The Undead the Second Week Compilation Edition Days 8-14

by RR Haywood

  The room looks like a staff room, except it’s a filthy staff room. Old blue cushioned chairs covered in oil stains, the table littered with salt and pepper pots, tomato ketchup bottles and everything covered in grimy oil smears.

  Even the once white sink is mostly black from grime and an industrial size tub of abrasive hand wash rests by the sink.

  Dirty coveralls hang from hooks by the door, posters of topless models adorn the walls. Without going any further Paula knows the place is a garage, an old style back street dirty garage with hairy men with fat stomachs and tattoo’s staring hungrily at every woman that dares walk in.

  A foreign environment and one that sent shudders through her. Simply because the people here knew more about cars than she would ever know, which meant she had to rely on them and take their word for whatever was wrong, which is something she had grown to hate over the years.

  Scanning round she looks for something to prop in the broken window, anything will do, even if it just blocks the eye from registering a freshly broken pane of glass.

  In the end she settles for the large side of a cardboard box, using her knife to cut it down to size and pushing it hard against the gap. Using the tub of hand-wash to hold it in place she rushes out of the room into the large main workshop, several vehicles sit high on ramps or jacked up with bonnets open and mechanical entrails littering about.

  Going from workstation to workstation she finds what she’s looking for and heads back into the staff room, using the sticky tape to secure the cardboard to the window, then changing her mind she pulls it off and finds a marker pen, scrawling this building is alarmed on the side before sticking it back up, then she pulls it off again and smears from oily dirt over the edges to make it look old, her art project finished she sticks it back up and stands wondering what to do now, biting her bottom lip as she looks round.

  Thirsty, it’s hot and she’s sweating profusely, replenish the fluids and find some food. The tap still runs so she leaves it on for a minute to draw any stagnant water out and starts looking through the mugs. All of them filthy and tea stained.

  Using a scouring pad and a new bottle of washing up liquid that looks like it has never been touched, she scrubs a mug clean, rubbing the brown stains away until it gleams in the original ceramic white colour with a picture emblazoned on one side.

  ‘You are shitting me,’ she shakes her head at the cover image for the movie 28 days later on the side of the mug. You couldn’t make it up she muses, filling the now clean mug and drinking deeply.

  She searches the room for food, finding a couple of chocolate bars in the rancid fridge, her fingers squish the melted chocolate as soon as she touches it. Discarding the ruined bar she keeps looking but finds only pasta pots and noodles which require hot water.

  Sounds of feet scuffing from outside, she freezes and listens intently. Footsteps getting closer, coming down the side. Backing away from the staff room she moves into the workshop, scanning round for somewhere to hide.

  A small customer office over the other side near the front, she gets inside but other than under the desk there’s nowhere to tuck away.

  Back into the workshop and she spots a single wooden door on a partitioned section in the corner. Pulling the door open she winces at the rancid smell of stale urine and human waste, grimacing at the sight of the filthy toilet bowl. No air flow in here, just stale air mixed with the waste of all the mechanics using it every day.

  Holding at the door she looks round for somewhere else, anywhere else but this is the only place. She drags a stack of old tyres over and places them in a pile by the door, making sure she’s got just enough to squeeze inside. Again it’s not perfect but it might draw the eye away from the door.

  The scrapes and knocks sound from the rear double doors, just feet from her position. Low groaning noises and scuffs as feet are dragged and placed noisily.

  Taking a big breath of semi clean air she heads into the toilet and quietly pushes the door closed before slumping down in the pitch dark with her back to it, staying as far away as possible from the filthy toilet bowl.

  Fourteen

  With Dave and Lani on the top wall looking out I take the opportunity to speak with Clarence while the lads piss about moving the vehicles to get to an old lorry. We both stare up at the two slight figures standing with their backs to us, the smaller shape of Meredith lying down next to Lani.

  ‘So?’ He says at length, ‘what do you think?’

  ‘Dunno mate, I want to believe it but what are the chances?’

  ‘You think it’s another trick?’ he speaks quietly, voice low and muted. I don’t know what to think so I don’t answer for a minute, ‘Boss?’ He prompts.

  Shrugging I try and find a clear thought process in my head, ‘Why Lani? Why not you or one of the lads? Why her? Of all the thousands and thousands of undead we’ve killed, every one of them being a person before they were infected…why Lani?’

  ‘There’s always the chance that I am immune, or Dave or any of us…we won’t know unless we get infected…’

  ‘Nah, you think so?’ I look up at him.

  ‘Not really,’ he shrugs, ‘just thinking it through.’

  ‘Right,’ I start off with my hand in front, palm turned up, ‘we find each other right, I was going into London and we meet you and Chris, then we get down here and get the fort…now there can’t be many places like this so that’s makes us kind of unique, plus we’ve killed so many, which again makes us unique…then we not only hear about Meredith but we find her too, again that makes us unique…and now with Lani? It just seems…I don’t know…’

  ‘There’ll be hundreds of communes and places like this,’ Clarence says inclining his head behind us and clearly meaning the fort even though we’re stood in it, ‘plus other survivors could have killed as many as us and we still don’t know if it is just Meredith or all that breed…we might not be as unique as you think.’

  ‘So if we look at it like that,’ I pick up on his train of thought, ‘then Lani being immune or repressing it or whatever she’s doing, then it could genuinely be that she’s the one in a million…or billion….or whatever comes after billion.’

  ‘Trillion.’

  ‘One in a trillion then…but we only had about fifty million in this country so…maybe one in fifty million…but like you just said we don’t know that, there could be loads of people the same as her, we just haven’t met them.’

  ‘Sorry to bring her up, but Marcy was different, she had a chance to infect you and she didn’t, she had time to take all of us but she didn’t.’

  ‘Why not? If the plan was to pump out pheromones so we all get turned then why not do it when the battle was on, or when we were sleeping?’

  He shrugs and shakes his head, exhaling a long breath at the same time, ‘I get the impression that Marcy meant what she said when she first turned up and the pheromone thing came later.’

  ‘Yeah I did think that,’ I agree glumly, ‘fuck this is hard, the end of days should be easy and running about killing zombies not wondering about this kind of shit.’

  He laughs and looks round at the sea of bodies stretched out in every direction, ‘we not killing enough for you then?’

  ‘Well,’ I exclaim loudly, ‘we can only do what’s in front of us, we get this place sorted and worry about it after…’

  ‘I’ll get the digger and see what the lads are doing,’ he strides off towards the gate leaving me alone and thinking hard. Glancing up I see Lani turned and staring down at me. I wave and she just stares back before turning away.

  I remember at work, in the supermarket that when I felt stressed or worried I’d go onto the shop floor for a bit and stock some shelves. The repetitious work somehow soothed my mind and enabled me to think a lot clearer. Looking round at the bodies I wonder if clearing these away will be the same thing.

  Shuffling over I get to the closest one and look down at the decaying mess of what was once human flesh and is now just a bloodied
, barely recognisable corpse. Red eyes stare up at me lifelessly, the mouth hangs open with flies buzzing in and out of the cavity. Bending closer I see fat white maggots writhing inside against the swollen tongue. Somehow, it just doesn't look the same as a crate of baked beans in tomato sauce that needs opening and putting on the shelf.

  The heat is already decaying them, the flesh will tear easily now and will be a bloody nightmare trying to clear them by hand. I snort to myself at thinking of it as a bloody nightmare, bloody in more ways than one.

  This fort was thriving just yesterday. Thousands of people feeling maybe that first stab of hope that they can get through it. Who was to blame? Sergeant Hopewell for not getting the security done faster? Or whoever messed up and let them get inside?

  Not that it matters now. A loud diesel engine chugs to life somewhere between the two gates, followed by another one a few seconds later, this one much louder. Staring at the gate I watch as first Clarence drives a big yellow digger through with a massive metal scoop on the end of the extending arm, then Nick behind the wheel of a tatty old flatbed lorry.

  They park up and clamber down to start putting the protective gear on, glasses, thick gloves and face masks.

  Why Lani?

  It doesn't make any sense. I want to believe in it, I truly do. But after Marcy and all the other things it just seems too good to be true. If she is immune, or has a way of fighting it then we need to do something. We don’t even know for sure if she died before she came back, she might have just got infected and not actually died. Either way her eyes are clear, she’s speaking normally and seems in full possession of her own mind. Nothing about her seems different apart from the wound that’s healed much faster.

  She could be the hybrid that Marcy said was possible, all of the good but none of the bad. Not likely though.

  ‘Here boss,’ Clarence walks over holding a pair of glasses along with the other gear. Taking them I get dressed slowly, still deep in thought as the lads stroll over with freshly lit cigarettes.

  ‘Ready,’ with the glasses and face mask on I turn round to and sigh again at the sheer number of bodies, then another sigh as I glance up into the clear sky and the heat coming down.

  It’s gruesome work, disgusting and filthy but after all the fights we’ve been in I guess we’ve become desensitised to it by now. Clarence gets to work trying to figure out how to use the digger and operate the scoop. Going too high with the scoop and too fast with the speed he ploughs into the bodies squashing them under the big wheels and driving the metal prongs of the digger through the corpses instead of under them.

  The lads burst away from the shower of guts and body parts that get thrown up, yelling in disgust as Clarence grins and stops the digger. Pulling levers about he smashes the scoop down, flattening more bodies, then up too high and going forward, driving yet more of them into the ground.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ he shouts above the noise of the engine. Concentrating hard he lowers the scoop bit by bit until Nick shouts for him to stop, then he inches forward again guided by Nick until the scoop is full of bodies. With a yell and a thumbs up Nick steps back, watching as Clarence pulls more levers to lift the scoop up.

  He starts turning in a wide circle, flattening and popping more bodies as he goes round. Facing the right way he jolts the digger forward and presses something that makes the scoop tilt forward dropping all the bodies back onto the ground.

  The lads all cheer and clap as Clarence goes red in the face and backs up, re-adjusting the scoop and trying again. Each time he does it the bodies get mangled more and more, becoming a heap of limbs and torsos instead of whole corpses.

  Finally he gets one in the scoop and lifts it up, the lads cheering as he starts inching forward towards the lorry. The single mangled body has one leg hanging out, threatening to pull the rest of the body down.

  Clarence stares at the dangling limb, sending thought waves of exactly what he’ll do if it dares fall out. Which then causes a problem as he’s watching the leg and not where’s he’s going and drives into the side of the lorry with a loud bang. Amazingly, the body stays in the scoop and the big man doesn't even glance at the lorry but operates the scoop to drop the body into the flat bed.

  ‘YES! GET IN!’ He bellows with a roar, standing up with his arms in the air. The lads cheer and applaud, we hear a whistle and look up to see Lani with her fingers in her mouth and waving down.

  ‘That’s one,’ I shout over, ‘nine hundred and ninety nine to go…’

  ‘On it,’ he shouts back buoyed up at his success. We watch as he goes back and attacks them again, causing more damage and just making it harder to get the flattened bodies up. He drives the scoop too low and grinds a huge divot of earth up. Cursing as he operates the scoop to drop the earth and change direction, going for another pile further on.

  In the end we pile in, the lads and I grabbing bodies to stack them into little piles for Clarence to get at. It works better and before long we’ve almost forgotten what we’re doing and shouting to each other as we work. Or clothes get covered in gore and we slip and slide through the mess, chatting away as we bend down to scoop bits of bodies up.

  At one point I look up to see Cookey a few metres away holding an arm as she explains something to Blowers who just nods back as though it’s completely natural. Cookey even uses the arm to emphasise whatever point he’s making before glancing at the limb and throwing it onto the pile.

  Clarence does get the hang of it, eventually. The lorry gets filled up with bodies and then Clarence has the bright idea of using the scoop to pat them down and make more room. We all see what he’s planning and we all try to shout, but he does it anyway and it does work to a certain extent but also reminds me of squashing your hand down on a sponge cake and watching the jam in the middle ooze out the sides.

  The scoop bounces down, rocking the lorry on its suspension, the hydraulic arm whirring as it lifts and drops with a squelchy thud. Bloodied things get popped and drop out and he goes back for another scoop.

  Nick gets into the lorry, Clarence swaps to the fuel tanker and we clamber in, driving out through the gates to the flatlands, leaving Dave and Lani on the top wall. We go slow as the unmade road bounces the lorry about, threatening to spill the bodies out.

  We head into the estate, or what was the estate and pull up next to the already huge pile of bodies. Even with the face masks on the smell makes us want to gag. Putrid foul eggs mixed with sulphur and rancid meat. Insects buzzing everywhere and the cadavers almost writhe from the maggots living within them. There were bodies here since the first attack by Darren, and Marcy stacked the people from the fort here too after the big fight yesterday.

  The sight is indescribable, just solid mounds of bodies in varying states of decay. None of us look too hard for fear of seeing faces and features we’d recognise.

  Nick operates the back of the lorry, holding a button down that pushes the hydraulic arm up to lift the flat bed. It grinds noisily, threatening to give out and I notice Clarence innocently looking away and pretending not to notice.

  It does lift and the bodies slide down to land in a wet heap on the scorched ground.

  ‘We burning these now or all in one go?’ Nick shouts out.

  Looking about I can see we’ve got enough space to make more piles and burn these now, but that would mean coming back up here with the bodies on fire.

  ‘We’ll do them all when we’ve finished,’ I shout back which means there was no need to bring the fuel tanker up here.

  Driving both back we head back inside the fort and park up in the same positions and take five minutes to get water and have a smoke.

  ‘DO YOU WANT TO SWAP?’ Dave bellows down.

  ‘Cookey, Blowers you go up and get out the sun for a bit.’

  ‘You sure Mr Howie, don’t seem right getting Dave to shift bodies like this.’

  ‘Ah get on,’ Clarence shouts, ‘what you on about? He’ll love it.’

  ‘Can I do the digger this
time?’ Nick asks quickly.

  ‘Fill your boots mate,’ I nod and laugh as he runs off, clambering up the side. Clarence strolls after him shaking his head, ‘hang on Nick, let me show you…’

  ‘I’ll figure it out,’ Nick shouts back and starts the ignition. Clarence stands back watching as he does the thing with his hands hovering over each stick, lever and button while murmuring to himself. He grabs levers and starts pushing and pulling, watching the hydraulic arm lift, drop and the scoop tilt up and down.

  ‘Clever fucker,’ Clarence looks at me with a shocked expression. Nick powers forward and aims the scoop perfectly. Slicing the pronged bottom lip under a pile of corpses and shovelling them into the bowl with his forward momentum. He judges it right and lifts the arm while tilting the scoop up, securing the bodies safely within.

  ‘I hate him,’ Clarence mutters, stomping over to start throwing bodies into a pile. The other two lads get up the top and stand talking to Dave and Lani for a minute before heading towards the Saxon.

  Within a couple of minutes they’re both down the bottom with us, pulling gloves, masks and glasses on.

  ‘I said Meredith should stay on a lead,’ I approach Lani as the dog scampers about sniffing the ground with her tail going crazy.

  ‘You did,’ she replies flatly, ‘but how do I do that and shift bodies?’

  ‘Well you don’t, you stand back and hold the dog.’

  ‘Here,’ she throws the lead at me as she walks past, ‘you hold her.’ I turn to watch her stride off, waving at Clarence who nods back as he throws another body with ease.

  She gets stuck in, heaving at a corpse to drag it over. I watch her for a minute, and she knows I watch as she point blank refuses to look back in my direction but starts making conversation with Clarence.

  ‘Mr Howie,’ Dave nods in greeting as he walks past, heading over to them both, but I notice he stays quite close to Lani and despite being seemingly focussed on the task at hand I know he’ll have one eye on her.