by Thomas Hall
The low moan of zombies was much louder now and she knew they were close.
‘Spread out,’ she whispered and, without need of further instruction, they did as she had instructed.
They moved slowly across the courtyard, keeping low and watching for the first sign of trouble.
‘I see them,’ Noel whispered.
Beth stopped and turned.
Noel was staring down the street which ran past the various novelty bars. At first Beth couldn’t see anything, but when she looked harder, she saw them.
The zombies were about five-hundred metres down the road, but they were moving quickly. It crossed Beth’s mind to go back and warn Margaret that these were quick moving zombies, who might easily break through whatever defences they had. But what was the point? She had already made it very clear that she wasn’t interested in being helped.
They made for an 80s bar. There was no power so she was spared the full neon effect of the paintings on the walls as they made their way up the stairs.
It felt as if the zombies must be right behind them, but when they got to the top and looked back, there was nothing there. Beth pushed the others through the door ahead of her and then followed them in.
CHAPTER 15
THERE WAS A BAR ALONG ONE WALL. THERE were nearly full bottles of spirits hanging on the wall behind it and other drinks in the fridges below. Opposite the bar there were some tables and chairs. In the other direction there was a dance floor with a DJ booth in the middle.
Beth had been to clubs and pubs before the zombies had come, and walking around now she found the place heartbreakingly familiar. This wasn’t somewhere that she had ever been, but there had been places like it. There had been many happy memories.
For the first time in what felt like years, she thought about the friends she’d had before the zombies had come. She was almost certain that they were all dead now, but even if they weren’t there was no hope of finding them again. The world had moved on from the days of social media and phone calls.
She brushed the thoughts away like loose strands of hair and focused on the current situation. Their position wasn’t good, but it could have been a lot worse: the doors weren’t locked, but if they were quiet, the zombies might not even realise they were there.
The windows were covered with thick black sheets. Beth peeled the corner of one away and found that the rest came easily. She was joined by Noel and Russell and between the three of them they uncovered enough that they could look out and watch the zombies arrive.
Beth’s breath caught in her throat. She looked down at the snow-covered ground and saw the trail of boot prints leading from the town hall, along the street and into the bar below.
‘We have to go back,’ she said.
‘Why? What’s going on?’ Russell said, pushing Noel out of the way so he could stand beside her and look out.
‘Damn it!’ he said, as if the failing was his, and not hers. ‘It’s too late now.’
Beth looked again. Two figures had appeared in the road, just dark shapes hidden behind the static of snow.
‘What do we do?’ Beth said. There was no way the zombies could hear her, but she spoke in a whisper all the same.
‘Sit tight and hope they don’t notice. It’s dark, maybe we’ll get lucky.’
Beth held her gun firmly and pressed her face against the cold glass. The zombies arrived more slowly than she’d expected.
There were slow zombies amongst the quick ones. It was rare to see quick zombies, but rarer still to see them amongst slow zombies. She had thought that was due to competition for resources, that the slow zombies always lost out when they were among the quick kind, but that seemed not to be the case here.
She watched a slow zombie fall and a quick one catch it before it could hit the ground, setting it back on its feet and then moving on.
The sight of the zombies co-operating made her feel sick.
None of them so much as glanced in the direction of the bar and soon, the footprints they had left behind, were impossible to see. The zombies didn’t appear to have noticed them.
They moved towards the town hall as if it was their home. They seemed to move together, but that might have just been her brain searching for patterns and logic. They began to bang on the door, scratching the wood with their long rotten nails, and the whole world seemed to shake.
Beth stepped away from the window, lowering her gun.
Now that the sheet had been peeled away from the window there was enough light for her to see that the dance floor was liberally covered with pink and green sparkling confetti. There were also a few balloons that had withered and fallen airless to the ground.
‘What are we going to do?’ Noel said.
Beth sighed. ‘I suppose we go back.’
‘It’s what she wanted,’ Russell said.
Beth nodded, waited to feel like it was the right decision to make, but couldn’t. Despite what Margaret wanted, it didn’t feel right to abandon her and the people under her care. A part of Beth was tempted to start clearing away the zombies and wait until later to deal with the consequences.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
‘Are you sure?’ Noel said.
She nodded again, unable to bring herself to say it. Beth turned away and led them back to the stairs.
The zombie moan was impossibly loud and discordant. It set her teeth on edge and wormed under her skin.
They stopped in the sheltered doorway of the bar. The zombies were massing on the town hall, but there were so many of them that they spread across the road and came within metres of the club. None of them were paying attention to the humans that slipped out and Beth was grateful for that.
She didn’t dare speak, but used hand signals to communicate to the others what she was planning to do: sneak around the bar, keep as close to the wall as possible and try not to make any noises that would draw attention to them.
They followed her and were so quiet that, if she hadn’t glanced back from time to time, it would have been easy to believe that they weren’t there at all. Even Noel seemed to have learned the art of stealth.
The line of zombies stretched back along the road and, in places, they came within a couple of metres of them. Whatever they thought was in the town hall must have been zombie catnip, because not a single one of them turned and looked at the group.
After a few minutes they were clear of the zombies and the road ahead of them led home. Beth straightened up and tried to relax. She still felt tense and anxious and she wanted this to be over with.
They turned off the road and went onto the high street. It was now hidden beneath several inches of snow. So much snow that their feet didn’t break the surface and they wouldn’t leave any visible prints behind them.
The further they got from the town hall the further away the danger seemed to be. She let her guard down.
She could no longer hear the zombies moaning above the brittle wind. They kept going, spreading out so there was more space between them, lowering their weapons so that they didn’t accidentally shoot one another. By the time they passed the big mall and started towards the bridge over the river, she had begun to feel as if it was over.
She didn’t notice them because they didn’t sound like zombies.
For as long as there had been zombies there had been the zombie moan. It seemed to come from deep within their chests, almost like humming, but filtered through mouths hanging slack and open. It was the sound of a broken motor running down, the sound of sickness. When you heard it you knew that there were zombies close by, when you didn’t, you knew you were safe.
Or so Beth had thought.
They reached the hotel on the other side of the bridge. There was a small courtyard which was cloaked in shadows and completely silent. None of them so much as glanced at it.
None of them realised that there was a zombie there until Darrel was thrown to the ground and it landed on top of him. His gun skittered across the ice and stopped
in a snow drift.
‘Get it off me!’ he shouted.
They were too close to use their guns, and experience had taught them that doing so was likely to bring other zombies to investigate. Russell ran towards his son, heedless of the danger.
There were more zombies hiding in the shadows.
Russell swung at the zombie on top of Darrel, his right fist connected with its cheek and blood splattered on the snow. The zombie didn’t move, was only prevented from killing Darrel by his own strong arms holding it back.
Shapes moved in the shadows and more zombies came towards them.
Beth ran at the zombie on Darrel. She didn’t think about the risk of doing so, she thought about the risk of not having Darrel to fight with them when the other zombies attacked. She didn’t want to lose his strength and skill with a gun.
She swung her gun and felt it connect with the creature’s head, cracking it like a hardboiled egg so that the insides came oozing out. The zombie fell limp and with a great heave Darrel pushed it away. He wiped blood from his face as he got to his feet and they all fell backwards to try and get away from the zombies.
Seconds passed and more zombies came. Not just from the hotel courtyard, but all around. Zombies were disconcerting at the best of times, but this silent kind were unnatural. They were true corpses and Beth found herself wondering whether they were a new kind of creature, something potentially even more dangerous.
Beth raised her gun.
There were enough zombies now that it probably didn’t matter if the shots attracted more. Whether they were killed by a small number or by a large number, wouldn’t change the outcome. At least this way they stood a chance of getting out with their lives.
Darrel shot first, hitting a zombie directly between the eyes. There seemed to be a pause and then its head exploded, covering the creature next to it with poisonous blood. He turned and aimed to fire again, she wasn’t sure who fired the next two shots but she shot the fourth.
After that they opened fire properly and the zombies began to fall in every direction, but no sooner had they hit the snow than more came forwards. They shot those as well, but she was aware of more moving around behind them, waiting for their turn to attack.
Beth fired until her gun ran dry and the only thing that came out were clicks. She heard the others curse as the same thing happened to them. She fumbled for another magazine as the zombies came towards them.
At the same time, the zombies who were behind them, also came forwards. The six of them drew closer together and Beth saw that there was no way out except through the circle of zombies.
Her eyes were drawn to the creatures that seemed to float around the periphery of the group. They seemed wrong, more wrong than a zombie, and strangely out of place. Her hands finished the job of loading her gun, without her needing to think about it, while her mind focused on the strange shapes.
They moved in a different way. Jerkily and insect-like.
She started shooting and so did the others. More zombies fell and more came forward to take their place.
When the strange shapes stepped into the light, Beth saw that she had been right.
They were zombies: the decaying skin proved that, but they were different as well.
The first one that she got a good look at appeared to be blind because it had no eyes. The skin and bone on its bulbous forehead was so thin that she could see the pulsing mass of its brain. A tongue which had to be two-foot-long and forked at the end swung from its mouth like a tail and every so often it flicked up into the air. Its arms ended, not in hands, but in vicious-looking claws.
At first she thought that they had been wrong about animals being immune, but it stood on two legs and walked like a human. The thing was revolting, but she couldn’t take her eyes off it.
‘The fuck!’ Russell said.
Beth turned and saw another creature coming towards him. This one was different and more easily mistakable for an animal. It walked on four legs and its head seemed to be nothing but teeth. Its face was hidden behind a mask of clotted blood.
Another one looked like a spider. It had long, spindly legs and moved sideward like a crab. She raised her gun and kept shooting.
There were more of the freakish things, but she didn’t get a clear look at them. They didn’t come forwards and she was glad of it. She didn’t want to see the other abominations that were hiding in the darkness. What she had already seen was enough to give her nightmares. Whatever they were, they weren’t regular zombies.
It was clear that they weren’t going to be able to kill all of the zombies that had been in the hotel courtyard, and those that had been drawn to them since they’d started shooting. They needed to get away.
‘Focus on the middle!’ Russell shouted.
They turned so that they could all shoot into the same spot, clearing a pathway through the creatures.
Beth felt dead hands groping her as she moved through the creatures. She used the butt of her gun to hit the ones that were too close to shoot.
They fell down as easily as zombies always did, but that had never been the danger of the creatures. That there was a seemingly unlimited number of them, ready to take the place of the ones they killed, was. She hit one and another appeared, like a chocolate bar in a vending machine.
‘Keep going!’ Russell shouted, leading the way.
Noel was to her right and Darrel was behind her. The zombies were all around them.
They made progress, but it was slow, and they hadn’t picked the best direction to escape in. They were moving towards the hotel, where the zombies seemed to have originated. Maybe they would be able to hide inside, but they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves for long.
Russell beat a bath through to the courtyard, and when they reached it, Beth saw the reasoning behind his plan. There was much less room there, the zombies couldn’t get to them as easily. The ground sloped downwards and, at the other end, there was an exit.
‘This way,’ he shouted. A burst of machine gun fire punctuated his words.
Beth turned and watched the zombies fight each other for the right to follow them in. Those that made it were easy to take out and she let the others get away before turning to follow them.
CHAPTER 16
THE DOOR AT THE OTHER END OF THE courtyard led to a road that ran beneath the mall. There was a bus turned on its side in the middle of the street, the paint faded and the windows broken.
They moved quickly. Beth kept looking behind her, aware that they wouldn’t have the moan to warn them that the zombies were coming, under the mall they wouldn’t even hear footsteps on the snow.
They followed the road around to the mall entrance, but didn’t go inside. Instead they turned right, past a department store and onto the high street again.
Beth called them to stop. She was desperate to catch her breath and there was no sign of the zombies behind them.
‘What is it?’ Russell said.
‘Beth are you okay?’ Noel said.
She shook her head and looked up. She didn’t like it, but she knew what she had to do. ‘We have to go back,’ she said.
‘What do you think we’re trying to do?’ Darrel said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Back to the town hall.’
‘What are you talking about Beth?’ Russell said.
She nodded back the way they’d come, not willing to let go of her gun for long enough to point. ‘You saw those things, didn’t you?’
They nodded.
‘Those weren’t regular zombies, were they?’
They paused for a moment and then shook their heads.
‘We’ve got to warn them,’ she said. ‘Maybe they were safe from regular zombies, but those things… did you see them?’
Russell stepped towards her. The only shelter they had was the overhang from the shop roofs either side of them and they were both getting covered in snow. Their voices echoed a little but they were used to speaking in whispers.
He pu
t a hand on her shoulder and she looked at him.
‘Beth, you heard the woman, she doesn’t want our help.’
‘I know, but--‘
‘Even if she did, how are we going to get back inside? The place is swarming with zombies.’
‘We could find a way.’
Russell shook his head sadly, leading her to believe that his objection was purely logistical.
She walked out onto the high street. The windows of long abandoned shops looked down on her and she knew he were right. It was a shitty thing to do, but there wasn’t time to discuss it and make him understand. If she was going to stand a chance of helping the Townies then she had to do it now, and she knew that the others wouldn’t let her go alone.
After five paces she became aware of them behind her.
They didn’t say anything, but she thought she could feel their anger burning a hole in the back of her head. Well that was fine, she could deal with that later, after they had done what they could to save the Townies.
They couldn’t get close to the town hall. Every street they walked down was choked with zombies and a few of the mutants which moved among them like dirt floating in water. They were forced to approach the building from the opposite direction and hope that there was a way to get in.
Russell took the lead, grumbling to himself about no one else bothering to read the maps. He had rarely left the street, but he knew the town better than anyone else did. He led them through a series of side streets and along the river. They emerged on a main road and crossed the street to the library. Up another side road and through to the park where Beth had once sat with the super zombie.
They skirted the edge of the park, where the bushes and trees were over grown and layered with snow. In the distance she could see the town hall and hear the zombies moaning. She wondered how many of them were without a voice. It sounded like a lot, even without accounting for the ones she couldn’t hear.