to rip or tear when caught by jagged debris.”
“Good enough. Here, Jay. Put this on.” She threw it to her son. He did, without hesitation. She took one down for herself.
“Here. Found it,” Mark said, after he’d levered off the bolts to a long metal cupboard. “This is what we want. Fire axes and crowbars. And not the kind you’d find in any old store.”
They each took one, improvising slings and harnesses to carry them.
“Might as well have some spares,” Nilda said, as she took down another axe and strapped it on to the back of the bike. “In fact,” she added as she took down a third, “we might as well take them all.”
“Did you find the pump?” Jay asked Tracy.
“No. I think they must keep them on the engines. Which, I guess, makes sense. It’s not a problem for now, and honestly, we can just as easily make one. What about first aid kits?”
“There was only the one left,” Sebastian said.
“We’ll need more than that,” Tracy said.
“We’ve got some supplies from the veterinarian’s,” Nilda said. “Though not much.”
“Well, what about the hospital?” Mark asked. “Have you tried there?”
“Not yet,” Nilda said. “I figured they’d have taken everything of use.”
“Worth a look though, don’t you think?”
It was only a short distance from the fire station to the town’s small hospital. To appease Mark, they walked, pushing their bikes with them. They kept quiet, their eyes open. At each house they passed, Nilda couldn’t help be aware that their owners were probably dead, and the homes would now be forever vacant. But it wasn’t the loss of life that was bothering her. The only thing that mattered was keeping Jay safe. Each empty house she saw represented another family of the undead that would have to be killed before her son could have a normal life. So lost was she in her thoughts, she didn’t notice the noises until they had rounded a corner.
“Oh no,” she murmured, too softly for the others to hear. It didn’t matter. They had seen the danger. Up ahead, the road branched. At the junction was a detached house. Clawing at the doors, their arms already pushing through the broken window were nine of the undead.
“Back. Let’s go,” Sebastian whispered. “Quietly!”
They pushed their bicycles away and behind a wall.
“Did they see us?” Jay asked, too loudly.
“Shh!” Nilda said, gripping his shoulders.
“No,” Tracy said, peering around the corner.
“Okay, so we find another way back to the school,” Jay said.
“No,” Sebastian said. “There’s someone in that house. There has to be. Why else would those creatures be trying to get in?”
“You want to go and help them?” Mark asked.
“Do we have a choice?” Sebastian replied. “If you were trapped wouldn’t you want us to help you?”
“No, we don’t have a choice,” Nilda said. “The undead won’t go away. We deal with them now so we won’t have to do it later. Listen, Jay, I want you to stay here.”
“No way,” he said, though his protest was half-hearted.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “You stay her
e. We’re going to go in and try to kill them, but if we can’t, we’ll run back here and cycle away. Just make sure the zombies don’t follow you back to the school. Understand?”
Leaving Jay with the bikes, she headed towards the house. The others followed. She tested her grip. The axe was well balanced but heavy. When she was fifty yards away she called out.
“Hey!”
One of the creatures turned. She yelled again. The others joined in. For a moment the zombies seemed uncertain, torn between the prey that was close-by but difficult to reach, and that which was out in the open but further away.
Nilda wondered, as the creatures stumbled away from the house, whether they really did think like that, whether there was any spark of reason left in them, or whether they were acting on instinct alone.
And then there was no time for either thought or doubt. The first of the zombies was ten yards away. Its face was scarred, the nose flattened and broken. Its clothes were shredded as if it had fallen through glass. She stared at its forehead - she didn’t want to look in its eyes. She swung the axe up and down. It crushed through the creature’s skull, cleaving into its neck. She pulled it out, taking a step backwards. The zombie fell, but there was another just behind it. There wasn’t time to swing. She punched the axe head forward into the creature’s face. It stumbled with the impact. She swung up and down, the blade chopped through the zombie’s collarbone, deep into its chest. The blade stuck, the creature fell, but it kept moving. She grabbed the crowbar from her belt, took a step forward, and smashed it down on its skull.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sebastian swing the sword. He mistimed the blow. The blade bounced across the zombie’s head, neatly scalping it. Sebastian lost his grip. The sword flew out of his hand, skittering across the street. The old teacher’s gaze automatically followed the weapon, and then the zombie was on him. Its flailing arms knocked him to the ground. Sebastian fell on his back, the snarling creature on top. Nilda started to run. She saw the creature snap at Sebastian’s face. She could see him struggling, his arms trembling as he held the zombie back. He didn’t have the strength to hold back that undead weight.
Then, out of nowhere, Jay came running up the street. He grabbed the sword from the ground. One hand gripping the hilt, the other around the pommel, he took another two leaping strides and swung the blade into the creature’s neck. It stuck. Momentum carried the creature off Sebastian, taking the sword with it. Jay didn’t pause, he leapt over the older man, grabbed the sword and pulled and twisted, nearly decapitating the zombie. He changed his grip and stabbed the blade down through the creature’s temple. Nilda had time to notice the brown red ooze dripping from the blade as he pulled it out, seconds before she saw another creature heading for her son. Still running, she took a skipping half step and dived forward, knocking the creature to the ground. It thrashed underneath her as she punched and pushed and tried to find the purchase to swing the crowbar. And then, its edge still dripping brown blood, the sword plunged down into the zombie’s eye, inches from her face. The creature stopped moving.
“Come on, Mum, get up! Quick!” Jay said, pulling her to her feet.
She spared a glance at him. He seemed fine but… different. She didn’t have time to think about that. She looked towards the house, in time to see Tracy swing her axe into a zombie’s legs, then Mark stepped forward, bringing his down on its skull. Another creature, messily decapitated, lay a few yards from them. She looked around for the other three. They were still by the house.
A broad-shouldered man, with a flat stomach hidden under a potbelly, stood in the doorway. A poker was in one hand, a dead zombie at his feet, with two more trying to claw their way in. Nilda changed her grip as she sprinted towards the house. Holding the crowbar out in front, she speared it forwards, using her weight and momentum to smash through bone. The zombie’s skull was crushed. The creature collapsed.
Now only facing one foe, the man swung his poker down. It narrowly missed Nilda before impacting against the zombie’s shoulder with enough force to knock it to its knees. She ducked out the way at the same time as Mark barged past, swinging his axe down on the fallen creature’s head. Nilda looked around again. Only the living were still moving.
“Jay, are you okay?” she asked, walking quickly over to him.
“I’m alright,” he said with a shrug. The sword was still in his hands.
“Sebastian?”
“Fine. I’m fine. Just a little… I wasn’t, uh… I’m fine,” he wheezed.
She glanced at Mark and Tracy, then at the man with the poker.
“Thank you,” the man said. “I knew someone would come along. I knew we’d made the right choice. Wasn’t expecting firemen. I thought they’d send the Army.”
Nilda glanced down at the firefighter’s jacket she was wearing.
“We took these from the fire station half an hour ago,” she said simply. “There’s no help coming. We’re on our own.”
“You’re not part of some relief column?” the man asked, disbelief battling despair on his face.
“There won’t be one,” Sebastian said. “I went on the evacuation. The vaccine was a poison they used to cull the population. I think they thought if there were no people, there would be no zombies. It hasn’t worked.” He shrugged, and turned to follow Nilda.
“Wait. Where are you going?” the man called out.
“The hospital. There might be supplies there.”
“There isn’t. That’s where we went and we barely escaped. These creatures followed us. That’s how we ended up here.”
“We?”
The man nodded, then turned to the house.
“Sylvia!” he bellowed. A woman came out, pushing two children in front. Nilda guessed their ages somewhere between seven and nine. She didn’t ask. She just turned and walked down the road. Jay followed.
“What’s wrong, Mum?” he asked.
“There were two adults in that house, with eight undead outside the front door. The front door, Jay, not the back. They let themselves be trapped, and when it came to it, only that man came out to help in the fight. And now they’re going to come with us. We can’t stop them.”
“But if everyone does their bit, if we work together, then it’s four more people to share the work.”
“The two children will be nothing more than two extra mouths eating our food. And they’ll need protecting, which means one less person doing something useful.”
“So what are you saying?” he stormed. “You’d rather we’d just left those kids to die?”
“No, Jay, of course not,” she replied, shaking her head. “But if it comes to a choice between you and anyone else, that’s no choice at all.”
It was Jay’s turn to shake his head, and then he walked off, heading towards Sebastian. He held out the sword to the older man.
“Oh no, I think that’s yours,” Sebastian insisted. “You made far better use of it than I did. Here.” He unbuckled the scabbard he’d improvised and handed it to Jay. “Now, what advice can I give you? The pointed end goes first, and remember that it is pointed. That’s a stabbing blade not a hacking one. Twist when it goes in, you don’t want it to become stuck again. Keep it clean. Keep it sharp. More than that, learn from my mistake; try and keep a hold of it.”
And another little part of Nilda’s soul ached at her son’s solemn expression as he sheathed the sword.
Without discussion, the plan of going to the hospital was put on hold, and they headed back to the school. This new family were the Harpers; Andrew, Sylvia, Chantelle aged eight, and Christof aged nine. They had driven from Kendal, heading north. Not to anywhere in particular, just with a vague idea that things would be better in Scotland. Nilda couldn’t quite understand why they had gone to the hospital, but that was where they had run out of fuel. She found it telling that they had left without either a set destination or the petrol to reach it. There was more to the story, something to do with neighbours and the days leading up to the evac
uation. She tuned it out. Her mind was focused on the undead, on her son, and what she would need to do next to ensure he stayed alive.
“Unload your gear, then we’ll need to go out again to collect more supplies,” Nilda said, unloading the axes and crowbars they had taken from the fire station.
“We’ve taken over the cricket pavilion,” Jay said, in a far friendlier tone than his mother’s. “There’s plenty of room.”
“That small building?” Mr Harper asked, “We’ll probably take one of the rooms over in that block.” He pointed to the main school building.
“Suit yourself,” Nilda said. “The only working showers are in the pavilion.”
That seemed to persuade Sylvia Harper, and the children were too scared to care, but not Mr Andrew Harper.
“Well, where are we meant to sleep?” he asked. And Nilda was amazed that there was no residual thanks from their rescue of his family.
“One of the changing rooms?” Tracy suggested.
There were two changing rooms downstairs, each with its own set of showers. One for the home team, one for the visitors. These were on the ground floor, one on either side of a long corridor, bracketed by a plethora of storerooms. On the floor above were the offices, the box, a kitchen, and a long dining room with a working fireplace, which, according to the brochure they’d found, was rented out for fully-catered functions. According to the same brochure, each meal cost more than Nilda made in three months. Tracy and Mark had claimed that room. Sebastian had claimed the glassed in box overlooking the pitch, and Nilda and Jay had taken the largest office.