by Perrin Briar
He took out his bludgeon, now thick with congealed blood, and began to swing at the zombies as they came toward him. Chris was vaguely aware of just four numbers now scribbled on the scoreboard, and thousands of pairs of eyes watching him, waiting and hoping for a fatal mistake, for it to be a close-won match.
A close-won match…
A smile spread across Chris’s face and a new energy surged through his body, replacing his slow, laggard movements with strong and renewed vitality. But George wasn’t doing so well. His arms looked heavy, barely able to lift his weapons.
“Just keep going a little longer,” Chris said. “I’ve got a plan to get us out of here.”
George could see Chris was serious. He redoubled his efforts and grunted with each attack. But even those raspy coughs weakened after a few more minutes, and the zombies began pressing forward.
The men turned and ran for the shack Zora and Maisie had run for. George struggled to breathe and couldn’t keep up. Chris grabbed his arm and began to drag him. George shrugged him off and continued on at his sedate pace.
They got halfway, back in the middle of the weapons cache. George dropped his blunt sword and picked up an axe with a long shaft. A zombie growled and reached for him, but George spun around in a slow circle, letting his weight bring the axe up to head height and knocking the creature’s head over at ninety degrees. It gargled blood and pitched forward. George stepped on its head with his size twelve boots, crushing it.
They puffed their way over to the shack where Zora and Maisie stood. Chris, his arms shaking and his lungs burning, struggled to pull himself up. Zora helped Chris haul George up.
“How many of them do you think are left?” Chris said.
Zora scanned the lump of human forms approaching them.
“About three dozen,” she said.
“Do you think we can take them?”
“If we defend together, why not?”
“Then maybe it’s time for us to carry out my escape plan.”
“You have a plan?”
Chris smiled.
“It’s actually very, very simple,” he said. “We’re going to take a lesson from the zombies…”
Z-MINUS: 4 HOURS 37 MINUTES
“It appears the remaining survivors smell victory!” the loudspeaker voice said. “They’re pushing the zombies back! There’s nothing that can stop them now!”
Chris, George and Zora flew at the zombies, caving in skulls and decapitating heads. Their movements were slow and tired, but they pressed on, and the audience cheered with delight.
Exhausted to his bones, Chris dashed forward and swung his bludgeon, striking a zombie across the neck, but the bone did not break. Chris hesitated. It was enough for the zombie to seize at the bludgeon. But it missed by an inch. It knocked the bludgeon aside, out of Chris’s hand. Chris took a step back and the zombies pressed forward.
Arms slow, awkward and heavy, George swung his axe, but the head was too heavy, and it only reached up to a zombie’s knees and struck there, breaking the bone. George stumbled back, tried to lift the axe, but it was too heavy. He dropped it and took a few steps back, his eyes wide with fear.
The zombies pressed forward further and met the blurry, shining blade of Zora’s sword, but even she was struggling, sweat pouring down her face, her nostrils flared. She stepped back and thrust the blade tip into a zombie’s face, through his eye. The zombie fell, twisting the blade around and down. There was a soft Ting! like tapping too crystal glasses together. Zora looked down at the jagged snapped blade and handle and dropped it. She reached for the long daggers at her waist and held one in each hand, but Chris and George were already backing away toward the shack.
“Where are you going?” Zora said. “There are only a few left! Help me!”
But they ran into the shack, the walls blocking any view of those inside. Zora flew out at the zombies, slicing an exposed tendon on a middle-aged zombie’s neck, making it flop to one side, and then another slash, this one low, just below the knee, sending the zombie to the ground. Still alive, it crawled toward her. Zora’s back found the shack wall. She looked at the undead wall of death heading her way, and backed into the shack with the others.
The remaining dozen zombies converged on the shack, pressing themselves against the flimsy walls, but there weren’t enough of them to push it over. A zombie entered through the door, and a blade shot out, severing the zombie’s neck and throat. The body collapsed forward, and the next zombie lurched in.
The crowd got to its feet, watching with baited breath. Who would survive? Who would win?
A zombie fell forward into the shack, and another two zombies entered, and finally all the zombies. There was an awful din of screaming and shouting and hollering, answered by disgruntled groans and grunts. Then there was silence. The audience was silent, eyes fixed upon the small dark doorway.
Then there was movement inside, a dusty dragging sound as a figure crawled out. It was Chris.
Z-MINUS: 4 HOURS 31 MINUTES
The audience got to their feet and roared with excitement, clapping their hands, and each other, on the back.
“We have a stalemate!” the loudspeaker voice said. “What an exciting round that was!”
The gate at the far end of the stadium creaked open and a small group of guards ran out onto the pitch, led by Mohawk. They approached the shack where Chris lay.
“Please check the sacrifice is dead, Captain,” the loudspeaker voice said.
Mohawk hesitated, approaching Chris’s unmoving body with caution. His clothes were drenched in blood and his face was pale and drawn. Mohawk eyed the blood the way he would the black fingers of a leper. He held his hand over Chris’s mouth.
“He’s not breathing,” he said. And then louder: “He’s dead!”
“And the others?” the loudspeaker voice said.
Mohawk poked his head into the shack, putting his hand to his nose to block the stench. He saw a pile of lifeless, unmoving bodies.
“They’re dead too, sir,” he said.
“Very good,” the loudspeaker voice said. “Have the food dispersed amongst the people, Captain. We must celebrate this most fortuitous event.”
The crowd cheered and began to filter out of the stadium. Mohawk waved toward the gates at both sides of the stadium, and men and women in white clothes entered, armed with buckets and spades. They began to clean up.
Mohawk looked down at Chris’s prostrate figure and smiled. He left.
Z-MINUS: 4 HOURS 22 MINUTES
The cleaners were well-equipped with steel toe-capped boots and shin pads made of a thick plastic material. They all had bite marks and scratches on them. The audience had filtered out, and another army of cleaners picked up the refuse left behind by the audience members. The cleaners began by stabbing at each of the zombies’ heads with a spike they each carried. Then they picked up the bodies and carried them away on stretchers, five bodies high.
A cleaner reached up and began to undo the bolts that held the shack walls together. He was about to loosen the third one when a fellow cleaner approached and peered inside.
“Woah! Wait!” the cleaner said. “We’ve got a few bodies left in here.”
“So clean up after I take down the shack.”
“It’ll be messy and harder to clean after you knock the building down. Use your noodle. Just let me poke them and pull them out.”
“Hurry up, then.”
The cleaner edged into the shack, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. He pulled back from the stench of rotting flesh and pus from a dozen open wounds. Flies buzzed around his face. He batted them away with a hand. There was a large heap of bodies on one side of the shack, the ground sodden with spilled blood.
The cleaner clutched his spike close to his chest. The other side of the shack was a smaller pile of bodies, the last survivors, lying in a row as if placed there. The cleaner struggled and began stabbing his spike into each zombie’s head, the sound hard and wet and hollow.
And then he stopped, frozen like a statue. His breaths came hard and deep from the back of his throat, and the flies that buzzed around the corpses seemed louder than heavy freight planes.
Out the corner of his eye, standing in the corner, a tall dark shadow watched him. He turned to face it. The shadow moved past, a blur. The cleaner grunted and fell to his knees, onto the ground face first.
The cleaner on the roof hopped down onto the ground and edged toward the doorway.
“Hey,” he said. “Are you all right in there?”
There was no answer.
“Shall I come give you a hand?”
Again no reply.
The cleaner grumbled to himself and approached the door. Looking in, there was pitch darkness.
“Hey!” he said again. “If you fainted, I’m not dragging you out!”
He stepped toward the door, but stopped before he entered, sensing movement. He heard footsteps, and then four figures lurched out of the darkness. The cleaner raised his arms and a muffled cry escaped his lips. He waited for the bites to come, but they never did. He hesitantly opened his eyes and saw four figures running across the pitch. His fear was replaced by relief, and then angst.
It was the final four zompit competitors. They were getting away.
Z-MINUS: 4 HOURS 11 MINUTES
“Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘Playing dead,’ doesn’t it?” George said with a chuckle. “And did you see that guy’s face? Priceless.”
George puffed and panted. His was not a body built for speed. Zora led the charge, guiding them toward a section of fence close to their shack. Her legs were a blur and she was lightning fast. The cleaners working the pitch looked up and watched open-mouthed as the survivors bolted across the field.
Zora got to the fence first, hooked her foot into a link, and pushed herself up. She grabbed the top and threw her weight over the fence and down onto the other side. It was a graceful movement, looking like something choreographed in a movie.
Chris ran into the fence and began to climb. He got to the top, leaned down, and grabbed Maisie by the arm. He lifted her up to the top of the fence, and then lowered her gently down onto the other side, into Zora’s waiting arms.
“Go!” Chris said.
“One word of warning,” Zora said. “Keep up, or get left behind.”
Zora took Maisie’s hand and started running.
“She’s pretty intense, isn’t she?” Chris said.
Chris leaned down to take George’s hand.
“Give me your hand!” he said.
“Sod that. I’ll pull myself up, thank you very much, not pull you down.”
Chris looked up to see the cleaners running off in different directions, no doubt to inform somebody. Some of the braver ones ran straight for them.
“They’re going to recapture you if you don’t hurry up,” Chris said. “Your body’s too big and your arms are too short. Take my hand!”
George looked back. The cleaners were almost on him, brandishing their bloodied spikes. George looked up at Chris, bit his tongue, and grabbed Chris’s outstretched arm. He kept hold of the fence with his other arm, and together they pulled him up. With Chris lifting one arm, and his feet kicking from below, George gradually made it to the top of the fence.
“Hurry up and climb over, old man,” Chris said.
“I’ll old man you!”
George pulled himself over and descended down onto the other side, landing heavily and ungracefully. Chris climbed halfway down the other side and then leapt to the ground. The cleaners threw their spikes at Chris and George, most getting blocked by the fence. The ones that got through bounced off the wall to either side of them.
Chris and George ran in the direction Zora had gone. The plastic yellow audience chairs on one side rose up above them like a giant frozen wave. The path they were running down stretched off into the distance. Chris and George came to a stop.
“That’s nice,” George said to Chris. “We help Zora escape and then she ditches us.”
“She did warn us we would have to keep up.”
“I thought it was just an expression,” George said.
“Seriously?”
“Why not? There are worse expressions.”
“Like what?”
“Like ‘pie in the sky’. What does that even mean?”
“Down here!” a small voice echoed.
Maisie stood at the end of a long tunnel that was burrowed under the audience seats.
“She went this way!” Maisie said.
They ran down the tunnel, their footsteps echoing off the walls. It opened out into a large room with large Cambridge United posters on the walls. There was a front counter with a cash register on one side and dining tables and chairs on the other. There was a door behind the counter and an opening to another corridor on the back wall.
“Now which way?” Chris said to Maisie.
She shrugged.
“I don’t know,” she said. “She was right here.”
“We’ll have to just take a guess,” Chris said, eyeing the two exits.
“Hold it right there!” a deep voice said.
Chris and the others turned to find Mohawk march into the room followed by three clones. They entered via the door from behind the counter. Mohawk had a gun in his hand. The others wielded swords. Chris and George put their hands up.
“This is great,” George said, rolling his eyes.
“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a couple of pretenders, boys,” Mohawk said. “Scorpio isn’t going to be too happy with this.”
He gestured with the gun at Chris, George and Maisie.
“Get down on your knees,” he said.
“Aren’t you at least going to buy me a drink first?” Chris said.
One of the clones stifled a grin.
“You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face with my barrel in your mouth,” Mohawk said.
The clone’s shoulders shook and he bit his lip.
“Please,” Chris said. “Leave my daughter out of this. She’s a child. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Get down on the floor, face down,” Mohawk said. “Or she’ll be the first one to get a bullet.”
They got down. Chris could smell the dirt and grime on the floor.
“This is a mistake,” Chris said.
“Too right it is,” Mohawk said with a sneer. “You should have stayed dead.”
“I’m starting to regret that too.”
“Believe me,” Mohawk said, tucking his gun away and taking out a vicious-looking curved dagger from his belt. “You don’t regret it yet… But you will.”
He kneeled down and lifted up Chris’s head so his neck was forced back to look up at the roof. Mohawk pressed the edge of his knife under Chris’s throat.
“Look away, Maisie,” Chris said, his voice raspy with the knife at his neck. “Don’t look at me.”
Mohawk tensed tightened his grip on his blade. Just then, there was a hiss as a figure dropped from the ceiling. Mohawk looked up, blinked, and in the next instant his smile was cut in half with a blade jammed deep in his mouth and out the back of his throat.
Zora flicked her arm out, and her knife caught the front of a clone’s throat. The second man stepped back and hesitated, in shock. Zora lashed out, severing the man’s tricep before spinning and burying her blade in his chest. The third man, eyes wide, turned and ran.
Mohawk clutched at the dagger still jutting from his throat and collapsed forward onto the ground. The second man slumped to his knees and fell forward, blood spilling from his severed throat like an overfilled goblet. Chris pushed Mohawk’s body off and looked up.
“You took your time,” he said, dusting himself off. “What happened to ‘Keep up with me or you get left behind’?”
“It’s just an expression,” Zora said, shrugging her shoulders.
George gave Chris a big grin.
Z-MINUS: 4 HOURS 0 MINUTES
They em
erged blinking into the light. Zora wore a dirty dishcloth over her head, disguising her face. At the foot of the steps was what looked like a market town from the eighteenth century. There were two long tables with heaps of food, not to be sold, but distributed. There was a short queue at each. People built houses made of scrap wood and bales of hay, while others shoed horses at a roadside smithy. Meanwhile just down the road mechanics tuned up a series of motorbikes with hand tools.
“Say what you like about Scorpio,” Zora said, descending the stairs, “but you can’t fault her system.”
“What do you think they’re doing?” Chris said.
“Surviving, looks like,” George said.
Zora approached a table where washerwomen were folding up freshly dried sheets and clothes.
“Hi there,” Zora said.
A large woman wearing a baggy white blouse glanced up.
“New here?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Which division did they put you in?”
“Guards.”
The washerwoman bent down beneath the table, picked up a pile of clothes and put them on the table. She gestured to a series of small huts behind her.
“Get changed in the changing room, please,” she said. “Next.”
Chris stepped forward.
“Builder,” he said.
The washerwoman bent down and gave him his uniform. She looked down at Maisie.
“Age?” the washerwoman said.
“Eight,” Chris said.
“And a half,” Maisie said.
The washerwoman gave Maisie her clothes. Finally, George stepped up, and the washerwoman had to crane her neck up, not because he was tall, but because he stood so close to the table and peered down at her. The washerwoman cleared her throat.
“Division?” she said.
“Mating.”
The washerwoman swallowed. She bent down, aware of him standing over her, and handed him his uniform.
“I suppose I’ll, uh, see you later,” she said, touching up her hair with her hand.