by Frank Tayell
She tried to see his face, tried to find it amongst the snarling mass of death moving inexorably closer. There. Was it him? She couldn’t be certain until she saw the firefighter’s jacket the creature was wearing. It was just the same as the one she’d insisted her son wore. And then, as creatures pushed and shoved and tumbled against one another, the figure was lost from sight. All she clearly saw was that scarf, waving above them like some mocking flag.
She screamed. She bellowed with frustrated grief. Her fists balled as her muscles bunched, and someone tackled her from behind, knocking her to the ground. She turned expecting to see a zombie’s snarling face. It wasn’t. It was Sebastian.
“Nilda. Please. Come on, or we’ll both die,” he pleaded with her.
“Jay!” she growled.
“Please, Nilda, please.”
“His scarf!” she wailed plaintively.
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said softly. “Come on.”
Her growl turned into a sob as he helped her up. With one hand firmly gripping her arm, the other holding an axe, the head dripping with red-brown ooze, he led her away.
An hour later, Nilda sat in the corner of the bus depot, silent. Sebastian sat next to her. Everyone else was just as quiet, all occasionally throwing glances her way.
“Alright, look, I am sorry,” Rob said again. He didn’t sound apologetic. “But we can’t just sit here. We need a plan. I reckon—”
“Ireland,” Tracy said, cutting him off. That’s our plan. Or one of the small islands in the Irish Sea. Somewhere with no zombies. That’s the only place that’s going to be safe. To get there we need boats. And we’ll find those at the coast. That’s where we’ll head.”
“And what about the government—” Rob began.
“No,” Tracy interrupted, firmly. “Tuck was certain about that. The government’s gone. We’ll avoid the enclaves and go north until we reach Carlisle, then we can either go west or up into Scotland. Either way, we’ll follow the coast until we find a boat.”
“And how exactly are we going to do that? Unless you hadn’t noticed,” he waved his hand around to take in the empty garage, “there aren’t any buses here.”
“Engines would be no good. You saw what happened at the school when those zombies all followed that car in. No, we’ll cycle. We’ve all got bikes.”
“I haven’t,” Rob said.
“Then you better go and find one. There were a couple chained up on the street outside. Because tomorrow, at first light, we’re heading west. We’ll follow the train line north and we’ll see where that leads us. We’ll get off the mainland. Then we’ll be safe.”
She said it with such certainty that most people, taking comfort in the words of someone who sounded like they had a plan, nodded their heads. Most people.
“That’s got to be two hundred miles,” Andrew Harper stated. “Let’s just cut across the Lake District.”
“Did you bring food with you? Did anyone? No? I thought not. Once we’re clear of the town we’ll need to find more. We’ll only find it near civilisation. We have to stick to the roads and railways. At least for now.”
“But it’s too far,” Mr Harper said. “We won’t make it.”
“We have to,” Tracy said, “because we can’t stay here.”
21st March
“Everyone up. Hurry,” Tracy called out softly, moving from person to person, pushing and pulling them to their feet. “Ten minutes, and we’re moving out.”
Nilda was awake. She hadn’t slept.
It took a long time to get everyone ready and outside. Or it seemed that way to Nilda. She watched everyone, seemingly in slow motion, grab their gear and try and organise themselves. The Harpers were the slowest of all. The children looked scared, perched on frames too large for them. Nilda watched their mother comfort them. She wanted to go over and tell them that the problem with Jay’s saddle was that it was too high. No, that wasn’t Jay… what was the boy’s name? She tried to remember. She couldn’t. She turned away. Her eyes fell on the road leading into town. Should she go back? She was still considering it when a steady hand fell on her shoulder.
“Come on.” It was Sebastian. He moved her over to the bike. A moment later she found that she was sitting on it, Sebastian on one side, Mark on the other. They pushed and dragged and cajoled until she began to pedal.
Cycling was easy. It was mechanical. She found it required no thought and gave her no time to think. She pedalled harder and faster. Feet turned to yards, road turned to rail, and they were cycling two abreast along the embankment. And soon after that, she was at the front. Rob put on speed to keep up. Tracy did the same. Yards turned to a mile, and then two.
Soon the ragged group was strung out on the railway line. Sebastian and Mark were at the back with the Harpers and a few others. Nilda was at the front, Tracy at her side, Rob and his gang trying to keep up.
“We need to slow down,” Tracy said.
Nilda heard the words, but she didn’t want to stop. She wasn’t sure she knew how.
“Nilda?” Tracy called again, a few minutes and a hundred yards later. “We need to slow down. Let the others catch up.”
“If they can’t keep up, they’re not trying hard enough,” Rob panted.
“Nilda,” Tracy began again, but was interrupted by a child’s scream coming from behind them. The sound cut through Nilda’s veil of grief. She stopped and looked behind. The rear half of their group was out of sight.
“Was that—” There it was again, a pitiful wail of pain and fear. She glanced over at Tracy and saw on her face the fear that she too had lost someone she loved.
“We have to help them,” Nilda said to Tracy, to Rob, to herself, and to no one as she began cycling back along the tracks. There was a third, more guttural scream, and a moment later it was Tracy’s turn to put on a manic burst of speed. She shot past, overtaking Nilda.
The tracks curved, and Nilda saw the other half of the group. They were half a mile away and they were surrounded. A dozen undead were on the tracks in front, another dozen behind and more than she could easily count spilling up the embankment from either side.
Tracy was two hundred yards ahead and getting further away with each second. Nilda followed, trying to catch up, but found she couldn’t match the other woman’s desperate acceleration.
She kept her eyes fixed on the group. They had formed a rough circle. The two children were in the centre, the adults ringed around them, fending off the undead. There were too many zombies that they could defeat them but, she thought, if she and Tracy and Rob and the others could just get there in time, maybe they would still all be able to escape.
She was four hundred yards away when she saw a pitifully small creature claw its way onto Andrew Harper’s back. She imagined the small teeth biting at cloth, scoring flesh, pulling itself up until it reached his neck. Mr Harper stiffened and screamed. He tore the creature off, throwing it back into the pack.
“Not my children! Not my children!” she heard him bellow as he swung left and right, an axe in one hand, a crowbar in the other.
But his berserk blows left him without any defence. Two creatures came at him simultaneously from either side, tearing and clawing and biting at his legs and arms and chest. He collapsed to the ground, three more zombies piling on top of this now easy prey. Sylvia Harper jumped forward, beating ineffectually at the creatures with a cricket bat, but then she too was knocked from her feet and disappeared under the snarling mass of the undead.
Nilda searched for some last reserve of energy, propelled by a burning need to reach the children. She regretted the hasty way she’d judged the couple who’d died protecting their kids. She regretted not trying to get to know them. She regretted going to the school and everything in between. But she felt if they could just save those two children then not everything would be lost.
With only two hundred yards between her and the undead, she saw Mark try to clear a path through the zombies in front. He swung his ax
e up and down, cleaving limbs and cracking bone. Humans would have fled before the onslaught, but the undead felt no pain. Nilda wanted to shout at him, to remind him that he needed to kill them, that nothing else mattered. But she had no breath to spare for shouting.
A creature appeared behind Mark. Its left arm had been nearly sliced through and now hung from the merest scrap of skin. With its right, it clawed out, grasping at Mark’s shoulder. He half turned, and almost as if it was waiting for that opening, a zombie lurched forward, its teeth chomping at his neck. He fell. And Tracy screamed as she leapt off the bike, sprinting towards her fallen man. She had the axe out and swung at a creature in front. She missed. Off balance, she didn’t even have the chance to defend herself. She fell, her screams finally cut short.
Nilda kept going. She could see Sebastian, and he was still alive. So were the children; both were huddling against his legs. The old teacher was timing his blows, swinging a crowbar methodically, left then right, then left again. With each blow he crushed a skull, and with each swing he took a step forwards, towards her, the children moving with him.
And then Nilda reached the undead. She fell off the bike. She reached behind her, unslinging the axe, and idly wondering who had put it on her back that morning, she swung it around in a long horizontal arc. It crashed through a zombie’s face. The creature fell. She pivoted, turned, and swung again. She threw the axe up and down, splitting a zombie’s skull in two. She pulled the axe out, swung again, and again.
There were only twenty yards separating them now. The others would arrive soon. She just had to keep swinging the axe and keep the undead focused on her, and Sebastian would be able to protect the children and the others would arrive and they would be safe and then she could die. Perhaps then, she might see Jay again.
She swung, aiming at the legs, keeping the axe low, scything it around. They might still be in time, if only the others would hurry up and arrive. And she scythed the axe around again, this time twisting with it so that she could see how far away the others were. The tracks behind were empty. There was no one coming to help.
Rage overtook her. She hadn’t saved her son, but she could save someone. If she managed to save just one person then, somehow, she would be redeemed. She cleaved and hewed, and the axe stuck. She dropped it, pulling out the crowbar from her belt. She swung and hacked, but there wasn’t the weight to the blows of the heavier axe. She split skin, she cracked bones, but the zombies didn’t fall so easily.
She vaguely registered passing Mark’s body. She vaguely noticed Tracy, dead, her hand outstretched towards him. She vaguely noticed the fingers twitch.
“Sebastian!” she called. He heard her. He looked up.
“I’m coming!” she yelled.
But it was too late. Sebastian was surrounded. She knew she couldn’t reach him in time.
“No! No! No!” she screamed, laying about her left and right. But Sebastian and the two children disappeared under the weight of the undead.
All reason gone, the crowbar fell from her hand as she tried to push past the undead to reach her fallen friend. She didn’t notice the first bite. She noticed the second, and with it, the rage disappeared to be replaced by a cold bitter fear. Acting on instinct, she pushed the creature away. Stumbling across the tracks, she backed away from the pack of zombies still tearing apart her friends. They were dead. She glanced at her arm. So was she. There was nothing she could do to help them. There was nothing she could do to help herself. But they could be avenged. Not by killing the undead. They were the weapon, not the cause. It was Rob’s fault. If he had followed her, then Sebastian and the children would still be alive. He would pay.
Her foot caught on one of the sleepers. Stumbling, she fell, grazing her hands on the gravel. She pushed herself upright and onward, back towards the bike. Glancing behind, she saw the creatures were getting closer. She may die, but she wasn’t going to die like that. Not yet. She turned and ran, back up the tracks to where she’d dropped the bike. She had to catch up with Rob and the others. Then she would let herself die, and in death she would become her own avenging spirit.
She pulled herself on the bike and began pumping at the pedals. She was tired. More than tired. Exhausted. Running on adrenaline, and that was running out.
“No. Not yet,” she said. “Soon. Just a few miles more.”
She felt weak. She felt tired. She tried to tell herself it was only the adrenaline wearing off, but perhaps it was blood loss. Perhaps it was something else.
She reached the point where she’d heard the first scream. There was no sign of Rob. But she knew which way he’d gone. He couldn’t be far ahead. She forced herself to continue, heading north along the tracks. When she looked behind she saw no undead. She had outpaced them. She glanced ahead. There was no sign of the others. She cycled faster, pushing herself on, forcing her feet to pedal, not wanting to stop until she caught up with them.
“Just a few more miles. Just a few more.”
But she knew she was slowing down. The last of her strength was finally beginning to ebb. She knew this was it. She was dying.
And with that thought, the last of her energy was spent. She brought the bike to a stop next to an old brick signal box. The bushes to her right rustled. There was a snapping of branches followed by the low wheezing snarl of the undead. No, she thought, that wasn’t fair.
She leant the bike up against the signal box and used it as a step to climb up onto its low roof. It wasn’t much of a last resting place, she thought, but she would die in peace and afterwards… afterwards didn’t concern her. Not any more.
She lay down and stared up at the grey sky.
“I’m sorry,” she said to no one and everyone.
She passed out.
And then she woke up.
Grey clouds scudded across a bruised sky. And she could see them. As that realisation seeped through her, she became aware of how bitterly cold it was. She raised her hands above her face. The movement sent a jarring pain through the back of her neck. If she felt pain, she wasn’t dead. She hadn’t turned. Or maybe she had. Maybe, she thought, she was undead but somehow… different. Slowly, painfully, she rolled onto her side. Another dagger of pain, this time from her arm, pierced her skull. She glanced at the bite wound. Red blood beaded up through the cracks in the scab. She bled. The blood was red. What did that mean? Maybe, she reasoned, she’d only been asleep for a few minutes, yet one glance at the long shadows told her that wasn’t the case.
“Either I’ll turn or I…” But she left the sentence unfinished, for as she spoke she had heard a sound from below. And there it was again, louder this time. A slow scraping sound followed by a snarling wheeze. She remembered the zombie that had caused her to climb the signal box in the first place. She rolled and crawled to the roof’s edge, and looked down. The creature was there, but it was alone.
I’m alive, she thought. A treacherous voice at the back of her mind added ‘for now’. But when throughout the scope of human history had anyone truly been able to say any more than that? She got to her knees and breathed deep, filling her lungs with the cold early evening air. If she was alive, then she could still have her revenge. And she would have it. More than anything, right then, that was what she wanted.
At some point she had lost her bag. She checked her belt, then her pockets. Empty. She was unarmed. No matter. She spotted a broken cinder block lying discarded amidst the gravel. She walked around the edge of the roof. As she did, the creature moved, following her, its hands pawing against the brickwork. When she’d reached the opposite side, the creature slapping at the wall below her, she ran back across the roof and jumped down. She landed hard, breaking her fall with her hands. Her injured arm sent a spike of protest into her brain. She gritted her teeth, channelling the pain into furious rage as she grabbed the cinder block and stood up. As the creature rounded the corner, she swung the block into its face. The impact knocked the zombie backwards, she swung again and again, and the creature fell. She s
tepped forward and brought the cement brick down on its skull.
She took a moment to look at the creature she’d killed. She tried to see it as the man it had once been. He had dressed like most of the others, in a thick winter jacket, jeans and trainers. Comfortable clothes for the evacuation. No, not he, it. It was just a creature. Not a human. Not anymore. None of them were. Not even Jay. She let the cinder block fall to the ground, grabbed the bike and began cycling north once more. She found she was cycling much more slowly than before, barely faster than a brisk walk. She hadn’t the energy to go any faster, but Rob would have to stop, she told herself. He would stop to rest and search for food. He would pick the most convenient house, the one closest to the railway line. She repeated the words to herself, kept her eyes scanning the tracks and overgrown embankments and tried not to think about being alive. It was hard.
She followed the tracks until she saw, with dusk’s last light, a railway station up ahead. She didn’t want to stop, but knew that if she didn’t she would collapse.
The station was small, consisting of nothing more than two platforms connected by a pedestrian bridge, each with a small waiting room. The southbound platform had a customer toilet with a faded ‘out of order’ sign. Next to it were two vending machines. She thought that an oddly appropriate place for them. She pulled herself up onto the platform and checked the machines. The doors had been forced open, the contents taken. Probably by Rob, she thought. It had to have been him. The sight of that oh-so-familiar poster on the vending machines side reminded her that she’d neither drunk nor eaten for hours, possibly not since the day before. She couldn’t remember.
She turned her attention to a small door marked private. Like the machines, the lock had been levered off. The contents inside appeared untouched, probably because none of them had any obvious value. She rooted around and found mops, buckets, a few bottles of disinfectant, a stack of bright orange ‘Warning! Wet Floor!’ signs, and at the back, behind a pile of lurid, high-visibility yellow vests, she found a pallet of water. She pulled out a bottle and downed it in two gulps. Only half of the water went in her mouth, the rest spilled over her face. It felt wonderful. She took another bottle. Her stomach gurgled as it began to fill. She felt more human, though that feeling was almost immediately suppressed by a flash of doubt as to whether she really still was.