End Times (Book 1): Rise of the Undead

by Shane Carrow

  “Tell him to knock it off, will you?” I said to Ash. “Tell him to fucking calm down.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Ash muttered.

  “Who the fuck asked your opinion anyway?” Cory said to me.

  “He keeps shooting, he’s going to let them know we’re up here,” I muttered. I looked over at Matt, who was keeping out of it. The Glock was hidden in the waistband of his jeans, beneath his shirt.

  But Liam had heard me. He walked back up the tin to the peak of the roof, where we were all sitting, slinging the rifle over his back. “You worried, kiddo?” he said.

  “You shouldn’t just be shooting at them for no reason,” I said, trying to sound confident even though my stomach was fluttering. Liam has one of those faces – one of those cocky, smirking, dick-swinging faces.

  “Don’t you worry, mate,” he said. “I’ve got a plan.”

  Nobody said anything. Then Cory coughed. “Truck, right?”

  Liam clapped him on the shoulder. “Truck. Everyone see that up there? Off the main road, other side of the train yard?”

  We craned our necks and strained our eyes. The streets of Manjimup were full of nothing but zombies now. Many were trickling slowly south, along the road, chasing the people who’d got away. But there were still thousands here, hemming us in.

  Liam was pointing out a semitrailer, a Mack truck with the Linfox logo painted on its haulage. “That there? That’s mine. We brought it out of Bunbury, made it into town with half a fucking cup of diesel. That’s why I left it – there was no fuel going here, Army took it all for themselves. Didn’t they, mate?” He glanced over at McCormick, who was hunched up on the ridge of the roof with his mouth buried beneath his folded arms. “So, end of the road for the truck. But it’s still got a splash left. Not enough to get anywhere, but enough to get us out of town maybe five or six kays. Which will be enough to outpace these fucking things.”

  We stared at it. “How do we get there?” Matt said.

  Liam shook his head. “Not all of us. Just a few. We take the ladder down, fight our way past the rail yard, climb aboard. Then, look – I can swing her around past those fences, bring her right up next to the warehouse. Everyone who stayed behind jumps on the roof of the trailer, hangs on tight, Bob’s your uncle. We drive the fuck out of here.”

  I looked over the edge of the roof. We had indeed found a ladder in one corner, cast into the walls of the warehouse, but it only led down into an alleyway full of undead. Well… not “full.” We could fight our way through, if we had to. If we had somewhere to go.

  “That’d be quite a jump,” the father of the kids said.

  “Fifteen feet, maybe,” Liam said. “Better than staying here.”

  We talked about it for a long time, weighing up the pros and cons, listening to the horrible constant gargle and gurgle of the rotting zombie bodies thronging the streets of Manjimup. But it was a moot point, in the end. It was clear that Liam was going to make a break for the truck, and that his friends would go with him.

  “We’ll come with you,” Matt said. He’d somehow managed to hold onto the baseball bat in the chaos inside the warehouse – I’d lost the hammer – and he held it loosely by the grip, trying to look like he knew what he was doing. “Yeah?”

  Liam looked him up and down, then flicked his eyes over at me. “Yeah. Yeah, all right.” He looked over at McCormick, the soldier. “What about you, GI Joe?”

  McCormick just looked back at him with red-rimmed eyes, and Liam laughed. “Yeah, yeah. All right. All right, boys, all right, girls. You sit tight here and be ready to jump. We’ll be back before you know it.”

  The mother and father and their daughters were perched along the ridge of the tin rooftop like a collection of sad birds on a power line. “You sure this is going to work?” the father said.

  “Of course it’s going to work,” Liam said. “Have a little faith.”

  And then we were heading for the corner of the rooftop, heading for the ladder. My palms were sweaty. I’d thought we might mull it over a bit more, but apparently there was no time like the present. Matt and I were at the end of the line, as Liam and Cory and Dave and Ash swung themselves over the edge. As they disappeared over the lip of the rooftop, Matt handed me the baseball bat wordlessly.

  “Don’t you…” I said, then remembered the Glock.

  I could hear the gunfire before I even started down the ladder. Liam had gone first and was opening fire with McCormick’s rifle on the zombies down in the alley – quick bursts, aiming at the head, clearing the way. By the time my own feet touched the slick wet concrete at ground level, the alleyway was already scattered with corpses and Liam’s group was disappearing around the corner.

  Matt and I sprinted after them, following them down the edge of the main road, towards the rail yard. I caught a sickening glimpse, through the alleyway, of the undead hordes on the main street – hundreds if not thousands of them – but we were turning, curving, bursting through a vacant lot and then sprinting along the edge of the railway line.

  That had been the plan, to cross over, although I was already getting the feeling in the back of my head that we were being left behind and the other four didn’t care. We reached the chain-link fence they were climbing over – Liam already on the other side, lining up steady headshots with the rifle – and we scrambled over alongside them. I found myself at the top of the fence with Ash, and then we dropped together down into the railway yard.

  There must have been a breach somewhere else. The yard was full of zombies – not flooded, not jam-packed, but enough that an alarmingly large amount were lurching towards us. Matt was levelling the Glock up and firing it for the first time, a steady bang bang bang, bullets drilling through the head of oncoming corpses. He had surprisingly good aim for a first timer, although most of the ones he was dropping were only a few metres away. “Move, come on, let’s move!” Liam screamed, as I swung the baseball bat and crumpled the skull of a leering zombie.

  We pushed across the railway yard, caving in skulls. Some of the zombies were fresh, with nothing more than bloodstains and clouded eyes to make them appear any different from us. They’d only been killed a few hours ago, as the outbreak swept through the town. There but for the grace of God go I.

  There was a massive gap in the far fence – it looked like the Army had cut it for ease of transfer – and there we could see Liam’s semitrailer, huge and powerful and solid in a landscape of ruin. We’d spun back out into single file now, taking on the undead as we went, and Liam was in front, the rifle bobbing on his back as he ran. He was first to the truck, bounding up the side of the cab and yanking the door open – and then the engine fired up with surprising speed, and the exhaust pipes were venting, and the whole vehicle jerked and shuddered as kicked it into first gear and started driving…

  Dave and Cory made it next, scampering up into the cab on the passenger side. The truck was already picking up speed as Ash got there, bounding up, clinging to the side. For a chilling moment, as Liam shifted into second gear, I thought Matt and I might be stranded out here.

  But that kind of terror does miracles for your leg muscles. We sprinted across the bitumen, matched the growing speed of the truck, and leaped up onto the running board. Ash, clinging to the side of the cab, reached out an arm to help me. Guilt over what he’d done the warehouse, or basic human decency?

  We both made it – Ash helped me, I helped Matt – and then we were clinging to the edge of the cab, charging through the ranks of undead, the truck shuddering and thumping as it ploughed through and over bodies. I got a quick glimpse inside, at Liam leaning over the wheel maniacally – yanking down on the cord, blasting the horn in sheer joy – and then we were gone, out of there, escaping…

  …and cruising right past the warehouse. Right past the others, right past McCormick and the family with their young daughters.

  “Hey!” Matt yelled, thumping on the window. “Hey, you got to stop!”

  Liam didn’t give eve
n any recognition of having heard, and Matt thumped on the window some more until Ash grabbed his arm. “Stop it,” he said. “Stop! You think he doesn’t know?”

  I realised then that they’d never really planned to go back for the others. And if Matt and I hadn’t gone with them, we would have been stranded up there too.

  “You fucking assholes,” Matt said. “You pieces of shit!”

  Ash stared at him, and over the howling of the undead and the roar of the engine and the blast of the air horn, he gave us a piece of advice: “Don’t let him hear you say that.”

  Liam shouldered the truck out onto Manjimup’s main street. It shoved through the horde of undead like they were Play-Doh, knocking bodies aside or crushing them utterly. I held tight to the wing mirror and closed my eyes. I don’t know how far south of the town we got – just that we were out, somewhere back out into that country world, that two-lane blacktop curving through the bush. When the truck shuddered its last breath, Liam and Cory and Dave and Ash jumped off and spread out across the road, swinging their weapons, because even here the undead were scattered about - the horde had followed the surviving refugees as they fled further south.

  “Off the road,” Liam said. “Let’s go, come on, let’s go!”

  I glanced back in the direction of town, hidden behind the trees now. But what could we do? Matt and I couldn’t drive the truck, and it was out of fuel anyway.

  So we followed them. What choice did we have? Across the fields and paddocks, out into the bushland again, navigating in a south-easterly direction with Liam’s pocket compass and roadmaps.

  “You left them,” Matt said, when we stopped in a clearing for a rest break, flies buzzing around our sweaty faces. He was squatting down, out of breath, the Glock still held in one hand.

  Liam looked down at him, as though surprised he was still there. He wasn’t sitting or squatting like the rest of us – in fact, he barely looked like he’d broken a sweat. He was pacing up and down the clearing with the soldier’s rifle in his hands.

  “Yeah,” he said. “What about it?”

  “Why did you leave them?” Matt said.

  There was a palpable increase in tension. Matt and Liam were staring right at each other, but the rest of us in the clearing all had our eyes locked on their guns. I wondered if Liam had used up all his bullets back in town. Then I wondered the same about Matt.

  “Well, couldn’t go back past the warehouse,” Liam said. “Too dangerous, crowd was too thick. We would have got bogged down, all of us would have died. You and your brother. You want that?”

  Matt didn’t say anything.

  “Besides, they’ll be fine,” Liam went on. “If they’re smart enough to lie down and stay quiet, the zombies’ll get bored and wander off. Follow the rest of the refos south. I’ve seen it before. They’re strong, but they’re stupid. They’ll be fine, and we’ll be fine. So don’t cry about it.” He looked at the Glock in Matt’s hands, as though seeing it for the first time. “And where’d you get that, by the way?”

  “Took it off a zombie we killed,” Matt said. “A dead cop up near Collie.”

  “Righto. Well, hand it over.”

  “You’ve already got one.”

  Liam peered down at him. He seemed half irritated, half amused. “Then give it to Cory. You’re from the city, aren’t you? Private school boy? What are you, sixteen? You ever held a gun in your life?”

  “It’s got no bullets left, anyway,” Matt said wearily, taking out the clip and showing him.

  Liam snorted. “Fine. Keep it. For now.” He turned to his mates. “All right, come on, get up. Let’s go.” And then looked back at us: “If you’re coming along, then keep up.”

  I glanced at Matt as we followed them on through the bushland – heading further east now, no more of the tall green karri trees of the South West, but instead dry scrubland, the border of the Wheatbelt. “This guy’s fucking dangerous,” I whispered.

  “No shit,” Matt said. “Everything’s dangerous. We come across any more zombies, I’d rather be with these guys than not. Okay?”

  I wasn’t sure about that. We’d been doing okay on our own.

  We trudged on further. That endless crunch of dead gum leaves, one of the most tiresome sounds in the world to me now. “Do you think…” I said. “Do you believe what he said? You reckon everyone back there will be okay?”

  “No,” Matt said.

  February 16

  Liam was a hard taskmaster. He insisted we keep walking east, as long as we could, until the very last light of dusk had slipped away. Then, he said, we could make camp. But it was then – only then – that we spotted the distant glow of a small fire, somewhere between the trees to the north.

  “Shhh,” Liam said. And he unshouldered the rifle, and chambered a round.

  My stomach lurched. Matt and I followed the other four, keeping a little bit behind.

  A campfire. Not a jolly family holiday campfire. This was a campfire of grim necessity, a dead possum skewed on a stick above the twisted flames of dead gum branches. Squatting around it, turning the meat, was a man in his sixties with a flannel shirt and bushy grey beard, and another one – his son, maybe – much skinnier, with an Akubra perched on his head. In the darkness behind them was the outline of a four-wheel drive.

  Liam, Dave, Cory and Ash emerged from the night around the fire. Spread out, flanking them. The man with the beard saw them first, muttered something to his son. Both kept their hands on their knees.

  “G’day,” Liam said. “What you got there?”

  “Not much,” the father said, looking at the possum roasting above the fire. “You’re, um, you’re welcome to some if you need food…”

  Liam wasn’t pointing the gun at the old man, not directly, but he didn’t need to be. “No. What else you got? Apart from the car, I mean.”

  “Car won’t start.’

  “Don’t lie.”

  “Mate, I’m not lying to you, we’d be in Albany by now…”

  Liam pushed forward from the edge of the clearing, looming up at the edge of the campfire, closing the gap. “Don’t lie.”

  “I’m reaching for the keys,” the father said. “Okay? Just the keys.” He made to toss them to Liam, but with a nod he was told to throw them to Cory instead. “You can check it, all right, I’m not lying…”

  The other had circled around the fire. Cory was already investigating the car, while Dave rifled through its contents. “You can’t do this,” the younger man said, with a mixture of anger and fear. “You can’t…”

  Liam turned to look at him – and now he was aiming the rifle, pointing it square at the younger man’s chest. “What? What the fuck did you say?”

  That was when the old man launched himself at Liam, grabbing the rifle with both hands, and suddenly both of them were on the ground, kicking and jerking in the dust and the leaves by the gentle glow of the campfire, struggling for control of the gun. One of them squeezed the trigger and a sudden burst of gunfire crackled into the sky – me and Matt and all the others throwing ourselves to the ground –

  And then Liam was in control again, wrenching the gun back into his hands, slamming the butt into the old man’s head again, and again, and again. He stood above him, blood running down his face, breathing heavily. The old man’s face was a bloody mess; he lay motionless between Liam’s legs. It didn’t look like he was breathing. His son had tried to intervene but Cory and Dave had grabbed him by the shoulders, held him back.

  Then Liam aimed straight down and put a bullet through the old man’s head.

  In the darkness around the edges of the campfire, the shot was deafening. It sounded like a burst of thunder, like the wrath of God.

  I can’t remember what happened next. Matt was pulling me away, dragging me back into the shadows. I heard screaming and shouting from the campfire – Liam, the man’s son, I don’t know. We were gone, out of there, disappearing into the night. Matt dragged me away until I gathered enough of my sense
to run alongside of him, both of us jumping logs and ducking under branches, disappearing into the bush.

  I don’t know how long we ran for – then walked, then ran again, then walked, then ran again. I had a burning stitch in my side and felt like vomiting from exhaustion. Neither of us spoke. We pushed on through the pain and the nausea, because both of us knew the most important thing was to get away from those men.

  I had a horrible, sick vision that we might be going in circles: that we might come across them again. Only now they’d put the fire out. Now they were waiting for us in the dark.

  It was only when we finally stopped – after midnight, probably, lost somewhere in the trackless bushland – that Matt confessed to me he’d lied. “I still had a bullet left,” he said. “Just one. I took it out of the clip when we got to the truck. I knew he’d try to take the gun off me. Still got one bullet.”

  “You couldn’t have…” I said. “I mean, what? Even if you shot him… there were still three of them.”

  “I still should have done it,” Matt said, staring at the bullet. “Should have taken the chance. At least he’d be out of it.”

  I shook my head. “Would have gotten us killed.”

  Matt didn’t say anything. I knew he was wondering the same thing I was: what they’d done to the younger man.

  February 17

  We didn’t stop to sleep. Both of us were too frightened of everything that had happened; we knew sleep wouldn’t come. We trudged through the bushland all night, blundering through grass trees and thorn bushes, the moon a tiny sliver of light far above. A few hours before dawn we had to give up entirely – clouds had slid in to cover the sky, and even that faint moonlight was gone.

  It started raining before dawn, as we sat with our backs to a huge dead gum tree. A good thing, too, because we needed the water. It was just a light drizzle but it lasted for a few hours and we cupped our hands and slaked our thirst. Then we were off again, squelching wet and cold through more featureless bushland.