by Perrin Briar
“Right under the ribs while she was busy with Drew.”
“And she wouldn’t have gotten far?”
“No, sir. She was bleeding like a slaughtered pig.”
“Then why didn’t you finish her off then and there?”
The man looked away, embarrassed.
“She had a murderous look in her eye,” he said. “Better to come and tell you than to stay and fight, in case I lost. I did the right thing, didn’t I, boss?”
Spiky swallowed the bile at the back of his throat with obvious effort. He smiled.
“Yes, you did the right thing,” he said, slapping the man on the back. “Go to Earl. He’ll fix you up.”
The injured man joined a thin man armed with a dented First Aid kit. Spiky leaned in close to Paul.
“Tell Earl to cut his jugular and toss him in the bushes,” he said. “It ought to be enough of a draw for the zombies around here. Hopefully he hasn’t lost too much blood already.”
“All right.”
The ‘All right’ sounded relaxed, but it had the tone of someone used to following orders. If he’d said ‘Yes, sir’ it would have had the same ring to it, and that was when Chris realised they were well-trained men, despite their casual appearance.
Chris looked over at Maisie. Kevin took a rag out of his pocket and dabbed the corners of her mouth. Chris wondered how he was going to rescue her from these people. He needed to come up with something, and fast. The men returned from the woodland. Baldy scratched his arse.
“Damn nettles! I took them for doc leaves!” he said. “It’s going to be rough going on the way back.”
“You’re lucky,” a toothless man said. “I squatted and it turned out there was a grass snack coiled up beneath me. Bit my cock, it did. Must be some kind of mating ritual.”
“Did you like it? I bet you did, you dirty old bastard!”
Baldy chuckled and slapped him hard on the back. His laughter died and turned into a sneer when he looked at Chris. He pulled the collar up on his leather coat to hide his face.
“Saddle up!” Spiky said.
Baldy climbed onto the front of the bike. The engine roared and they drove away. Chris noticed there was a single motorbike left by the side of the road.
Z-MINUS: 4 HOURS 17 MINUTES
Phillips sat on the bottom step of a short set of stairs that led from the promenade to the seafront. Vasquez approached him.
“Well?” she said. “What do we do now?”
“They were right here and they slipped through our fingers. They were coming to us! It could have been over, all of it.”
“You’re not depressed again?” Vasquez said, her tone sharp. “This is just a setback. You’ll find a way. You always do.”
“Not this time. They’re gone.”
Phillips hung his head.
“All gone,” he said.
“Sir, permission to act freely.”
“Yes. What is it?”
Vasquez’s hand slapped his cheek hard, turning his head to one side. Phillips put his hand to his face, feeling a tingling sensation.
“What was that for?” he said.
“You can’t give up now, not when we need you.”
“You struck a superior officer.”
“I’m sorry, sir. But it needed to be done.”
“You don’t sound too contrite.”
“It was necessary.”
“You’ll have to face the repercussions of your actions.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Except you know there will be no repercussions.”
“No, sir.”
“For where would I find a pilot with similarly exceptional skills?”
“You’ve got me there, sir.”
Phillips got to his feet and let out a deep breath of air.
“You’re right,” he said. “I need to remain calm. Thank you for striking me – but don’t make a habit of it. We need to be open minded about this. There must be a way to figure this problem out. ”
“We could jump in the helicopter.”
“And do what? Pick a direction at random and hope to find them? They could have gone anywhere!”
“Got to be worth a look.”
“In the fog?”
A high-pitched note sounded from somewhere down the beach.
“What’s that?” Vasquez said.
“I don’t know. Sounds like a whistle.”
Phillips walked down the beach.
“Wait,” Vasquez said. “It might be one of them. It might be a trap.”
“Why? They’re miles away by now. They wouldn’t come back here.”
“Unless they left someone behind to deal with us.”
“Now who’s being ridiculous?”
But Phillips unfastened the holster of his weapon and they ran along the beach, the waves beating on the shore like an angry god. The sand sucked at their boots, making the going tough. And then they realised the sound wasn’t coming from the beach, but behind them, from one of the brightly coloured beach huts. The whistle blew again, weaker this time.
Phillips pulled himself up onto the promenade. He froze at what he saw. A long trail of blood wound its way down the path and into a beach hut painted with the colours of the Union Jack.
The door floated open on squeaking hinges, waving toward the ocean as if inviting it in. Phillips and Vasquez shared a look. He nodded to her, and she squeezed between two pavilions, working her way behind it.
The waves beat on the shore, frothy white like the cuffs of a shirt. Phillips pushed the flapping door open with his pistol and aimed the gun at the interior. It was simple with little decoration, only just enough room for someone to sit with a heater or fan. On the floor a fully grown woman, drenched in blood, lay in the foetal position. The whistle had fallen from her dry lips. Vasquez emerged from behind the hut. She shook her head, and then looked inside the hut.
“Jesus,” Vasquez said. “Who is she?”
“Does she look in the right frame of mind to be telling us her background?”
“I’m just thinking out loud.”
“Well, keep it in-loud.”
“She dragged herself a long way, by the look of it.”
Vasquez gestured to the long bloody trail that ran all the way to the fringes of the foggy clearing. There were a couple of dark lumps down there too.
“Go check it out,” Phillips said. “See how she got these wounds. I’ll try to find out who she was.”
Vasquez took off at a jog down the promenade. Phillips knelt down and pressed his hands to the woman’s left pocket. It was empty. He turned her over to check the other one-
The woman gasped. Phillips jolted back like he’d been stung. The woman gasped again, her hands clutching her stomach, her face clenched in pain. Her lips moved, saying something, but Phillips couldn’t hear her.
“Save your strength,” he said. “I’ll go get someone to help you.”
The woman shook her head, eyes full of fear.
“Can I look at the wound?” Phillips said.
The woman again shook her head. She spoke, but too quiet. Phillips leaned in closer, his ear millimetres from the woman’s lips.
“You must get there…” she said in a breathy gasp. “Save them… Save… them… You must… The cure… They have the cure…”
“Who has the cure?” Phillips said, his heart thumping in his chest. “Can you tell me who they are?”
The woman choked on something, her lungs filling with liquid.
“Tell me where they’re going,” Phillips said. “Tell me where the bikers are going.”
The woman made choking, mouthing motions, but couldn’t get the words out.
“Cam… Cam…” she said.
“Camberley?”
The woman shook her head.
“Cambridge?” Phillips said.
A painful smile broke over her pained expression and she nodded.
“Hold on,” Phillips said. “We’ll get help. You’re going to be oka
y.”
The woman’s eyes widened and then relaxed, her breath escaping her lips. Her eyes rolled back. Her body relaxed, the smile fastened to her face. The wind beat on the shed walls, making it creak, and the waves brushed against the sand with a gentle caress.
“It’s a mess over there,” Vasquez said. “Looks like multiple assailants. She managed to stand against them. I couldn’t tell if she was alone or not.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Phillips said, closing the woman’s eyes. “She told me where to go next. I know where they’re heading. Again.”
Z-MINUS: 4 HOURS 3 MINUTES
The gentle drone of the engines lulled Chris into a state of near unconsciousness, his eyelids drooping low and obscuring his vision. He gasped as he felt a tight cold hand grip him, and a surging wave of hunger buffet against him. The darkness throbbed and pulsed with a red-tinted light, a glowing orb that consumed him. A low groan yawned from his throat. His breath hitched and his body shook like he was experiencing a panic attack. His fingers formed claws, and his consciousness was leaving him, his ability to think diminishing, running low like a battery without power. His last thought was of Maisie, how he’d failed her. Chris heard a loud roar and started awake.
He was on the back of the bike, his hands curved into painful claws, his teeth bared, mouth dry, and before him was a twelve-inch long blade held in Baldy’s fat paw, eyes round and riveted on him.
“Come on. Turn, you bastard,” he said. “Come on! Give me an excuse.”
Chris forced his hands to unfurl, and dropped his lips down over his teeth.
“I’m okay,” he said, wiping the spit off his lips. “I’m all right.”
Baldy lowered his weapon, disappointment evident.
“Don’t get my hopes up like that,” he said, climbing back onto the bike and rejoining the motorcade. “I’ll have you next time.”
Next time. Through the horror of what he’d just experienced, Chris turned his head to the side and smiled. A glinting light at the end of a dark corridor. He’d just come up with an idea to escape.
The motorbike was going slow, but the engine increased in volume as the sound bounced off the cars packed bumper to bumper on either side.
Facing backwards, Chris could make out the long tail of motorbikes following in their wake, easily maneuvering between the vehicles like a snake hunting in a crevice for a morsel of food. They shuffled past a large coach on their right hand side. Chris’s bike was halfway past when a voice shouted: “Oh my God!”
There was a smash and Chris was showered with flakes of glass. He ducked his head down to keep it from falling in his eyes. He waited a moment and then looked up. Grasping rotten claws of a dozen zombies reached for him through the coach windows. Up ahead one slipped out, falling onto the driver below, and then another, and another.
“For Christ’s sake, keep moving!” Baldy said, edging his motorbike forward and nudging his front wheel behind the motorcycle ahead.
A slew of zombies slipped from the broken coach window like a dripping tap, onto the heads of the Reavers. Chris turned to look over his shoulder at the head of the motorcade.
“Maisie!” Chris shouted, though he couldn’t make her out. “Maisie!”
He squirmed to turn his body around to get a better view. Baldy cursed and pulled on the throttle, sending them rocketing forward, running into the back of the motorbike in front. The force knocked Chris forward. He leaned back, but his weight carried him over the edge and onto the hard tarmac.
The shards of glass pierced his skin, forced in deep by his own body weight. An engine roared ahead and a huge tyre rolled toward him, specks of glass glinting like a studded necklace. Chris flinched, shutting his eyes tight, helpless against the impending rubber doom.
The tyre stopped, stood perfectly still a moment and then fell over to one side. The driver screamed and fell with the bike, a zombie on top of him, tearing at the man’s throat. There was a snapping sound as tendons and cartilage were torn loose. Chris stared in terrified horror. The zombie, its mouth buried deep in the man’s neck, eyed Chris, and then its eyes rolled back in pure ecstasy.
Chris could smell the liquid iron. He turned his head to one side to clear his senses of the stink, feeling repulsed. Then his mouth began to salivate and a deep gripping hunger seized him, betrayed by his own body. He thought of the rolling green hills of the countryside, but the hunger was still there.
Out the corner of his eye he spied Baldy forcing his way past the other bikers, kicking them aside to save his own skin.
“Yaaarrghhh!” a man screamed, his orange Mohawk flashing in the moonlight.
His blade slashed across a zombie’s chest splashing blood in a fine spray. He hacked indiscriminately at the zombies, severing grasping fingers and hands. A knot of zombies regrouped and pressed forward, and Orange Mohawk couldn’t keep up. He was pushed back, back, back, until he came in contact with the door of a pale blue saloon, nowhere else to go, and the zombies buried their teeth deep into his flesh. He screamed and cursed, spittle rolling down his chin as they tore chunks out of him.
There were more screams up ahead and behind, and Chris knew things had taken a turn for the worse, and any second now he would hear the heartbreaking shriek of his darling daughter. And here he was, trapped and restrained on the road. He struggled against his bonds but it was no good.
He could taste the blood in the air, and in his weakness he breathed it in, giving in to it the way an alcoholic succumbs to alcohol after years of abstinence. He let himself be consumed by it, to invade his body and senses. His eyes rolled into slits and he could taste the tang at the back of his throat. It crushed him like a wolf with a deer in its jaws, his entire being focused on a single act. All he wanted to do, all he needed to do, was bite… bite… bite…
He was once again at the centre of the throbbing red ball of energy. It surrounded him, and then became him, and all he could see and smell was blood. He felt calm. He opened his eyes, the grey-white mist obscuring his vision like a frosted window. He looked to the zombies, his brothers and sisters, their groans like a welcoming embrace. But he wasn’t wholly gone; he was aware of a sliver of his consciousness beating against the wall of zombiedom, and he wondered if this was what it was always like to be a zombie.
Then he noticed something.
The zombies’ expressions had changed: from consuming hunger to passive interest and confusion. They were looking at something heading toward them, mouths hanging open, blood and sinew dribbling from their lips. Chris shook his head of his stupor and turned to face what had so encapsulated them. His eyes widened.
It was Maisie.
Chris snapped out of the virus’s grip, though it clung to him stubbornly like dried blood, and his consciousness took over once again. He opened his mouth to yell at Maisie, to tell her to run, but he stayed his tongue, somehow knowing it wasn’t the right thing to say. Maisie seemed to glow, her skin shiny and effervescent. Her dress waved in an invisible wind. She walked up to the zombies, looking at each of them in turn.
One zombie sniffed her, and then stepped back, its eyes fluttering open and closed like it was in the late stages of REM. The others sniffed her, doing the same. Maisie laid a hand on a young male zombie’s face. He blinked, and his white eyes seemed to clear slightly. Chris could almost make out the colour of his irises. He looked at Maisie with something approaching affection. It was a moment, a respite from all the horror.
Then there was a roar and the Reavers burst forward in force, a desperate act of revenge, hacking at the zombies, decapitating them with a single blow. They tore through the undead without remorse or hesitation. The young male zombie still had a smile on his face as his neck was cut and his head flew through the air. He was the last of the zombies to fall. The attacking Reavers wiped the sweat from their faces with the back of their hands.
“Good work, lads,” Spiky said, scooping up Maisie in one arm. “Let’s finish up here.”
The Reavers turned on Or
ange Mohawk, who lay on the ground covered in blood.
“No!” he said. “Don’t!”
The Reavers, led by Baldy, brought their weapons down, hacking him to pieces, first at his head, then his neck, until it hung loose on a thread of skin. Then they moved to another Reaver who had started crawling away, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Baldy said.
“Please, don’t,” the bitten man said. “I have eight hours. Let me enjoy them.”
Baldy led the attack, hacking with a big grin on his face. When they were done, the men were bloody up to their knees. They walked past Chris, cleaning their hands on the front of their T-shirts before stripping off. They climbed on board their bikes and drove away. Baldy crouched down beside Chris.
“Nice to see you made it,” he said, wiping a few spots of blood out of his beard.
“You too. I suppose they don’t like fatty meat.”
Baldy smiled. It had no mirth in it.
“Don’t worry, your turn will come soon,” he said.
He picked Chris up and dumped him onto the back of a bike. Chris watched as the mutilated bodies were left behind and swallowed in billows of dust.
Z-MINUS: 3 HOURS 52 MINUTES
The Reavers, reduced now to just eight members, including Chris and Maisie, made fast progress down the motorways. The land to either side banked, swelled, and then emptied into vast expanses of flat farmland. A thick fog of tiny black flies buzzed over the rotting produce in the fields. The Reavers put handkerchiefs over their mouths and powered through. Chris’s head hung down, counting the dashed white lines in the centre of the road to keep conscious. Paul pulled up beside him.
“Hey!” he said, voice slightly muffled by the cloth.
Chris didn’t respond.
“Hey! How are you doing? Turned yet?”
“Not yet, unfortunately.”
“Why unfortunately?”
“At least after I turn I’ll be able to have more intelligent conversations.”
Paul laughed.
“You might be right,” he said.