by Thomas Hall
Beth had felt alone and abandoned and, if she hadn’t reached her house in time, she knew that she would have died that day.
She’d run into her front door so quickly it had hurt and she’d almost fallen over. She’d banged on the door with one hand while clumsily fumbling in her bag, trying to find her keys, with the other. All the while the zombie had been gaining on her. By the time the door opened she’d been able to feel its hot sticky breath on her neck.
It had been close, and if her dad hadn’t been sent home from work early that afternoon, it would have been the end of her. She hadn’t fully realised that until later in the evening when Dawn was in bed and her parents had told her that Wesley wanted them to leave and stay with him. She’d almost died, she’d thought.
Now she had a gun, but it didn’t make her feel any better about being alone in the street. There could be zombies hiding anywhere. She began to walk more quickly.
She found Russell with Noel on the other side of the convoy. They were both crouching on the ground with a number of red petrol canisters between them. The smell was incredible. Neither of them looked up at her as she approached.
‘What’s going on?’ she said.
‘Refuelling,’ Russell said.
‘We’re running low?’ Beth said.
‘And if we’re lucky this lot will be as good as the last lot. Degradation’s happening.’
Beth nodded. They’d estimated they had another twelve months left before the fuel stopped giving them the return that they needed and they’d either have to stop permanently or find another way to haul the wagons. She’d had a romantic vision of horse-drawn caravans, but since she’d left Harmony, she could count the number of horses she’d seen on one hand.
‘We’ll make getting more a priority,’ she said.
Russell nodded. He finished pouring the last of the petrol from the dull silver can into the red plastic one and stood up, wiping his hands on his trousers.
‘We’ve got bigger problems,’ he said. His breath billowed out as he spoke and she could smell the last cigarette he’d smoked.
‘Like what?’
‘Well for starters we can’t go anywhere until this clears,’ he said, looking around. ‘Not safe to drive, we’d end up crashing, or worse.’
Beth nodded. She’d already accepted that they wouldn’t be going anywhere that day and was glad that they’d selected somewhere relatively safe to stop the night before. ‘What else?’
‘It’s the weather. We’re living in caravans with millimetre thin walls. People are going to feel it.’
‘So we’ll use the heaters,’ Beth said.
‘Which need fuel to run. If we use the heaters overnight, then we might not have enough left to start again in the morning.’
‘But if we don’t use them people are going to freeze,’ Beth said.
‘Exactly,’ Russell said. ‘We’re right up shit creek.’
Beth turned and looked at the caravans. Even though she was standing within a couple of metres of them they felt distant. She could almost reach out and touched them, but the fog made everything feel unreal.
‘Any idea how long the fuel will last us?’ she said. ‘If we use it for heat.’
Russell shook his head. ‘A few days, maybe.’
A few days with warmth but, even assuming the fog had cleared by then, they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere.
‘Where’s Darrel?’
Russell shook his head and shrugged.
‘We need to get the bikers out looking for fuel,’ Beth said, the plan only coming together as she spoke. ‘Noel, could you go and see if anyone’s around?’
Noel looked at her as if he’d just been slapped on the hands, but he nodded, got up and left her alone with Russell.
‘It’s going to be a cold night,’ he said.
Beth nodded.
‘We can’t use the fuel,’ he said.
She nodded again. ‘We’ll need to figure something else out then.’
Russell nodded and returned to his work. She watched him for a moment longer, but he didn’t look up and, eventually, she walked away.
Beth had a plan. She didn’t think it was a particularly good one, but it was all she had and there had been enough people volunteering to make it plausible. Along the side of the road there were trees and, even though she couldn’t see them, she knew that a lot of the branches would have fallen to the ground and not been cleared away.
The half dozen people she had brought with her held hands to compensate for the poor visibility, but they still managed to walk into the fence with enough force for someone to fall over and pull half the line with them.
‘Be careful!’ Beth hissed under her breath, mindful of the fact that there could be zombies close by and she would have no way of knowing.
‘Sorry,’ somebody mumbled and a moment later they were moving again.
They crouched on the floor and were able to see the snow-covered ground. On the surface it was smooth, but by digging down a little they were able to find twigs and branches. It occurred to Beth that everything they collected would be wet, and she wasn’t sure it would burn, but she didn’t mention it to the others. For those who were doing the work it would keep their minds busy, and those who were back at the caravans waiting for them would be reassured that she was doing something.
By the time they had finished they each had an armful of soggy wood which they carried back to the caravans.
Russell, Noel and a few others were waiting to collect the kindling when they got back. The sun was still up which gave everything an eerie glow.
‘Any problems?’ she said to Russell.
‘It’s been quiet,’ he said.
‘Are the bikers back?’
‘A couple of them, they haven’t found anything. I’m not surprised. Don’t know what you were expecting from them when they can’t see any better than us.’
‘We need to keep trying,’ Beth said.
‘Tomorrow. I’m not sending them out again tonight.’
She nodded and walked away, leaving the bundles of sticks and branches at his feet, her wishes implicit.
The sky began to darken and brought with it the cold that she had feared. It was like nothing Beth had ever felt before. The air was like razor wire and it almost hurt to move.
Everyone had gathered in the middle caravan. It was a tight squeeze and she didn’t think she would be able to sleep, but the discomfort would only generate more warmth and, hopefully, that would be enough. The children and older folk were in the middle where there was the most warmth. She was sat on the floor by the door with Dawn and Russell’s family nearby.
They were still missing some of the bikers and she could only hope that they’d found a warm place to stop for the night. She wouldn’t like to have been out in this weather unprotected.
She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but the sound of fifty other people breathing in close proximity made that seem unlikely. None of them were laying down so she doubted she was the only one who would be awake through the night. She pulled a blanket up to her chin and shivered.
‘Are you alright?’ Dawn whispered.
There were no lights on in the room and they had hung sheets over the windows to provide some small measure of insulation. She couldn’t see Dawn but she could feel her closeness.
‘I’ll be fine. Try to get some sleep.’
She waited for Dawn to say more, but she didn’t. After a few minutes she began to think that her sister was asleep. Beth wished that she could do the same, but there was still so much that could go wrong.
Due to the weather she had decided not to post a guard. They wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway. If a pack of zombies came along now, there was little they could do to protect themselves. She had a gun and so did a few others, but the chances of being able to get into a position to use it were small.
They had dried the sticks as best they could, but when they tried to light them nothing had happened. Russell h
ad said they were still wet on the inside and they might never be any use. Still, she had put them in one of the other caravans, where at least they wouldn’t get wetter.
She wondered whether she had been right to save the fuel.
What good would a full tank of petrol be if they were all dead? Nice for anyone who came along later and found them, she supposed, but not much use to them. They were going to have to face the reality of petrol running out sooner rather than later anyway. At least if they had been able to keep warm they could have set off on foot when the weather cleared.
She was woken by a scream.
At first she was so confused that she tried to jump up, forgetting that she was wedged between Dawn and Colette. She reached for her gun but there was no room to do anything and her limbs were a few seconds behind the rest of her waking up. She flapped around uselessly for a moment before coming to her senses.
The room went from near silence to panicked whispering in no time. Beth looked around to see what had happened, her only thought was that, somehow, a zombie had gotten in.
A little morning light leaked in through the thick blackout blinds and she was able to see the shapes of people. Many of them were trying to stand up and pushing others to move. She quickly saw that if they carried on like that, they were going to crush each other. No one could move properly until she was out of the way and the door was open.
‘Stop it!’ she shouted. Her voice cut through the low-level murmur that filled the room. Everybody stopped and turned towards her.
Beth took her time getting to her feet, figuring that they could all use a little time to realise that panicking wasn’t going to get them anywhere.
‘What’s going on?’ she said, directing the question at no one in particular and not expecting a proper response.
One of the children started to cry.
‘He’s dead!’ someone said and then the urgent movement and screaming started again.
More people stood up and Beth realised that there was no way she could calm them all down. Instead she opened the door, pulling Dawn out with her, moments before fifty people spilled out of the caravan onto the frozen ground below.
It had snowed again during the night but the fog had cleared a little. She was now able to see the other vehicles in the convoy clearly and that gave her hope.
Once they were outside people seemed to regain some of their composure and, after a few minutes, they were standing in groups, whispering to one another about what had happened. Beth looked around and saw one of the children crying. Rachel was standing next to her trying to offer some comfort, but without much luck.
Beth walked over to them. ‘What happened?’ she said.
‘He’s dead!’ the girl said. Beth thought her name was Amy, but she wasn’t sure.
She looked at the caravan. It was clear that she needed to go in and find out what had happened, but she wanted to put that off for as long as possible. Even now, even after everything that had happen, she still felt a natural anxiety about seeing a dead body up close.
‘Who’s dead?’ she said.
The little girl looked at her. She shook her head.
Beth looked at Rachel as if she might know, but only received a shrug in response.
‘I’ll go if you like,’ Noel said. He had crept up without her realising it. She was sorely tempted to take up his offer.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. As the leader of the group there were some things she could delegate and some things she couldn’t. This seemed like one of the latter. ‘It’s fine.’
The snow crunched beneath her boots as she made her way back to the caravan.
She could see somebody sitting on the floor.
‘I think it was his heart,’ Kathy said. ‘With all the people in here last night they must have thought he was just asleep.’
Beth crouched down next to Kathy and looked at the body. A pale face looked up at her but there was no life in it.
‘It’s William,’ Kathy said. ‘I never knew his surname.’
Beth nodded. She wasn’t sure what to say.
‘We should bury him,’ Kathy said.
Beth thought about the hard, icy ground, burying him didn’t seem like a good option to her. She shook her head. ‘We can’t.’
‘It’s the right thing to do,’ Kathy said.
‘The ground’s too hard, we’ll spend all day digging. We’ll…’ she almost said ‘burn him’ but that didn’t seem right. He hadn’t been a zombie and shouldn’t be treated like one. ‘We’ll cremate him.’
They sat in silence for a while. Beth wondered how long it would be respectful to wait before calling people in to help move the body. The thought of touching the dead man was repellent, but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to show disgust when the time came.
She was saved from having to make the decision by the arrival of Noel and Russell.
Beth reached over and took Kathy’s hand from William’s arm. ‘It’s time,’ Beth said.
Kathy nodded and Beth helped her stand. Together they walked to the door.
‘Let me,’ Noel said and took Kathy’s arm from Beth.
She stopped where she was and watched them go, leaving the door open so they could begin their terrible work.
‘We’ve got a fire started outside,’ he said. ‘The sticks dried out overnight and Darrel brought some more.’
‘He’s back?’ Beth said, feeling a small ray of hope in what had, so far, been a pretty bad morning.
‘They’re all back. Spent the night in… well, we’ll talk about that later.’
She nodded and together they returned to William’s body. He was heavier than she’d expected.
They carried William’s body out of the caravan. People had formed at either side of an imaginary path which led directly from the door to the fire. The ground had been swept clear of snow.
There had been deaths amongst the convoy before, but this was somehow different. Being caught by a zombie was both shocking and tragic, but it was different to dying in your sleep. On her shoulder was a reminder that, even if they somehow managed to survive the zombies, they were still all going to die. No one could escape that.
The fire was burning fiercely and, despite the reason for it, she found herself enjoying the warmth. There was no way to get the body into the fire gracefully, without risking personal injury, so they had to swing and release William into the flames.
The thump of his body at the foot of the fire sent a wave of cinders into the air. She stepped back quickly and found that the path behind them had disappeared as everyone had come closer.
‘I think you should say something,’ Russell whispered.
She looked at the faces and tried to think of something to say. Time seemed to slow down and she felt trapped, as if they weren’t going to let her go until she placated them with words. She cleared her throat but had no idea what she was going to say until the words came out of her mouth.
‘William was a good man,’ she said. But that rang false. She didn’t know he was a good man. She sighed. ‘This is a difficult life, isn’t it?’
No one replied but she hadn’t really expected them to.
‘None of us would have chosen it but, in a way, we’re the lucky ones.’
Again, no response but she found it easy to go on and talk about the things that she was really feeling.
‘I lost my mum and dad when this all started. I lost my grandfather and my partner not so long ago. I’m sure you’ve all lost people you cared about?’
‘I lost my mum and dad,’ said a girl.
A couple of other people shouted out the people who they had lost: parents, grandparents, children and friends.
‘Death isn’t easy,’ she said. ‘When we stand here looking at the fire we’re not thinking about William, we’re thinking about all the people we’ve lost and how we didn’t have the time to bury them.
‘Death isn’t supposed to be easy but it is inevitable. One day it will be me. One day it will be
you. We can’t escape it, but we can fight it. We can fight them.’
A few people were nodding now, murmuring agreement.
‘William wasn’t killed by a zombie, his heart failed him. But that doesn’t make the loss any less tragic. We should still mourn him, but we should also remember that he died fighting. He died winning because it was his body and not a zombie that got him.’
‘We should all be so lucky,’ someone called out.
Beth smiled. ‘Exactly! That’s exactly what I mean. William won, he died a natural death and that’s what we should all be fighting for; the right to die surrounded by people who we care about, in safety, knowing that others will go on. It’s what he would want for all of us.’
More murmurs of agreement. She let them continue for a few moments. She was done eulogising.
‘We’re moving again in two hours. Get something to eat and make sure you’re packed up.’
She walked away and this time they let her through. She was reluctant to leave the warmth of the fire but there were things that needed to be done.
CHAPTER 4
IT TOOK UNTIL MID-DAY TO REACH THE town, which according to the sign was called Carningsby. Most of the fog had cleared, at least enough for them to look down the hill at their potential new home.
The streets were crawling with zombies. From a distance they looked like insects.
Russell and Darrel were standing beside her, the smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air. She didn’t know what they were thinking, but she knew this was far from an ideal place to stay. They would need to get rid of all the zombies below and she had no clue how long that would take. But there were advantages: there was a lot of space and she could see a few large buildings that might be supermarkets or warehouses.
Even if they didn’t stay they would need to visit and collect supplies.
‘What do you think?’ Russell said.
‘There’s a lot of them down there,’ Beth said.