by Frank Tayell
“What I’m wondering,” Kim said, “is whether these soldiers came from Dublin, gathering civilians along the way. More importantly, did they bring all the ammunition those airlifted soldiers brought to that city? If they did, is there any point in us going to Dublin?”
“Hard to say,” Bran said. “At least, it’s hard to say now. We’ll know more when we’ve properly searched the place, but sunset is coming, and we don’t want to be out after dark.”
“Ah, it’s frustrating, isn’t it?” Kim said as they headed back to the gate, and then to the two-storey sheet-metal barricade. Her gaze caught the twice-dead corpses. “If the defenders came from Dublin, I wonder whether these zombies did, too. I wonder how they ended up piled together.”
“They were lured here by the sound, like you said,” Annette said.
“No, I mean… It doesn’t matter.”
After the generator had died, after the sound had stopped, why hadn’t the zombies drifted away? Even that wasn’t what she really wanted to know. What she wanted to know was whether, if they hadn’t come to the barracks now but in a month, or two months, or a year, would the zombies have been dead? After a few days, they often adopted that squatting position, waiting motionless, dormant. Was that the first step to death, or to an eternal hibernation?
Chapter 7 - None Shall Pass
Dundalk
The motorway was mercifully absent of the undead, and thankfully absent of Joan and the others who’d gone south. Worryingly, there was no sign of Ken and Dee-Dee.
“We’ll give them five minutes,” Kim said.
A gust of wind dragged a curtain of snow across the empty road.
“The weather’s changing,” Bran said.
“We’re going to have another snowstorm?” Annette asked.
“I don’t think so,” Bran said. “The wind’s coming from the south.” He cricked his head, then turned north. “Did you hear that?”
Kim peered into the white haze. The wind dropped, the snow settled, and the setting sun lit up the white-coated landscape. Ice glittered, visibility improved, and Kim saw a figure running towards them. It was Ken. He raised a hand, yelled something, then slipped on the ice.
“Zombies!” Ken said breathlessly, as he picked himself up. “Zombies. Barricade. On the bridge. Lots. Hundreds.”
“Where’s Dee-Dee?” Kim asked.
“Shooting them,” Ken said.
“Hundreds?” Bran asked.
“Maybe thousands,” Ken said. “Way more than by the barracks!”
“If they get through, we’ll have to fight them in the town,” Bran said.
“Go,” Kim said forestalling any more discussion. “Take Ken and Annette. Give me your ammo. We’ll hold them as long as we can.”
She took the magazines from Bran and Annette.
“Already gave mine to Dee-Dee,” Ken said.
“Go,” Kim said again, then ran north along the snow-covered motorway, following Ken’s tracks into danger.
The barricade had been built on the northern bank of the bridge, which explained why the ship’s crew hadn’t seen it. Excused was a better choice of word since the barricade was of a similar construction to that near the barracks. It towered over twenty-feet high, made of great sections of sheet metal, bolted and welded together, supported by girders, toughened by cement. Like the barrier at the barracks, a gap had been left in the middle, wide enough for a vehicle to drive through. Here, though, there was a gate. Six feet high, with hinges three feet long, it had begun as a farmer’s five-bar gate. Reinforced with wire mesh, a timber lock-bar, and a patchwork of far smaller metal plates, half of which had been knocked free by the thrashing, clawing zombies on the gate’s far side.
On the bridge was a rusting police car, on the roof of which stood Dee-Dee. Slowly, methodically, she was shooting over the top of the gate into the mass of the undead beyond.
“What happened?” Kim asked.
“Zombies,” Dee-Dee said. “The other side of the barricade. Over there. Fifty metres away. That field.” Her tone was clipped, each phrase punctuated with a shot. “Tried shooting them. Before they got to the barricade. Too many. Hundreds. Thousands.”
“They heard you?”
“Not sure. Must have. Who knows?” Dee-Dee’s rifle clicked. The magazine was empty. She ejected it, letting it clatter onto the vehicle’s battered frame as she took a spare from her webbing. “What’s the plan?”
Kim climbed onto the police car’s bonnet. “We’ll hold them for as long as we can,” she said, raising her rifle. She took aim, but the angle was wrong. She could see a long, thick column of the undead drifting onto the road, but not the zombies immediately behind the gate. She could see the metal shake, though, as the undead beat and pushed, and in turn were pushed by the greater number beyond. She fired at a bare-scalped creature twenty feet from the barricade, but didn’t wait to see if it fell. “There’s ammo at the barracks,” she said, firing again. “Bran, Ken, and Annette have gone to get it, and some guns. We can hold them here.” She fired.
“I’m not sure we can,” Dee-Dee said, firing a shot of her own.
The gate shook. Kim fired. The gate shook again, and this time Kim saw the sheet-steel barricade shudder.
“If we have to, we’ll lead them back through the town,” Kim said.
“To the college?”
“What choice do we have?” Kim said. “If they get through here, they’ll cut us off from the sea. Now or later, we have to deal with them.”
“No retreat,” Dee-Dee said.
“No retreat,” Kim echoed.
The gate had stopped shaking, but not because the undead had stopped pushing. It was simply that the roiling mass on the other side were pressing the frame taut.
The beach, the hotel, the barracks, and now the bridge. One last desperate stand after another. A life spent terrified, horrified, but relatively safe as long as they had ammunition. But the ammo would be gone soon enough. This was life. This would be every expedition ashore, and if they were to live aboard ships, there would be many expeditions, and soon the ammo would be gone. She fired. This was life, and in it, she could see the shape of her death.
“There were trucks the other side of the barricade, near where the zombies were gathered,” Dee-Dee said.
“Army trucks?” Kim asked.
“Think so,” Dee-Dee said.
“Another lure, then,” Kim said. “Doesn’t explain how the other zombies got inside the barricade.” She fired, then reflexively glanced around. She’d had a sudden fear of being surrounded, but there were no zombies behind. No sign of Bran, Ken, and Annette, either. There was a loud creak, then a sharp metallic crack. She turned to her front in time to see the gate’s hinges torn from their brackets. The gate thudded down into the snow, and the undead piled through. Those who’d been closest to the barricade had already been crushed, their bones pulped as the great roiling mass surged through the narrow opening. More fell as they tripped on the ice, on the bones and skin and frozen rags of their fellows. But between and behind them were hundreds more.
Kim jumped from the roof, propping her rifle on the police car’s snow-covered bonnet. A frisson of cold swept up her arm as her elbow dug deep into the snow. Her clothing was already damp, and it would soon freeze, but that discomfort was a welcome distraction as she fired one shot after the next into the approaching tumult of death. She aimed at heads, but the undead moved too erratically, too fast, and too often her bullets missed their targets, impacting against arms and chests, doing nothing to stop the surge.
Dee-Dee had jumped down, and propped her rifle on the roof. There was no point calling out targets, as the scrumming undead were uniformly horrific in their coating of ice and frozen rags. They fired, one bullet after another, until the magazines were empty. Kim reloaded, her numb fingers fumbling with the fresh magazine.
“I’m out,” Dee-Dee said.
“Here,” Kim said, handing her one of the magazines she’d taken from Bran. “Thi
s is the last.”
The undead were now beyond the gate. Some had staggered sideways into the relative shelter of the steel sheeting. There, they’d found their footing. They lurched onwards, slipping, sliding, and one even tumbled over the bridge’s low wall, down to the river below. The others staggered on, slowly approaching the car.
“Two more shots,” Kim said, firing into the bare skull of a creature from which the skin had been peeled away. “Two more, then we run.”
She fired to the right of the gate, then to the left. She had five shots left, at least she thought she did, but she’d keep those for the retreat.
“Ready?”
She heard footsteps, running, and coming from behind. She turned around and saw Bran sprinting along the road, his feet kicking up a cloud of snow with every two-metre stride.
“Fire every last bullet!” Kim said.
Four bullets later, the magazine was empty. She dropped it onto the car’s bonnet, and reached for the holster at her belt. She had six rounds left in the pistol, and the weapon had no suppressor, but it would buy them a few more seconds. If she could draw the weapon. The flap was frozen solid, and her fingers weren’t much better. She’d managed to get it free just as Bran reached them. He slammed something large and heavy down on the car: the machine gun.
“You brought that?” Kim asked.
“I need a minute,” he said.
As Dee-Dee fired the last of her shots, Kim raised the pistol. The un-silenced shots echoed like thunder across the frozen landscape. At the sound, the undead by the gate became more animated, more violent, more erratic, pushing and shoving each other so that even more fell to the icy tarmac. Those further from the gate had no such impediment. They staggered onward, their twisted backs straightening, their broken arms swinging, their gaping mouths snapping.
Kim was on her last bullet. She aimed at a tall creature, wearing clothing more intact than the others. Its trousers were taped at the ankles, body-armour was visible beneath a ragged red coat, and a ski mask covered its head. She fired, but the sound of her shot was drowned by the cacophonous bark of the machine gun. The tall zombie danced as bullets thudded into it. The short burst ended. The zombie continued staggering back a pace. It straightened. Kim couldn’t tell whether the bullets had penetrated the body-armour, but none of the dozen rounds had hit its head.
“She works,” Bran said. “Now let’s see what she can really do.”
He opened fire, stitching bullets at head height. This time, he had the angle right. Bullets smacked into as many chests as heads, but the zombies began to fall. The only thing louder than the gunshots was the sound of bullets hitting the sheet-metal barricade. The undead flooded into the gap, but Bran concentrated his fire there. Kim smiled, until she saw a shot zombie stand. The machine gun was just too inaccurate.
“Watch the sides,” Bran said, as he reloaded. “Watch the sides.”
“I’ve got the left. Dee-Dee, take the right,” Kim said as she drew her machete from its sheath. Bran opened fire again. Kim saw a head explode, then turned her attention away from the gate and to the undead that had already staggered through.
Most headed towards the sound of the machine gun, and so lurched into the path of its bullets, but there were three, two feet apart, staggering along the motorway’s kerb.
Fingers numb, she gripped the machete with both hands, planning her blow as the zombies approached. She swung high, the blade skimming off its frozen scalp, but then had to jump back as the zombie’s three-fingered hand clawed at her face. She ducked low, swinging at its knee. The oft-sharpened blade slashed through shredded cloth and rotten sinew, and the zombie fell. Kim stepped back, as the next zombie lurched forward, but it tripped on the thrashing, grounded creature, leaving her free to sidestep them both and slash the blade at the last creature’s skull. It burst like a rotten egg, spraying a dark ooze over her and the trampled snow. She spun around, hacking the machete at one fallen zombie, then the next, and kept moving, spinning, looking for the next threat.
“Kim!” Annette called. Kim kept spinning, kept turning, until she spotted the girl, standing by the car, a shotgun in her hand.
Kim ran over, grabbed it. “Ammo?”
“Here. This bag. But it’s loaded.”
Kim slung the bag, and moved away from the vehicle. Ken was there, too, a submachine gun in his hands, crossing to the other side of the bridge. He fired, his shots calm and measured, barely audible over the industrial racket of the machine gun, until, without warning, the machine gun stopped.
“Jammed!” Bran spat the word as if it were a curse.
Lying on top of the fallen gate was a mound of the dead. For a moment, it was still. Then it shifted and rolled, heaved and shuddered as the undead behind struggled against the fallen that were trying to stand.
Kim raised the shotgun, fired, ratcheted in a new shell, and fired again. The range was too long. She took a step forward. ”Bran? Are we retreating?”
“I brought these,” Annette said. “Are they any use?”
“Yes,” Bran said. “I need some wire, and about thirty seconds.”
Kim took another pace forward. She hadn’t turned around, and so wasn’t sure what Bran was planning, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they needed time. She fired into the heaving mass by the gate. The slug ripped a hole through a zombie’s chest. Kim sensed the movement more than she saw it, and stepped sideways and back as a crawling zombie swiped an arm through the space her foot had just been. She ratcheted in a fresh round, lowered the barrel, pulled the trigger, and fired from a distance of less than two feet. The zombie’s skull exploded, spraying bone and rotten brain across the churned snow. Kim chambered a new shell, and fired again at the gate. Ken was firing, too, his shots more measured, more carefully aimed, but it wouldn’t matter. All that was keeping the undead back were the mass of corpses in the gap where the gate had been. The sheet-metal barricade shook. Either it would collapse, or the undead would push their way through. And then… and then the shotgun clicked on an empty chamber. She thrust her hand into the bag, pulling out a shell.
“Kim! Get back! Now!” Bran called. “Run!”
Shell still in her hand, Kim turned and ran, and saw Bran running towards her. The canvas bag was in his hands. She didn’t ask, because she could guess. She dived forward, behind the relative cover of the car, turning again in time to see Bran hurl the bag over the roiling mass of undead in the gate. He pivoted on his heels, slipped on the ice, pushed himself to his feet, slammed his palm into an approaching zombie’s chest, and darted towards the car. Kim finished reloading, raised the shotgun, but couldn’t get a clear shot. Bran dived over the bonnet, dragging Kim down just before the bag of grenades detonated.
If the sound of the machine gun was like thunder, this was an earthquake, throwing an avalanche of metal and pebbles, gravel and grit, ice and gore, bone and flesh against the sheet-metal, the road, and the river either side of the bridge.
“I thought you’d use the grenades one at a time,” Annette said.
“Too much risk, too little cover,” Bran said, as he grabbed the machine gun. “I need a couple of minutes.”
“Who has ammo?” Kim asked, hastily reloading the shotgun.
As the ice and snow settled to the ground, all appeared momentarily still.
“I think you got them all,” Ken said.
He spoke too soon. A figure lurched out of the snow. Annette and Ken fired at the same time. At least one of them was on target. The zombie fell.
“Call out your targets,” Kim said. “We really can’t waste the ammo.”
“Mine,” Ken said as another zombie lurched out of the snowy mist.
“Next is mine, then,” Kim said. A minute dragged by, then two, and then a zombie crawled through the gate on hands and knees. “Mine,” she said, and fired.
“I think she’s ready,” Bran said.
“I think we got them,” Kim said.
“That’s probably for the
best,” Bran said. “An FN MAG isn’t the best weapon for this kind of work.”
“That’s the type of gun?” Dee-Dee asked.
“She is,” Bran said. “She’s an old friend. Or the cousin of an old friend.”
“You used one in the Army?” Annette asked.
“Kandahar,” Bran said.
“What happened there?” Annette asked. “You’ve never told me any stories about your time at war.”
“There’s not much to say,” Bran said. “Except that’s where I had the best coffee I’ve ever drunk. I think we’re clear.”
They weren’t, not quite. As they left the cover of the police car, and walked slowly towards the barricade, the mound of wrecked bodies and broken limbs undulated. A wretched creature crawled out from underneath. Ken fired. The shot echoed, but silence returned.
“I can see the boat,” Annette said.
“The New World?” Kim asked, not taking her eyes from the twice-dead.
“No, the sailing boat,” Annette said. “They must have heard the explosion. They’re sailing this way.”
“Wave,” Kim said. “Signal we’re okay. The last thing we need is them coming ashore and us losing the boat or something.” She spoke distractedly, because there were noises coming from the other side of the barricade. “Can you hear that?”
“It’s the injured undead,” Bran said. “So it’s not over yet.”
Then came another sound, an increasingly familiar one, that of running feet, slipping on the ice. It was Joan and the others.
“We heard the gunfire,” Joan said. “We’re not too late?”
“Actually, you’re just in time,” Bran said. “And when I tell you what for, you’ll wish you hadn’t rushed. We need to clear the bodies by the gate, kill any crawling undead on the other side, get the gate back into position, then move the car in front to keep it closed.”
“So much for getting back late to avoid the hard work,” Annette muttered. She looked up, then raised her gloved hand. “Hey, I think it’s snowing.”