The Undead the Second Week Compilation Edition Days 8-14

by RR Haywood

  Fortunately I judged the distance about right, giving Nick enough time to slaughter them down before they reach us. It’s done within minutes as the road becomes thick with mangled bodies lying ruined and destroyed.

  ‘Not exactly a clear path there Nick,’ Blowers shouts up as we start driving over the first bodies, the huge heavy wheels squashing them into the road.

  ‘They were running for fuck’s sake,’ Nick shouts down, ‘Dave can I smoke up here please?’

  ‘Yes Nick.’

  ‘Oh that’s not fair…’ Cookey starts to bleat.

  ‘Open the back doors and have one then,’ I shout back.

  ‘Really?’ Blowers asks, ‘is that alright?’

  ‘It’s hot as hell in here mate, might get some air flow too.’

  ‘Nick,’ Lani shouts up, ‘have you put sun cream on, you’ll burn in this heat.’

  ‘I put that factor fifty on you gave me.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Er…few hours I think.’

  ‘Put some more on then, it burns off.’ He drops down as Lani fishes a bottle out of her bag and tells him to sit down so she can rub it into his face and ears.

  ‘Aw is iccle Nick getting his creamy put on,’ Cookey jokes.

  ‘I am,’ Nick laughs.

  ‘Don’t take the piss you two are next.’

  ‘Ah no I don’t want any,’ Cookey groans.

  ‘Stop being a child and sit down for a minute.’

  ‘Yes Lani.’

  Twenty Eight

  ‘What the hell are they doing?’ Paula leans forward, closer to the windscreen to watch the back of the Saxon.

  ‘Er, that young lady is putting sun cream on the boys by the looks of it, very sensible,’ Roy replies.

  ‘Look at the bodies Roy. It only took them a couple of minutes with one gun…will the van go over them?’

  ‘If I follow their vehicle it should be okay. They’re laughing and joking, look at that cheeky one waving at us.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paula waves her hand briefly, ‘strange people.’

  ‘Stranger than us?’ He asks with a snort of laughter.

  ‘Well, maybe not,’ she replies. Us. What made him say that? But she sensed the way everyone else in that room responded to them, like a given that they were a unit of their own. Howie’s team, Maddox and his team then Paula and Roy. Even when they said how they just met a few hours ago they still assumed that they were one unit.

  The strange thing was that Paula didn’t mind that assumption. There was something nice about being seen as a team. Roy, with his amazing ability with the bow and her ability to plan, prepare and use the ground to cut them down, it was nice and what’s more it gave them strength against the larger already established teams.

  Paula had watched the people as they spoke during the meeting, how they interacted with each other. Strong men and strong women, all of them with a voice that was both listened to and respected.

  Lenski and Lani, despite both being young and extremely attractive women were treated with the same regard as the men, and when Lenski stepped in to end the argument between Maddox and Howie she was deferred to as she obviously knew what she was doing.

  What was more amazing was that she even said she wasn’t a fighter but she was a strong leader and didn’t hesitate to show her confidence at staying to run the fort.

  A young Polish female immigrant running one of the last bastions of human society and not one of them balked, blanched, rolled their eyes or made any negative comments.

  Howie and Maddox were true leaders, both possessing that intensity that made them easy to watch and although they were young, she found herself hanging of what they said. The electric charge that rippled through the room as they started arguing was tangible to say the least. Maddox was strong and proud, clearly very intelligent too but Howie was the one to watch. He possessed a power that oozed out of his very soul. Quiet and unassuming, polite and joking around and similar to Roy with his polite countenance, but when he flashed that dark look it made everyone sit up and take notice. That, right there was why he was the natural leader.

  The incident with Clarke had left a deep distrust for other people, that all men would eventually try and do what he did. If it wasn’t offered it would be taken. Without the protection of laws and consequences men would just revert to the Neanderthal pricks they really were. So she had shunned any company other than her own. Roy was different as he was so pre-occupied with his own concerns she doubts he had even contemplated anything of a sexual nature.

  The three young lads with Howie had given her a quick appraisal with eyes running over her body but again they didn’t linger on her chest or show anything other than youthful charm and respect.

  It was those reasons and many, many more that compelled Paula to work with them, that and the prospect of getting an absurdly high number of kills too.

  Roy watched the back of the Saxon and the road, carefully negotiating the van to steer over the squashed bodies to avoid getting the wheels stuck.

  Howie and Maddox seemed nice, intense but very polite. The young lads were cheeky but funny, despite the way one of them had told him to shut the fuck up. But then Roy was used to that, he knew there was something about him that sometimes annoyed other people, and he also knew when his mouth was getting him into trouble but the connection between the voice in his brain yelling at him to shut up, and the words still coming out of his mouth was broken somewhere.

  Oh well. The sooner they get this done the sooner they get on and find some doctors. Probing his gums with his tongue and they felt irritated and swollen. Must be something bad. Had to be something bad.

  Health anxiety held his focus, not the coming fight or the tens of thousands of zombies marching at them, not Howie or Maddox, not that giant of a man with the bald head or the small one with the eyes of a killer.

  Just his mouth. That’s what worried him.

  Maddox gripped the wheel, staring at the symbols on the back of the fuel tanker, the letters and numbers that were used for the hazardous chemicals recognition.

  His team of twenty had been carefully selected, and Howie was right. Most of the crew chiefs had been taken aside and told to choose a number two that would step up as they were all being taken for a mission.

  The details were outlined and explained, how a huge army was coming at them and they were going with Howie ‘s team and two others to cut them down. It was also made clear that none of them were ordered to come, that he wanted volunteers only. Every single one of them stepped forward and together they picked out a few more of the older reliable youths.

  They were shown how to use the assault rifles and then each given their own gun with spare magazines which they each held proudly.

  Leaving Lenski was hard, and convincing Darius he had to stay behind was even harder. The other youth refusing to listen and demanding to be taken with them. Eventually he reluctantly backed down and agreed to stay behind and get everyone safely inside.

  When he thought about it rationally, it seemed completely stupid that they were doing this. Why risk himself and his own people for someone else’s fight. But he also knew those tens of thousands wouldn’t just stop at the fort, they would have reached the compound and wiped them out too. If they wanted to survive and have a life they had to deal with the threat.

  And as much as he mistrusted anyone that wasn’t of his own kind from the same background as him, he knew, just knew that Howie was the one to lead them.

  Twenty Nine

  ‘Paula to Howie.’

  ‘Yeah go ahead Paula.’

  ‘They can’t be that far in front of us now, there’s a junction up ahead if we take that we will go onto higher ground and should be able to look down on them.’

  ‘Howie to Paula, got it…yep we see the junction.’

  ‘How far from that town now?’ Dave asks.

  ‘Er…just coming up to twenty two miles mate,’ I reply.

  ‘Good, that gives us a few h
ours.’

  ‘You sure it’s four miles an hour?’ I ask again.

  ‘Definitely, average marching speed to allow the troops to be fresh enough to fight at the end.’

  ‘But these aren’t regular troops Dave, they’re fucking zombies.’

  ‘They are Mr Howie, but they’ve also learnt that they get weaker if they are pushed too hard and fast. If the infection has learnt anything it has learnt the balance between moving fast and retaining energy.’

  ‘You’re talking like it’s a thing mate, like a real er…well entity or something.’

  ‘I think it is.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Know your enemy, study them and see who are they, what are their strengths and weaknesses, what advantages can be leveraged.’

  ‘I get that mate but thinking of the infection as an entity with like a conscience or something…I dunno, just seems a bit too much.’

  ‘Not a conscience as that would suggest compassion in the human sense. Not a living entity like you or me but a super organism, like Ants or a beehive, a collective intelligence with a collective consciousness.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘No offence Mr Howie, but I don’t have the restrictions of thought you have. Normal living and the experiences you have had do not apply to me. I kill without compassion or mercy, I do not suffer from moral guilt the way you do, so recognising what this enemy is isn’t that hard for me to understand and accept.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘They have evolved.’

  ‘They have,’ I agree, ‘or changed might be another way of saying it.’

  ‘No, evolved,’ he says firmly, ‘they learnt to speak and alter the way they do things. The infection can control vast numbers of beings with perfect harmony, which is why Paula is saying they are marching in order. Armies have spent thousands of years learning to do that so the infection is simply taking what we know and using it to its advantage.’

  ‘If you’re right then they are getting smarter and stronger.’

  ‘Not they Mr Howie, it.’

  ‘So if it is getting smarter then we could be in for a bashing today.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? Why not? You just said it is getting smarter and stronger.’

  ‘You said that and even if it is getting smarter and stronger we still have the advantage.’

  ‘How? There’s what thirty of us against fuck knows how many of them? We probably don’t have enough ammunition…’

  ‘We can think individually, that’s the one thing it cannot do. By keeping a collective conscious and controlling every single one of them it does not allow them to operate as individuals. Soldiers need discipline and training, but the best armies are made up of soldiers that can think and react as they see fit…communist armies have great numbers but just do what they are told and are not allowed to think for themselves, which is great while the General is on the ground, but take him out and they cannot function.

  ‘They attack us with increasing violence and aggression, stronger with more rage but rage makes you unbalanced. Harnessed anger makes you deadly, but uncontrolled rage makes you an idiot. We use that against them. They work as one unit. We use that against them. Even if they split their forces and attack on multiple fronts we can still use their lack of reaction against them. They are predictable. We use that against them. They are many. We use that against them.

  ‘For every strength they have we manipulate and turn it into our advantage. Paula took a whole town out by using the single most powerful strategy ever possessed.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Forward planning and preparation but with an ability to react fluidly.’

  ‘That’s more than one,’ I reply with a smile.

  ‘And an instinct to use overwhelming violence when appropriate.’

  ‘That’s definitely more than one.’

  ‘That Dave,’ I say after a few seconds of silence which suggests he has finished speaking, and noticing that the others in the back have all crept forward to listen intently, ‘is the most I have ever heard you say.’

  ‘Sorry, did I talk too much?’

  ‘Eh? Oh yeah…fuck me you were going on and on, none of us could get a word in edgeways. In fact, we’re always saying the biggest problem with Dave is how much he talks.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him Dave,’ Lani touches his shoulder affectionately which surprisingly, he doesn't flinch at or show any reaction at all. A few days ago and she could have been judo thrown through the windscreen for even contemplating touching him.

  ‘There,’ Nick points across me to my window and a fleeting glimpse in the distance. We’ve been steadily rising since turning off but the view has been hampered by wooded thickets, houses, farms and buildings. Climbing higher we get a sudden full view as the vista opens up. Sweeping pastures that slope gently down to the shore and the never ending deep blue sea that stretches off to the horizon.

  The coastal road is there, a distinct black line that breaks the natural hues of greens and browns that roll down to the golden shore.

  Pulling up we clamber out and shield our eyes against the glaring sun beating down on us. Paula and Roy join us first, then Clarence and finally Maddox and his team. All of us standing there in silence staring at the solid mass of figures marching along the road.

  Solid, unbroken and never ending. The column stretches back further than the eye can see, disappearing from view as the contour of the land dips and turns through valleys and hills. Thousands upon thousands of figures and despite the distance they move with perfect timing. There is no rippling or undulation of so many people moving in one direction. Just an almost static thing that somehow moves forward without any apparent movement.

  We all stare at the front and slowly rotate our heads to take in the miles of bodies filling the road.

  ‘More than the Isle of Wight,’ Nick remarks quietly.

  ‘Yep, more than Darren brought too by the looks of it,’ I reply equally as quiet.

  ‘Far more,’ Clarence adds, ‘many, many more.’

  ‘More than all the fights put together, including Salisbury,’ Dave adds.

  ‘I wish we had a fighter jet,’ Cookey sighs, ‘even a Spitfire going up and down that road would do the job.’

  ‘Where we gonna get a Spitfire from?’ Blowers asks.

  ‘Fuck knows, museum?’ Cookey replies.

  ‘Dave, can you fly a plane?’ Nick asks.

  ‘I don’t have a licence.’

  ‘Helicopter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Submarine?’ Cookey asks.

  ‘Alex.’

  ‘Sorry Dave.’

  ‘Even a warship in the sea would finish that lot off,’ Cookey sighs again.

  ‘Tanks too,’ Roy adds, ‘a few of them would do the job.’

  ‘Dave? Can you drive a…’

  ‘No Alex I cannot drive a tank.’

  ‘Er, there are two of us from the army,’ Clarence rumbles.

  ‘Sorry, can you drive a tank?’ Cookey looks up at him.

  ‘No, but that’s not the point.’

  ‘That’s a lot of zombies,’ I remark casually.

  ‘It is Mr Howie,’ Dave replies.

  ‘All coming for us.’

  ‘They are Mr Howie.’

  ‘Whole lot of dirty fucking zombies,’ I say slowly as Nick and Cookey start smiling.

  ‘It is Mr Howie.’

  ‘Many…many…dirty…nasty…filthy….zombies…’

  ‘Just say it,’ Lani sighs.

  ‘Fuck it,’ I laugh.

  ‘We’ll win!’ The rest of them shout in reply then snigger sheepishly as the others stare at us in horror.

  ‘You’ve clearly done this several times before then,’ Roy remarks with a smile.

  ‘Shit loads mate,’ I reply, ‘righto, well back to that town then and we best start getting set up…you know what I always say?’ I look at Maddox, his team and then across to Paula and Roy, ‘I always
say that for every strength they have we can manipulate it and turn it to our advantage because we have the single most powerful strategy ever possessed…’

  ‘You didn’t bloody say that,’ Lani laughs, ‘Dave said it…don’t listen to him.’

  ‘Forward planning and preparation but with an ability to react fluidly and an instinct to use overwhelming violence when appropriate,’ I continue in a patronising know it all tone.

  ‘Well remembered,’ Dave nods, ‘but I said it first.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ I mutter to the others staring at us like we’re slightly freaky, ‘can anyone see the end of them yet? No? Shit…that is one big horde.’

  ‘Proper pre planning prevents piss poor performance,’ Paula mutters.

  ‘I agree,’ Dave responds quickly with intense seriousness.

  ‘Right,’ I look round at the small crowd, ‘we are a bunch of fucking misfits,’ I grin, ‘so let’s go get ready for a big fight, Paula, your expertise is needed here so have a think what you want to do between here and the town, we’ll follow your lead with input from Dave and…’ Clarence coughs, ‘…and Clarence…’ I add firmly with a glance up at him.

  ‘I’ve got some ideas but er…’ She hesitates, seemingly suddenly unsure.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Well that’s a big army…maybe you guys should take the lead, you’ve er…well you’ve done this lots of times.’

  ‘So have you,’ Roy says quickly.

  ‘I have but…well,’ she looks uncomfortable, like caught on the spot.

  ‘Paula, what you said you did in your town we need to do for this lot…just bigger…and quicker…but then it isn’t just you this time, you’ve got almost thirty of us.’

  ‘And a dog,’ one of the youths quips with a cheeky grin.

  ‘And a Dave,’ Cookey adds, not allowing anyone else to make quips when he’s about.

  ‘What’s a Dave?’ The youth asks with a confused look.

  ‘I’m a Dave…I mean I’m Dave,’ Dave says.

  They carry on chatting while I zone out staring at the never ending column. Too big and too many. Even if we blew that town apart there would still be a long queue of them coming out the end.