by Craig Jones
‘I’m doing this, Danny. Just take that one as read, okay?’
‘You still think you’re quicker than me?’
‘No. I think I’m quieter, and there’s less chance of the zombies seeing me because I haven’t got a huge oversized moon head that reflects my ego.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah. Now let’s do this before I bottle out of the whole thing.’
* * *
Danny threw a couple of microwave defrosted pork steaks over the heads of the zombies at the gate. They followed the trend we had seen yesterday and turned in pursuit of the raw meat. I was in place on top of the wall at the back of the house, three sharpened poles and one grass rake already dropped over the other side. My eyes were drawn across the fields, towards the farmhouse.
If I could still see dozens of those creatures patrolling around up there, it might make me feel more confident that they weren’t strolling around the streets of Usk, waiting for us to stumble into the middle of them, but the trees blocked my view.
Dan sprinted down the garden and climbed the ladder, pulling it to the top of the wall and dropping it into place for me to descend to the other side. I looked up at Nick, who was thoroughly scanning as far as he could see beyond the barrier. He signalled that all was okay with a double thumbs-up. Cheesy, yes, but very clear as to its meaning. With him up there and Danny monitoring the corners of the wall, if anything came along, I would know about it.
‘Here we go, then,’ I said, and began to climb down.
Upon reaching the bottom of the ladder, I scanned left and right.
Nothing.
I picked up the four weapons and worked my way down towards the river. I expected the ground to be more treacherous, but the grass, while uneven, was not littered with branches or anything that could trip me up. I reached the trees and turned around. I knew if there was a problem that both Nick and Dan would have started shouting, but I only realised I had been holding my breath after I saw them both showing me two upturned thumbs.
The trees weren’t particularly dense and picking my way through was not a problem. As I came out the other side, I noticed what an amazing day it was. The sky was bright blue with a few cotton clouds floating by. I heard the babble of the river as it wound its way over the large stones that made crossing at this point easier. Even without the stones, the river looked no more than eight inches deep at most.
I stared across the water to the bank on the other side that led to the tennis courts. I could just make out the tops of the floodlights but most importantly, even as I looked up and down the river as far as I could see, there was not a single member of the undead to be seen.
The trees blocked out the noise the zombies made and it struck me for the first time that, apart from the river, the world around me was silent. No cars. No dogs barking. No children’s voices as they played. Looking up at the sky again, it hit me that there wasn’t a single vapour trail left behind by an aeroplane. The country was more isolated than we could have possibly imagined.
I laid the weapons against a large tree trunk about one and a half metres from the water and started to head back. I slowly made my way through the trees until I once again had a proper view of Danny and Nick. Both still held out their thumbs up and, on reaching the open ground, I sprinted to the foot of the ladder.
Danny was holding the top of it steady as I climbed.
‘Any problems? Did you see any of them out there?’
‘Not a one,’ I replied, reaching the top and helping my brother pull the ladder up after me. We both turned and waved to Nick, who drew himself back inside and pulled the window shut.
‘And you put the weapons against the big log?’
‘Yeah. All done.’
All was well. All was going as planned. But I couldn’t help but think we were making a massive judgmental error by not sitting still and seeing this through.
11
We stood in the kitchen while I took some water on board. I would need to change my t-shirt and I could already smell my own body odour. Jenny had taken the children up to Danny’s room, and my anxiety levels were starting to grow.
‘I want us to double-check everything’s okay out front,’ I said. ‘Feeding those things might have gotten them all riled up.’
Dan and Nick reluctantly agreed. I could tell they were just running through the motions to appease me, but they also knew that if I pulled out at this stage then the whole rescue mission was out the window. Danny reached the front door first, and as he pulled it open he turned his head towards us.
‘What if we..?’ ‘Danny! Look out!’
Nick shoved me aside and I fell to the carpet. He wrapped his right arm around Danny’s shoulders and bundled him out of the way, both of them bouncing off the banister at the bottom of the stairs as a decomposing hand, its nails long and sharp, swiped the air where Dan’s knees had been a second before.
‘What the..?’
Nick stepped forward and kicked out at the monstrosity that was lying outside our front door. It had no legs and only one arm. In its attempt to snare my brother it had unbalanced itself and now rocked on its back like an overturned turtle struggling in the sun. It was all but naked. Its shirt was ripped open right across its chest, exposing the bloody mess that had once been its shoulder joint. One leg had been torn off at the hip, the other at the knee, and it had left a snail’s trail of blood as it had dragged itself across the gravel driveway and towards our front door.
Apart from a smear of blood across one cheek, its face and head were unharmed and I realised that it was a woman. Her hair was blonde, short, and before all this happened probably stylish and fashionable. From my position on the floor I was looking right into her eyes as Nick brought his heel down on the side of her head over and over again until a black ooze ran from her nose. Her hand lifted once more; Nick lifted his knee up as high as he could, and when he drove it down into her head I heard a sickening crack as her skull split. The hand slumped to the ground.
‘Is it dead?’ I whispered.
Nick stamped again.
‘Now it is,’ he said and stepped over it onto the drive.
He bent over, resting his hands on his knees as he sucked in air until his lungs were full. Danny followed him out and put an arm across his shoulders.
‘That was amazing, dude. Thank you.’
Nick waved a hand dismissively.
‘Guys?’ I called.
They both turned their eyes towards me.
‘Could you maybe drag this thing away from my face?’
Nick pulled himself together and helped Danny to throw the half-zombie over the wall. The undead briefly intensified their groans and made a few investigative shuffles towards the corpse, but then lost interest. We followed the gory mess our vicious visitor had left to the gate, and it became clear that its injuries had allowed it to slip through the narrow gap. Logic told us that when the other zombies had left the gate in search of the food, this damaged creature had finally found its way to the front, and into our safety zone.
None of us voiced our concern, our fear, that another one might find its way in.
12
While Danny and I dressed into our motorbike leathers, Nick rolled our bikes out onto the driveway, placing the customised chain next to Danny’s bike and the now-shortened baseball bat next to mine. He started the Range Rover and made sure it was warmed up. He also placed the axe in the passenger seat, the handle closest to where Jenny would be sitting so she could quickly pick it up and use it if something went wrong. He set the ladder on the corner of the wall, just as Danny had done when we had tested the zombies’ reaction to the raw chickens.
The sword, shovel and the longer kitchen knives were left on the gravel, far enough back so that they wouldn’t get in the way of any of the vehicles, but close enough if Nick needed to grab one. By the time Dan and I came out of the front door, everything was in place, even the bag half full of uncooked chicken and steaks at the bottom of the ladder.
We both collected our helmets, with our gloves stuffed up inside, from the garage and walked across to our bikes in that funny ‘I may have soiled myself’ way that Kevlar-plated leather forced you into. I took Danny’s lid while he hopped onto his red Yamaha R6, adjusted the old Adidas rucksack full of meat on his back, and started the electric ignition. Danny took both helmets and I mounted my bike, the same model as his but blue, and we jammed our makeshift weapons down the front of our leather jackets, zipping them up as far as we could. Jenny came over and tugged them up snugly.
None of us made eye contact, and no one was speaking. It was like we were NASA astronauts preparing for liftoff. Danny caught my attention and gave me a wink. He passed my helmet to me. As I got onto my bike and started the engine, Dan dismounted and took up his position at the front of the Range Rover, fishing the keys to the two padlocks out of his trouser pocket. Jenny got into the driver’s seat of the Range Rover and gunned the engine.
She had clearly noticed the dried, black blood outside the front door and on the drive, but I could only guess that she decided now was not the time to ask questions. She knew I was looking for an excuse not to go through with this, and initiating debate might just have given me the opportunity to talk myself back into the safety of the house.
Nick moved to the foot of the ladder, hooking the bag of meat through his left hand.
It had been decided that I would give the word to get things started. A simple, ‘Go,’ and Nick would climb the wall and attract the attention of the zombies. I sat on my bike, feeling the vibrations from the throbbing engine in the pit of my stomach. I gave a brief thought to Mum and Dad and the sometimes irritating rule of always having a full tank of fuel that they had endorsed to stringently. Well, it was going to save somebody’s life now.
It was then that I realised I had been paying no heed to the zombies at the gate.
Had we become conditioned to the continual groaning?
They continued to rock, forward and back, making that same noise, and as time had passed, even just a couple of days, they looked worse, as if they were finally giving in to being dead. I locked eyes with one and saw nothing of its humanity left. It was just a shell. I gave the neck strap of my helmet one final tug to make sure it was on tightly enough, pulled on my gloves, turned to Nick, and from under my raised visor gave the keyword.
‘Go.’
13
The zombies had reacted to Nick dropping the meat over the wall just as they had the first time Danny had done it; a terrifying version of Pavlov’s dogs.
The plan could not have been running more smoothly. Danny had quickly unlocked the gates and Jenny had reversed the Range Rover. Dan had pulled the gate open just enough for me to squeeze my bike through and had then got back onto his own machine and followed me out. As we accelerated along the first straightaway from the house, I hoped Jenny and Nick had experienced the same lack of problem in getting the gate shut.
The roads were deserted. They were also dry and our tyres gripped the asphalt perfectly. We swung around the two tight bends that opened up next to the garden centre on the right and the row of cottages to the left. This was my first point of concern. Where there were homes, there could be people. Where there were people…
Nothing. We rode side by side, straddling the white line as we approached our emergency exit; the left turn that headed up towards the prison. We didn’t need to take it. We had every opportunity to go through with this. As we approached town, Danny slowed his bike, pointing for us to divert into the petrol station just before the bridge that would take us into Usk. He pulled in first and I tucked in behind him. When we came to a complete halt, I hopped off my bike and adjusted the straps on his rucksack, making sure they were loose enough for Danny to drop the bag in a split second.
‘You ready, bro?’
‘We’ve come this far,’ I said. ‘Let’s get this done.’
I got back on my bike and we rode out of the petrol station, turned right onto the old, stone bridge and up onto its apex, where we paused once again. From here we could see the rest of the way across the river to the group of zombies outside the hairdressers’. There were twenty at most, probably not even that many, and they were all to the right of the road, near the front door of the shop. They had left a clear path along Bridge Street, and the rest of the route Danny was going to follow looked entirely clear from our vantage point.
The noise of our bikes drew their attention but not enough for them to move towards us. Maybe our leathers restricted the scent of food we gave off. Just like the ones outside of our gate, they stood there and rocked. I was sure that they were making the same sound, too, but with my helmet on and the bike’s engine purring below me, I couldn’t hear anything. Danny flicked his visor up and I edged my bike forward a touch, so we were once again side by side.
‘There’s nothing in the way,’ my brother said. ‘As soon as we get the signal from them, I’m gone.’
‘Well, there it is. Good luck.’
‘You too.’
And, in a blast of sound, he was gone.
A towel was being waved from the very top window of the hairdressers’ building. That was our signal; the girls were in place and ready to exit the front doors. All Danny had to do now was draw the zombies away and loop back around. He flew past the creatures, thumb on his horn as he went, trying everything he could to gain their attention. And it worked. They all turned their heads and tracked his movement up towards the archway that would take him past the Spar and into the big, open car park.
He slowed and swung the bike so he was faced under the arch. I watched with a stomach full of acid as he wrestled with the rucksack, finally freeing it from his back before depositing the mass of raw meat all over the tarmac. And, just like they had done back at the house, the zombies reacted and began their shuffle to the food. I realised with revulsion that there were children in amongst them. A girl, aged about ten with long blonde hair streaked with dirt and blood, half her jaw chewed off, stumbled along with the rest of them. And a boy, no older than seven, dressed in a blue and grey tracksuit, dragging himself along behind because he was missing a leg, leaving a trail of gunk behind him like some nightmare slug.
Danny waited, knowing he was as much part of the bait as the meat itself. He gunned the throttle on his bike, making as much noise as possible to keep their attention fixed on him as I slowly let my bike creep down the town side of the bridge.
I could see inside the hairdressers’. The faces of two girls, one with short dark hair, and the other with longer blonde hair, were now pressed against the glass of the front door, and behind them was a man I vaguely recognised, giving me a wave with one hand and shaking a bunch of keys at me with the other. Yes, they were definitely ready to go.
‘No! No! Get back!’
Danny. My attention was drawn back to the main street. To the zombies, still about two hundred yards from my brother. To the now open door of one of the cottages on the left. To the tall woman with short, black hair sprinting towards Danny. Sprinting into the mass of zombies. Realising her mistake. Trying to turn. Slipping, falling into two of the undead. Screaming as, on her hands and knees, she tried to crawl away from them. Elbows already bloody.
A zombie, a bald, fat man with its shirt torn open, falling to its own knees and sinking its uncannily white teeth through her jeans into her calf muscle. A spurt of blood arcing up into the air and spraying the nearest creatures.
Those that the blood hit stopped and started licking the liquid off themselves. Her head being thrown back as she yelled for help. A second zombie falling onto her, ripping at the back of her neck with teeth and fingernails, tearing the flesh, its face becoming a mass of blood and gore. And then her eyes met mine. One of her hands reached out for me. She mouthed the words help me.
The child zombie, the boy who had been crawling behind the rest of them, had finally caught up. Her throat was at the perfect height and he sunk his teeth into her wind pipe, snapping his he
ad backwards, his mouth full of skin and gristle. And then she was engulfed by even more creatures. They squirmed over her wriggling body like a fisherman’s box full of maggots. For being so unsteady on their feet, they fed with a frenzy that had frozen both me and Danny to the spot.
Was it because we both knew who she was?
That she was Missus Pound, who we saw walking her dog, a friendly golden Labrador, past our house on a regular basis? That she always had time to stop and say hello? That one of the zombies now emerged from the scrum, using others of its kind as crutches as it pushed itself to its feet, with her arm, torn off from the elbow, held like a chicken leg? That her blood was running down its chin and it was taking the time to push the droplets back inside what was left of its lips with fingers that were already caked in dried flesh?
Yes, it was because of all of those things.
But what got us moving again was when another of the zombies pushed and pulled its way to its feet, its fingers still wrapped around her hair, with the rest of her head swinging, a section of her spine visible and the last of her blood dripping onto the road. The creature raised its prize up to eye level, confused as to what was weighing its arm down, and simply discarded Missus Pound’s head into the gutter and began walking again toward the fresh meat at Danny’s feet. Slowly, most of the others followed suit, leaving three or four of their hellish cohorts licking her blood off the white line in the middle of the road.
The roar of Danny’s bike brought my focus back to the task in hand. He popped the front wheel up the curb and was gone through the archway. I advanced across the bridge and turned right, to the front door of the shop, and signalled wait with a raised left palm. I could hear Danny’s bike in the near distance, still too far away for my liking. I looked back inside the shop and by pointing made it very clear that the dark-haired girl was to get on the back of my bike, and the blonde was to get on the back of Danny’s.