by RR Haywood
‘That went, your big hench fella got ‘em away.’
‘Clarence?’ Lani leans forward, staring intently at the young lads.
‘Yeah him,’ Mohammed nods,’ he got them out, said they’ll come back.’
‘You seen the others?’ Jagger asks, Lani switching her gaze between the two slightly older lads.
‘Others?’ Lani probes.
‘Loads of us ran off,’ Jagger says.
‘Went off every direction, they’s runnin’ like the feds was coming,’ Mohammed cuts in.
‘Will they stay here? You know, like in this area or what?’
‘Guess so,’ Mohammed shrugs, ‘dunno.’
‘Car park first, then we can start looking,’ Lani says clearly with an air of authority. Leading them off she heads back down the road. Meredith going ahead in her natural role to scout the ground, sniffing and running in circles while constantly glancing back to check the position of the group.
‘You not seen Mr Howie then?’ Jagger asks the lads, ‘what happened to him?’
‘No idea,’ Blowers replies, ‘he got pulled into the ramp…’
‘I checked but couldn’t find him,’ Lani cuts in, ‘Dave went after him so…’
‘So what?’ Jagger asks.
‘Dave would have got him out,’ Blowers says confidently.
‘Out where?’
‘Don’t know, anywhere away from that lot, he’ll stay close though…’ Blowers explains.
‘You don’t think he got done then? Mr Howie? Like you know, got bit or sommin?’
‘No,’ Blowers shakes his head.
‘Kind of weird,’ Cookey cuts in, ‘can’t explain it but…dunno, just don’t think he has.’
‘How?’ Jagger pushes the question, ‘he was fucked, they’s all on him.’
‘Maybe,’ Cookey trails off, the worry evident on his face but still with that indescribable feeling inside that Mr Howie is okay, that Dave got to him. He tries to rationalise the feeling, give it a name or words but it’s so fleeting and intangible that he can’t seem to grasp it solidly enough. He just…. Knows.
‘You alright?’ Blowers asks him, seeing the deeply puzzled look.
‘Eh? Yeah fine, just thinking…’
‘About the boss?’
‘Yeah, like he’s okay but I’m still shitting myself that he’s not okay but I know he is okay and…’
‘Me too,’ Lani adds, ‘same thing.’
‘Really?’ Cookey asks.
‘Not just Howie though but all of us, Nick and Clarence too, even Dave.’
‘Yeah,’ Cookey exclaims, ‘yeah same thing, like I’m worried and scared and stuff but at the same time I kind of know they’re okay…can’t explain it.’
‘Fuckin’ freaky,’ Mohammed comments. Following the conversation he looks at each one, first at Lani then at the two lads. They’re different and have an air of survivor about them, that nothing could stop them, completely and utterly dependable. All three of them constantly scan the area, checking the flanks and rear, weapons ready but held relaxed. He and Jagger have a closeness built up from years of friendship and both know they can rely on the other.
He thinks of Maddox, of the devotion they all feel towards him. That he has that same thing that Howie has, that ability to lead and inspire everyone else.
‘Shit,’ Cookey comments as the car park comes into view, taking in the bodies and the raging fires of the High Street in the near distance beyond, ‘we gotta stop burning everything down.’
‘Nah, it’s fun,’ Blowers replies.
‘Motherfucking shit,’ Jagger spits, ‘look down there, what the fuck?’ Crossing a junction and while everyone else stares at the High Street and car park ahead, he glances down to the hundreds of bodies lying strewn across the road.
The group stop, all of them taking in the view of the corpses littering the ground. They’re piled up and stretched out in long lines, tracing the route Dave took through houses and gardens and then back to the road.
‘Dave,’ Blowers says.
‘Dave?’ Jagger asks.
‘Dave,’ Blowers nods, ‘come on.’ Entering the road they head towards the first corpse, spotting the cut throat, then the next one and the one after that. Each throat cut open has a severed artery, and while that body still lived it pumped pints of blood out until the heart ceased to function. Hundreds of bodies, hundreds of hearts, thousands of pints of blood and the road is thick with the stuff. So dense and thick it remains wet and sticky even in the heat, and the stench is terrible. Rotten corpses, bowels voided with metallic tang of blood. Flies and insects have already moved in, taking advantage of the bodies to generate whole colonies of breeding grounds. A massacre, like something from a movie. Too much to be taken in and made sense off by the naked eye. They’ve all seen death, and lots of it, but the blood is something else.
‘Look,’ Cookey points to the corpse lying a short way off with two knives sticking out of the face, ‘Dave.’
‘Definitely Dave,’ Lani nods.
‘All of these?’ Jagger asks, ‘no fucking way…’
‘All the throats are cut, that’s Dave,’ Lani shrugs, ‘no one else can do that.’
‘One man?’ Jagger says dubiously.
‘You saw him Jagger,’ Mohammed says, ‘last night, he was like a ninja or sommin’’
‘Where are they then? Some of these are fresh…very fresh,’ Blowers asks, kneeling close to a corpse to inspect the surgical like cut administered to the neck.
‘Must be close,’ Lani looks round, staring at the houses.
‘Here,’ Cookey calls out, standing at a garden gate he points to the window fractured and splintered with the body slumped at the base of the house wall.
‘Boss?’ Blowers calls out making his way down the path. Pushing the door open, he spots the two empty coffee mugs on the doorstep and bends down to feel the sides of the mugs.
‘They warm?’ Lani asks.
‘Not really,’ he replies. Inside the house they search through the ground floor rooms, spotting the sofa and the red stained cloths Dave used to clean the filth from Howie.
‘They made coffee,’ Cookey calls out from the kitchen, ‘gas is still on and this pan is still a bit warm.’
‘Just missed them then. Two mugs though, so Mr Howie must be okay,’ Blowers says, his hard face staring down at the pan held by Cookey ,then looking up to the open coffee pot and the stained teaspoon on the side.
‘Tobacco,’ Lani sniffs the air, ‘someone’s had a smoke.’
‘Dave doesn't smoke,’ Blowers nods firmly, ‘they must be at the car park.’
Moving faster now they exit the house and thread carefully back over the corpses, making their way to the end of the road and back towards the car park in the distance.
Thick smoke billows from the burning High Street, giving the area the look of a warzone. Bodies lie everywhere and the stench of death, of rotting flesh, clings to the area.
Heat like nothing ever felt by the young people bears down, oppressive and suffocating and the combined effect makes it feel like they are walking through hell.
Taking a breath, Blowers gets ready to call out for Dave and Mr Howie but the oppression of the scene and the heat makes him hesitate, instead exhaling to keep walking silently.
Meredith runs ahead with her nose down, circling in large loops as she scours the ground and constantly glances back to check the position of the group behind her. All eyes scan the area ahead, eagerly trying to pick out the two figures that should be there.
Reaching the ugly grey building, they pause at the start of the vehicle ramp, all of them casting about and looking to each other.
‘Check round the back,’ Lani instructs, as she stares round at the silence of the scene.
Blowers and Cookey peel off, quickly moving round to the side entrance of the stairwell. They check inside before continuing round the back and finally to the front, ‘nothing,’ Blowers reports.
‘Nothing?’ Lan
i asks.
‘No, nothing,’ Blowers affirms, ‘inside?’
‘Probably, I’ll go with Meredith up the ramp, you two take the stairs.’
‘On it,’ Blowers nods, striding back round the side of the building with Cookey.
‘We waiting here yeah?’ Jagger asks.
‘Please,’ Lani gives the one word answer. There’s no doubt those bodies were Dave’s work and Dave wouldn’t be there without Howie. They’ve had coffee and even a cigarette and they’d know to stay at the car park. Maybe they didn’t know everyone splintered and ran off. They could have grabbed a car and be heading for the fort right now. No, they wouldn’t do that. They would be here checking and searching for a while before moving off.
Heading up the ramp with Meredith, she takes greater care to check the bodies. Convinced that Howie and Dave are both safe but needing that added re-assurance. Slowly she climbs higher, passing the openings for the levels as she scours the floor, shoving bodies over with her foot and pressing on.
‘Lani?’ Cookey calls down, having reached the top using the much quicker stairwell.
‘Here,’ Lani shouts back from the depths of the tunnel, ‘you got anything?’
‘Nope, you?’
‘Nothing,’ she shouts back. A minute later and they all stand looking round, feeling lost.
‘Any ideas?’ Lani asks eventually. The two lads stay quiet, shaking their heads as the worried looks come flooding back.
‘Where are they?’ She asks out loud.
‘They’ll come back,’ Blowers says after a few seconds of silence, ‘we’ll wait at the bottom for them, they’ll come back.’
Sixteen
Sometimes, you get pushed just too far. A sequence of events can lead to the loss of control. Those events could be individually insignificant and, taken separately, they wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. However, lack of sleep affects moods very quickly. Heat, constant, sustained and oppressive will also sap away at the energy reserves. Fear will start with a tight knot in your stomach, then swell to drive all other thoughts. Suddenly, you’re in a nightmare.
Clarence is a big man by any degree. A strong man too. Stronger than normal humans and it is argued that such men possess a gene that is different to others, a gene that changes the way the deep muscle fibres adhere to the bone and tissues, giving them larger, denser muscles that are capable of far greater feats than other men.
But these men are normally gentle in nature. They do not feel the need to dominate nor control others with their size, but rather they become natural protectors of those who are less able to defend themselves.
Once in a while though, even those men can get pushed too far and the resulting explosion of rage is something that will frighten even the toughest of minds.
Take, for instance, a big man with such capability. Take away his sleep for almost two days, give him crap food without the proper nutrition that drops his blood sugar. Give him heat, sustained and constant. Put his friends in peril. Give him an added pressure that the safe place is now under danger. Give him a task, a task that requires him to drive to what was the safe place, deposit one group and then return to the scene of one of the hardest battles he has known to find his team.
He can cope with that. He will not only cope but he will rise to the challenge. He can fend off the tiredness, the fatigue, the heat sapping at his mood. He can worry about the dire threat at the place of safety later. All he has to do now is return to the car park and find the others.
What he cannot cope with, what will cause the explosion of rage, is the Saxon breaking down. The Saxon, which has been as much a part of the team as any of them, with so much heart and soul that it almost makes it an entity with conscious will, something on their side, a machine made from moving parts but with a desire to help. The Saxon that has never failed , now fails. One of the many moving parts doesn't work.
Clarence explodes. The anger, rage, sheer uncontainable pressure bursts out like a nuclear detonation. A small town with a relatively small High Street. And Clarence, launching litter bins through the windows of those shops. Clarence, ripping benches from the ground to swing round and through more shops windows. Clarence, who takes something long and hard, too angry to even see what it is, and uses the object to beat more objects. Vehicles, cars, vans, truck, windows, doors…anything in his way is destroyed.
The Saxon sits nearby, forlorn and alone. It has ceased to function and will not keep going. Despite the prayers, the curses, the threats and more prayers, it simply stopped. It could be something simple, something that would take five minutes to fix. But Clarence is a soldier, not a mechanic. He can give field triage and treat battle wounds. He can fire probably any weapon ever designed or made, but mechanical stuff, that’s left to the engineers.
He doesn't speak or make any sound, but his eyes blaze as the air is filled with smashing, crashing, breaking, splintering, ripping and tearing sounds. If this was normal society with normal rules, the first attending officer would be standing back and using the police radio to summon back-up. He would be telling them to bring everyone. Bring dogs and Tasers and helicopters and shields and guns. Call the army and request they send a tank. Phone an elephant vet and ask for a shit load of tranquilisers because there is no way, not on god’s green earth, that the officer is going anywhere near the giant man going nuts.
Alas, this is not normal society. This is the apocalypse and there isn’t anyone to help or possibly hinder. So time does what time does, and lets the big man play out his anger until the blind rage starts to ebb. Leaving him a little shaky, a little bit more tired but feeling a whole lot better.
Coming to, he realises just how far he travelled from the Saxon, standing down the street and looking back at the trail of destruction to the Saxon.
Chest heaving, muscles pumped from heavy use, sweat pours from his red face. The rage has burnt out to leave his mind calm, more able to rationalise and think through the dilemma.
The Saxon doesn't lock, or if it does, they have no keys to lock it. That means leaving it here with all the weapons and equipment. Unless he can find something else to use that is big enough to transport everything and still bring the team back, plus all those kids.
His hand unknowingly goes to his chin, rubbing across his thick stubble in the same manner Big Chris did whenever he was in deep thought. Mind you, he muses, all he has to do is get there, they can find other vehicles in that town.
What they cannot afford is for the Saxon to stay here with all the equipment in it, so some know all mechanic can come along and take it, or strip it clean.
But that is going to take time. Consider the options. Shit, Howie and Chris are far better at decisions like this.
The team are scattered but strong, they’ll know to head back to the car park and wait, or if the area is crawling with the zombies, to lie low and wait nearby. The children will hopefully do the same. He thinks through his options. Finding someone to fix the Saxon is instantly negated by the simple fact of how to find someone. Leaving the Saxon loaded up here cannot be done, so it has to be stripped and the weapons will have to go with him.
‘Right,’ he says firmly, ‘need a van.’ Staring round he spots several that would have been perfect, if they hadn’t just been completely trashed by a berserk ,bald headed giant going crazy with heavy litter bins and wrought iron benches.
Feeling more than a little ashamed at his actions, Clarence walks back to the Saxon. He takes a long drink from one of the water bottles as he looks up and down the road trying to decide which direction to go to find a van.
Shrugging he goes left, breaking into an easy jog whilst he offers more prayers to keep the others safe.
Seventeen
‘Which way?’
‘Don’t know, I lost her.’
‘Shit,’ I bend over gasping for breath, spitting on the ground as I let the sweat drip from my forehead.
‘Could be a trick,’ he says again. Glancing up I shake my head. Unbelieveable, Dave’s h
ardly even breathing fast and still looks perfectly composed. I’ve slept all night, had a coffee and water and I’m blowing out my arse. Still, I had a heart shoved in my gob and he didn’t. Not that that makes any difference.
‘Could be,’ I concede.
Standing up, I take in the view. It’s just another street, with more houses. The girl could be anywhere, in any of them, or gone into the gardens at the back or even kept going. She was a fair distance off when we saw her. Just a small blond haired child, who we assume is female from the long flowing locks and the brightly coloured summer dress. She was standing at the end of the road watching us as we came out of the house. Both of us saw her and stood there watching for a second as though expecting her to walk down or be joined by adults.
Of course, the fact that she could be one of them was considered very quickly but by the act of standing there and watching, and waving back when I lifted my arm to her, suggested that she wasn’t.
Dave isn’t convinced though, I can see it in his face and the way he keeps saying it could be a trick.
When she didn’t walk towards us, we started walking towards her. She started backing away so I waved and called out, which seemed to prompt her to run off.
We gave chase and now we’re here. In another unknown residential street, staring at more houses, after running through hell knows how many other bloody streets until we lost sight of her. Even Dave, running ahead to keep a decent view, lost sight of her.
‘She must have gone to ground here.’
‘Probably,’ he replies.
‘HELLO!’ I shout out but my voice is weak and doesn't carry that far, ‘Dave, you call out…’
‘Okay,’ he takes a deep breath.
‘Dave,’ I interrupt.
‘What?’
‘Try not to sound angry.’
‘Pardon?’
‘If she’s on her own, she isn’t going to come out to you bellowing about finding her house and burning it down is she?’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ he stares at me.
‘Yeah right, well…just try and say something nice.’