by Thomas Hall
She moved back towards the wall and leaned against it, using the heavy bricks as a shield. She looked around for Darrel and the others, but there was no sign of them. Beth began scanning the faces of the zombies, unsure whether it would be a relief to see them there or not.
Her gun hung by her side. She reached for it and fingered the safety off.
Despite the progress that the super zombie was making, there were still a lot of zombies in the park. They were coming in from the entrance nearest the town hall and, if she hadn’t known better, Beth might have thought they were fleeing the fire.
She moved forwards, keeping her back to the wall and her eyes open. Her own breathing was heavy in her ears.
The super zombie didn’t need her help, but perhaps her friends did. She wouldn’t be able to rest until she found them, whatever state they were in.
The ground had become marshy beneath the melted snow.
She wanted to call their names, but not at the cost of drawing attention to herself.
She looked around but there were too many zombies to see clearly. It quickly became obvious that she wouldn’t find her friends that way.
Beth realised that she needed to come up with a different plan.
There were trees skirting the edge of the park and her first thought was that she might be able to climb one and get a better view of what was going on. Then it occurred to her that Darrel and Noel might have already thought of that.
It went against every instinct she had, to turn her back on the zombies, but she forced herself to do it. She looked up into the darkness of the nearest tree and saw a shape there.
Her heart leaped in her chest and she thought, for a moment, that she’d found them in the first place she looked.
‘Hey!’ she called, her voice hushed as much as she could, while still hoping to be heard.
There was no response.
Beth looked around, reassuring herself that none of the zombies were sneaking up on her, and then stepped closer to the tree. With her hands on the trunk she leaned up and looked up.
The shape she had seen was a bird nest. Nothing more.
She stepped back with a sigh and moved to the next tree to see if they were there.
‘Beth!’
She turned. For a crazy moment she thought that the super zombie had spoken to her. Instead she saw a man shaped patch of darkness.
‘What happened?’ Noel said, coming towards her. ‘Where did you go?’
Beth felt like hugging him but she restrained herself. ‘To get help. Where’s everyone else?’
‘We got out. We’re at the town hall helping.’
There was a loud groan from the direction of the super zombie. She turned to look and saw the wall around the park come crashing down, followed by what looked like a hundred zombies flooding in.
Noel grabbed her hand and pulled her away. Her gun clattered against her leg as she ran along behind him, pushing herself to keep going and not give in to the temptation to turn and check on the super zombie.
He led her around the outside of the park. Now that she was a little further from the zombies, she could hear another, more disturbing sound layered beneath their moans; she could hear screaming and crying and the crack of wood breaking in fire.
‘How many did you get out?’ Beth said.
‘As many as we could,’ Noel said, he sounded upset, but she tried not to read too much into that.
‘Where are they now?’
‘Wherever we can put them,’ he said.
They rounded the park and turned left before the railway bridge. Beth was already sweating and they weren’t even near the town hall yet.
Another left took them onto the road. There were some zombies but they were easier to avoid than to fight. They kept going and soon came to the town hall.
The fire had destroyed most of the windows and was now reaching out of them, climbing towards the roof. A series of small explosions inside made her stop and turn, but Noel kept her moving.
Most of the zombies she saw were charred corpses, barely recognisable as having once been human. Some of them still had their heads, however, and were clawing their way across the ground, reaching out to them with a pathetic desperation. Beth almost felt sorry for them and might have put a bullet in their heads to spare them, if she hadn’t been more concerned about running out of bullets.
‘Noel! Beth!’
She turned towards Darrel’s voice. He was standing at the end of an alleyway between two shops. She could see people moving around behind him and hoped that Kris and the others were okay.
‘What are you still doing here?’ Beth said.
‘There’s still people inside,’ Darrel said.
Beth looked at the town hall. It was an inferno. She saw fire and smoke behind every opening. Although they were more than a hundred metres away from it, the heat was intense. It wasn’t a difficult decision; sending anyone inside now would be murder.
‘It’s too late for them,’ she said.
Darrel shook his head. She could see by the flickering fire light that he was in shock, and who could blame him: he had already lost his dad and now, who knew how many people inside the town hall were going to die. She didn’t think there was anyone left alive in there, but Darrel clearly did.
‘No one’s going inside,’ she said. ‘No one.’
He looked as if he might argue, but in the end he just slunk back into the shadows and, once more, she was in charge.
Margaret had made it out and so had the giant. Beth recognised a few of the others as well, but not many. She had no idea what their original number had been, but now there were fewer than fifty. She found Margaret at the back of the alleyway, sitting on a discarded crate, surrounded by her followers.
When Margaret saw Beth, she stood up.
‘You did this,’ she said.
Beth was taken aback. She didn’t know what to say.
‘You brought them here.’
She shook her head. She knew Margaret had been through a lot, and she didn’t want to make that worse. They could deal with blame later. ‘You can think that, if it makes you feel better. I’m not here to argue.’
‘Why are you here then?’ Margaret said. She looked very old, outside of her well-appointed office. ‘To gloat?’
Beth shook her head. ‘It’s not safe here and your people are in shock. We’ve got room for everyone.’
‘You think we’re going to go with you?’ Margaret said.
The people who were standing around her began to murmur to one another. They shuffled their feet but didn’t contradict Margaret. Perhaps, Beth thought, their pride would prevent them from accepting her help.
‘You’re free to do what you think is best,’ Beth said. ‘I’m offering to help.’
Before Margaret could answer a woman carrying a baby of unidentifiable sex, stepped out of the darkness. They were both wrapped in thick blankets but even so, the night would be a cold one.
‘Can we come?’ she said.
Beth nodded and tried not to feel good about the fact that Margaret’s people were willing to abandon her. That wasn’t how she wanted this to end.
‘Of course,’ Beth said, smiling and then raising her voice slightly. ‘You’re all welcome to come. It’s a bit of a walk but once we’re there you’ll get a hot drink and a warm place to spend the night.’
More people moved forwards, joining the woman with the baby.
‘Noel?’ Beth said, without turning around. She felt the warm air push against her as he came over.
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘Take anyone who wants to go, back to the street. Make sure they’re looked after.’
He nodded.
‘Go with Noel,’ Beth said. ‘He’ll show you the way.’
People walked past her, cautiously at first, as if they thought she was going to hurt them, but then with more confidence. Soon it was just Beth and Margaret left.
‘There’s room for you too,’ Beth said.
>
‘Why?’ Margaret said. ‘I wouldn’t take you in.’
Beth shrugged. The idea of leaving them had barely occurred to her. It was unthinkable.
‘You can’t stay out here, you’ll freeze. Come back with me, at least for tonight?’
Margaret looked around, no one else was there. She sighed. Then she stood up and, together, they began walking back down the alleyway to the street.
Beth tried not to feel like she was abandoning the super zombie.
She walked alongside Margaret but her thoughts were elsewhere. The super zombie was probably dead, she told herself, and even if it wasn’t, it shouldn’t have been alive in the first place.
That didn’t help.
They caught up with Darrel at the back of the group. He had Kris with him.
He nodded at her and she replied in kind, but it was too risky to talk.
When they turned off the main street, Beth looked back. She could see the burning building and hoped that it would put itself out. The snow would help, but they weren’t in any position to fight it themselves. Perhaps it would take out the zombies who were still alive.
Without discussing it, they took a different route back to the street. None of them wanted to go past the hotel again. Soon they were walking along familiar roads and the end of their journey was in sight.
Beth felt herself grow tenser the closer they got. In some indefinable way, she felt, that their business hadn’t been finished. The Townies who had survived the fire were safe, but they hadn’t stopped the zombies. She was relying on the super zombie and the fire to do that.
‘Beth?’ Margaret said.
She turned to look at the older woman and was reminded briefly of Kathy. Beth wondered if the rest of the group would be able to forgive the Townies for that, or if the two parties would remain forever at odds.
‘I heard something,’ Margaret said.
Beth stopped.
Darrel stopped. ‘What is it?’ he said.
She listened and she could hear fresh snow landing on the ground, but nothing else.
A mutant zombie scuttled across a snow dune to her right. It had the body of a spider and two claws that looked as if they would be able to slice through sheets of metal.
She reached for her gun, but in the split second that her attention was elsewhere, the creature struck.
Kris started to scream when she saw the creature coming towards her. There was a kind of terror in the sound that Beth had rarely heard. Kris didn’t even think to reach for her gun. The noise stopped abruptly when the creature reached out with one of its hideous bear arms, slicing through her neck and severing it from her body.
Beth opened fire before Kris’ lifeless body hit the ground.
The mutant zombie flapped around as if it was dancing, its multiple limbs flailing. Its head didn’t explode, but when she caught it with a clean shot the life went out of it. The gross body fell on the snow with a thud and there was silence.
Beth tried to calm her breathing and focus. She had a gut instinct that the creature wouldn’t have come alone, that it was either a pack animal like normal zombies, or had been followed by them.
She tried to count to sixty but only got up to twenty-nine before she saw them. Their freakish mutated forms rising over the hill, their jerky movements like something out of a horror movie.
There was a shuffling noise behind her and she turned; there were more of them there.
‘How much ammo have you got left?’ Darrel said.
Without taking her eyes off the creatures, Beth reached down and felt the clips on her vest. ‘Two mags,’ she said.
She heard him curse. ‘That’s not going to be enough.’
It suddenly occurred to her that Darrel and the others had nothing. That was why they had left the park in the first place, if they’d come better armed they might still be there, or they might be dead.
‘We need to keep moving,’ she said.
‘Where?’ Darrel said.
‘The church, we’ll be safe in there.’
He nodded but she didn’t see that he had much confidence in the idea. She couldn’t blame him. They were effectively unarmed and running from creatures that they had never dealt with before. If half of them made it out alive it would be lucky.
Darrel walked swiftly through the group, spreading the news about their destination, leaving her and Margaret alone with Kris. They had lost three people since arriving in Carningsby compared to one on the road. She was beginning to wonder if it had been worth it, but decided she would worry about that if she was still alive in the morning to do so.
The people in front of her started moving and Beth moved with them. Margaret walked alongside her and in the shadows, the mutant zombies followed.
Beth waited for them to attack but they just followed, keeping their distance and freaking her out. Zombies themselves were unnatural, but these creatures were worse. They were abominations and she couldn’t begin to imagine where they had come from. She wished they had all been burned.
They neared the church but she didn’t feel right about leading the mutants right there. It was their haven, a place where they had been safe from the Townies, when they had been a threat. It felt wrong, but she didn’t see they had a choice. The stone walls were thick and the heavy door could be locked. As far as she could see it was the safest place in town.
It occurred to her that, hiding in the church, was not so different to Margaret and the Townies hiding in the town hall. If they decided to make the church their home, in fact, it wouldn’t have been any different at all.
But it was different, she assured herself, because they had tried to fight the zombies and they weren’t really hiding. This was a tactical retreat, because they had children and old people with them now, and it wouldn’t be right to put them in danger.
She glanced at Margaret, as if the old woman would know what she was thinking and feel a sense of victory in it. But all she saw on Margaret’s face was the fear of someone who had never had to fight for themselves, and was now relying on strangers to keep her alive.
They were in sight of the church when the creature attacked. She raised her gun to deal with it, knowing that she couldn’t afford to miss, but before she was able to squeeze off a single shot she was struck from behind.
Her feet left the ground for a moment and then she hit the snow hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. She heard screaming, but it sounded distant and a part of her wondered if it would be easier now to just let herself die, a part of her was tired of fighting.
She waited for the final blow or the teeth that would turn her into one of them, but it didn’t happen. A shadow fell over her and she found that she was still able to feel the cold.
Beth rolled onto her back and felt little shockwaves of pain run through her bones. The super zombie was standing over her and she opened her mouth to speak, but she didn’t have her breath back and all that came out was an airless gasp.
The mutant zombies rounded on the super zombie.
Beth managed to scramble to her feet and stood beside it, the creature, her friend. She watched as the rest of the group tried to get away and raised her gun.
The mutants made terrible sounds. They didn’t moan, but whispered and clicked like alien monsters. They barely seemed to notice her.
When the first creature came forwards she killed it before it got close. Then waited for the next one. She told herself that she wasn’t using the last of her ammo to protect the super zombie, that she was keeping the mutants busy so Noel and Darrel could get the others safely into the church, but she knew the truth.
Several mutants came forwards as a group. She shot three of them and the super zombie batted the others away, sending them flying through the air to land in a crumpled pile on the snow.
She squeezed the trigger, got a dry click in response, quickly swapped the magazine and started again. She was able to repeat the procedure once more before her gun clicked dry for the last time and all she w
as left with was an ineffective club.
‘Run.’
Beth looked up, sure for a moment that she had imagined the word. The super zombie couldn’t talk.
‘Run Beth,’ it said and this time she saw its mouth move and knew that she hadn’t imagined it. The creature didn’t sound like Dale, just as it didn’t look like him, but it retained a certain aspect of him. A ‘Daleness’ that she recognised and clung to.
‘I can’t,’ she said.
‘Run,’ the super zombie said.
The mutants seemed to realise that she was defenceless. They crept forward in increasing numbers and she quailed against the super zombie’s side. She couldn’t move, felt paralysed by indecision. This was all too familiar.
It had been a mistake to let Dale sacrifice himself, but it hadn’t been her mistake to make. She had watched him walk into the forest, but she hadn’t been allowed a say in the matter. It had been his decision and there was no more to it than that. It had been a mistake, but not hers.
This was the same but it felt different.
The super zombie wasn’t Dale, but she had fought against that idea for so long that she was no longer sure where the truth lay. It wasn’t Dale, but it had become a kind of surrogate and that was why this felt so familiar, because, whether it was true or not, she felt as if she was sacrificing Dale for her own good, again.
‘Run,’ the super zombie said.
She made the decision in a split second and knew at once that she was right. Either she died alongside the super zombie or she lived and it died. A similar thought had probably occurred to Dale.
Beth reached for the creature’s hand and took hold of an overgrown finger, like a child grasping its parent’s digit. She squeezed and the super zombie looked down. It lacked the facial muscles to smile, but she saw the peace in its eyes. It no longer seemed right to think of it as a zombie at all.