by Ian Woodhead
Abel closed his eyes and began to shake.
Noah kneeled up and gently stroked the other one’s ear, “We’d dine like kings.”
The other man growled, and then shoved Noah off the bed. “Consider this to be your one and only warning. If you make one more attempt to flame up my already weakened urges, then I will pull off your head and drink deep from your neck. Have you got that?”
Noah picked himself up off the threadbare carpet.
“Yes.” He mumbled. Noah shook his head to try to clear the nausea. He despised his current condition. Human food kept them alive; it also kept them as weak as a kitten. Noah needed to taste warm flesh again.
“I’m sorry. Look, I know how hard it is to keep focussed but we have to stick to the plan.” Abel got off the bad and crouched beside him. “Keep your head straight. Luke has not let us down yet, has he? You know his plan makes sense. This is the largest nest of humans in the area. We can milk this place for months.”
He stood up, Noah watched him pad over to the window.
“We both drank deep just three days ago.” Abel turned and gazed at him. “I bet you can’t remember the last time we dined on human, because I can’t.”
Noah’s eyes dropped to the floor, he shrugged. His passion was beginning to recede. Abel’s words helped, but he suspected the main reason why Noah’s blood stopped singing was that he could not hear Aliza’s heartbeat. That was such a pretty name and such a pretty face. Before the event, before he changed his name, a classy bird like her would have been right at the top of his ‘get inside their knickers’ list. Back in those days, he went by the rather boring name of Patrick and lived in student digs along with three other no-hoper nerds, each one furiously studying for their university dissertations.
He was the only one who wasn’t in a relationship. At the time, he wanted to believe that this had been his choice. Girlfriends, or in Edward’s case, boyfriends, only caused unnecessary distractions. He only had a few months left before exams and if he didn’t earn the maximum number of points, well he may as well kiss his chosen career as a games programmer goodbye.
Noah sat back on the bed, wondering what would have become of him if the event had not taken place. Would he have attained his dream of joining a programming team? He believed so. In some alternate reality, in a dimension where this outbreak hadn’t occurred, another Patrick could be sat in front of a PC, head deep in thousands of lines of code for the next Halo sequel.
“Still learning, still making lists and still without a girlfriend.”
“What did you say?”
Noah joined his companion by the window. “Nothing, I got lost in my past for a moment.”
Abel turned to face him “Do you miss it? The past, I mean. Do you wish the event had never happened?”
Noah shrugged, “I’m not sure.” He looked back with longing, remembering the first few weeks after the outbreak. He and seven others like him rampaged through the human survivors, slaughtering hundreds of the screaming meat bags.
The man beside him grinned, “Yeah, those early days were a fucking riot.”
Noah laughed, “You picked that thought up? You’re getting better at reading what’s going on inside the old noggin.”
“I’m standing next to you, though, also, it was such a strong memory.”
Noah nodded, “Yeah, I doubt those good times will ever be repeated now.”
A couple of hundred feet below them a wretched assortment of corpses stumbled aimlessly along the deserted street. As the things passed the tower block, each one paused before continuing along their path.
“I fucking hate those bastard things,” muttered Noah.
Because of them, his group had been halved in number. Small numbers of the shambling monstrosities had never been a problem. Noah and his companions had rampaged through those fuckers as well. Noah’s new and improved genus was immune to their bites. Their bodies regenerated at an incredible rate and although the dead were far stronger than a normal human, they were stronger than the dead.
They all nearly perished because of their arrogance. A few weeks after the event, the number of humans and the dead were getting fewer in number as each day passed. They understood the reason for the decline in humans; their species was being hunted down and either turned or consumed; the day of the human standing at the top of the food chain was now in the past.
None of the group really commented on the mystery of the declining numbers of dead. They were all too busy having so much fun to care about a bunch of brain-dead bags of maggot food. Noah – they had decided to go for the biblical names about a week after the event - just assumed that they were running out of steam and finding secluded nooks and crannies to lie down and quietly rot away.
Their little group found, to their cost, that the dead had not just vanished. They were approaching the city of Manchester, following six bikers when they literally ran into a huge horde of the shambling monstrosities.
Their numbers had not declined; the things had been massing together. Creating vast swarms of decaying bodies that shuffled through the urban landscape, consuming or infecting any living human unfortunate enough to get in their way.
They had slaughtered dozens of the undead fuckers but for each corpse they tore apart, another ten rushed forward to take its place. Noah, Abel, Luke and three others watched in horror as their other companions were swallowed up by the crowd. After weeks of believing that they were the dominant species, they now saw the true power of the dead. Their vast numbers overturned what advantage their speed, strength, and resilience gave them. The remainder fought their way out of the hungry hordes and bolted for safety.
“They know that there’s food in here,” said Noah.
Abel nodded, “Yeah, but they can’t get in. This is our pantry now.”
The things below slowly moved off. Within moments, they had all passed from sight. Noah turned away from the window and walked over to his own bed next to the far wall. The apartment on the other side was still vacant, so no human movements troubled him as Noah rested.
“Living amongst our food without slaughtering them on sight is going to be difficult, I’m not sure that I’m strong enough to do this, Abel.”
“Luke and the others will be with us in a few days, they know where they are and I’m sure that remaining roamer will be able to stumble upon them on his next trip out.”
When they had separated from their three companions, Noah had felt a bit lost at first. He had been perfectly fine with separating from the fanatic, but leaving Luke and John had been difficult. Noah looked to Luke for guidance, and John was a pleasant companion. They still had Luke's orders to follow, but the signal was getting weaker. The distance between them was widening, not closing. This worried him greatly, but he could not let Abel read this angst from his mind. Abel had assumed the role of leader in Luke's stead, and Noah had no desire to try to usurp that authority. Hopefully, they would all be reunited soon, and this would all be moot.
Noah growled, remembering how good that other roamer tasted. “I hope they kill him and bring us some of his meat.”
Abel laughed, “Luke was right about you, I’m not going to be able to keep you under control for the next day or so am I?”
Noah shook his head, “I don’t think I’ll be able to last another hour.”
“Well, I do have a bit of good news for you. Luke has given us permission to take out one of their group, as long as we do it without anyone seeing it.”
Noah leaped off the bed and ran to the other wall, he placed his ear against the wallpaper; they were both in there, sleeping, her and that kid of hers. “Let’s do her. Fuck it, let’s do them both.”
Abel shook his head, “No, those two have to live.”
“What the fuck for?”
"These idiots have a little research lab in between here and where they keep their supplies. They call it the farm.”
Noah was confused, he did not have a clue what this had to do with anything, nor did
he care.
“Well, Luke plans to do that here.” Abel nodded towards the wall. “We know that one in there is fertile, she’ll make a fine breeder.”
Noah laughed, "Oh fuck, that’s genius! We’re going to be farmers.”
His companion grinned, “Aye, we’re going to start growing our own food. I take it that you approve.”
“No more scrabbling around for scraps, no more hiding from the dead hordes and fresh food on tap. What’s not to like?”
Chapter Five
This predicament was doing his box in. Had the old bastard used cat litter or sand? Calvin Walker dropped his binoculars into his lap and grabbed his bottle of water from the windowsill. It had to be cat litter, just how many supermarkets used to sell bloody sand?
Whatever he’d used—cat litter, it had to be cat litter—the stuff had done a bloody good job in soaking up all that black gunk that had spilled out of the dead thing’s body when the old bastard had sliced it up. Credit where credit’s due, he hadn’t messed about after finding the unwelcome visitor in the delivery bay. The old bastard obviously had plenty of experience in dealing with dead things. Even so, Calvin knocked two points of his overall score for leaving its legs sticking out of the skip.
He dropped the now empty bottle on the floor and leaned over his chair to search through the faded canvas rucksack by his feet. He was positive that he had three more bottles in here.
“For fuck’s sake.” He muttered. Calvin was down to his last two bottles. That would only last him another day, two at the best. He gazed out of the window, squinting at the blazing sun beating down. There was no way he would last for two more days, not in this fucking heat.
Calvin picked up his high-powered hunting rifle, pressed the butt into his shoulder, and looked through the scope. With a bit of luck, he wouldn’t have to wait for two more days. The old bastard was bound to come back out. He would not leave any evidence. Sloppy work was the recipe for losing your life. He sighed and placed the rifle back down. That also included using rifles. Hell, the report would carry for fucking miles. He would attract every predator from here to Birmingham if Calvin took the old bastard out with a well-placed bullet.
He would have to do it the old-fashioned way. Now that he had proved that the place was ready to be plundered, it wouldn’t be too hard to get inside and remove the current occupants.
Calvin grinned at that particular phrase. That was Zara Kent’s favourite saying. Their enigmatic leader had a saying for every occasion. He liked that one the best though. Removing current occupiers was something he was very good at doing. She never questioned his strategy, although he knew the lovely woman was not too happy about him never bringing back live ones. Calvin guessed that if that supermarket were full of pretty young females then he probably would bring them back alive.
Like that was ever going to happen; from what he could make out, there were a maximum of two men inside. Maybe three, it was difficult to get an accurate figure. Hell, it could be just the old bastard, for all he knew; if there were more people inside, surely they would have helped him dispose of the dead thing. The group have enough men already, what they lacked was a good stock of females. Apart from Zara, there were only another five girls of breeding age and they were all spoken for, and not by him. He would not mind having a crack at Zara though.
“Yeah, and so would every other bloke in our little party.”
Fuck it. That was another reason why he wouldn’t bring more men back with him. He needed less competition, not more.
“What if there were more than a few men hiding out in there?”
He sighed. His experience had taught him that the strongest were not necessarily the ones to have managed to stay alive since this fucking tragedy had happened. The one’s he had come up against in the past were just very good at hiding away and not being caught.
Even so, two or three extra blokes would not make much difference to him. They may be skilled in dead thing removal but they would stand little chance against Calvin. Unless, like him, they were ex-service. Somehow, he doubted that. They wouldn’t allow some old guy to put down a dead thing by himself. No, they were just scared little woodland creatures, cowering away in their little sanctuary. Hell, the people were as dead as the corpse in the skip; they just didn’t know it yet.
Calvin picked the binoculars back up and trained them on the delivery yard. “It’ll be cat litter; no way will it be sand.” The old bastard had yet to make a re-appearance. “Calm yourself down, boyo. Don’t bugger this gig up just cos you’re getting a bit thirsty.”
He placed the binoculars back on the windowsill, snagged the straps of his rucksack, and retreated to the back wall, into the shade. He sat down on his rolled up sleeping bag and closed his eyes, thinking of walking down those supermarket aisles and staring at all those shelves full of tinned goodies. “My god, it’ll be like Aladdin’s cave in there.”
That supermarket should hold enough food to keep their group going for months. Two or three people wouldn’t be able to make much of a dent in the supermarket supplies, even if they had been in there since the outbreak.
"There had better be, anyway, after what I’d gone through to set this gig up.”
His normal mode of operation was just to get inside, case the joint, dispose of any lingerers and radio for the distributors. After what she had told him a couple of days ago, Calvin couldn’t afford to take any chances.
He remembered exactly what was going through his mind when Calvin had received the summons to Zara’s inner sanctum. As per usual his thoughts were full of buxom young maidens hiding away in cellars, just waiting for the ruggedly handsome Calvin to take them away from the monsters; that, and finding more chocolate. He didn’t have a clue why the woman had asked to see him, Zara had already given him the coordinates for his next search zone. As Calvin threaded his way through the smoky sewer tunnels, the lithe body of that longhaired brunette replaced his buxom girl. Zara was a babe, a babe who knew how to handle herself. Zara was a beauty with a bite more lethal than any dead thing.
What she had told him when he had finally reached her room had shocked him to the core, it even stopped him from gazing in lust at her tits. The group had lost two roamers in the last couple of days. Zara had told him that the last garbled transmission she received mentioned a tribe of sprinters.
That was all they needed. One sprinter was bad enough, but a tribe of the evil fuckers? He’s noticed more than the usual activity these past few hours, but he’d just assumed that the smattering of plebs that infested the tunnels were just doing their usual bout of pissing about. Calvin never took much notice what the others in the group got up to. He kept himself to himself.
Zara informed him that the group was moving to another area, to somewhere only she knew. He’d nodded. Calvin as well as everyone else were well aware that the sprinters plucked your thoughts out of your head just before they cracked open your skull and scooped out the squidgy grey goo.
He was their one remaining roamer. Calvin leaned back against the peeling wallpaper. Christ, what a depressing thought, he never got on with the other roamers, but that was beside the point; all the plebs now relied on him and him alone. He opened his eyes and suddenly smiled.
“That makes me invaluable, that Zara chick is bound to see me in a different light now.” Yeah, of course she would, especially after he’d delivered this Aladdin’s cave to her. As soon as this crisis was over, he’d pop the question. She couldn’t stay single all her life. Those sprinters wouldn’t stick around for too long, they never did. Hell, they had probably already fucked off to new pastures.
That meant he had better get his arse in gear. There was a certain old bastard just begging to get dead. The sooner he did that, the quicker he’d be able to get inside Zara’s knickers. Calvin hurried over to the window, relieved to see dark clouds drifting across the blue sky. He picked up the binoculars and walked towards the bare wood door leading to the staircase. His other stuff could wait. Calvin would
pick it up later. He had his knife and his binoculars, Calvin didn’t need anything else.
As he picked his way through the smashed up butchers shop, Calvin remembered just how much of a pain in the arse it had been to get that dead thing into the delivery yard. He had to admit, though, his plan was just genius. If the supermarket was a trap, occupied by the sprinters, then he’d soon find out. The fuckers hated dead things more than they loved the taste of human flesh. As it turned out, there were no sprinters—maybe they never were.
Calvin passed the rusted up car wreck, this dead thing had tried to crawl out from under it, only to be stopped when Calvin placed his size ten boot on it’s spine. He applied a little pressure and effectively pinned it to the ground. Upon investigation—not too close—the smell drifting from the thing turned his stomach, he reckoned that he’d found a dead thing dating back to the original outbreak.
After a full year of weathering, it now more resembled a vacuum-sealed lump of beef ribs. Calvin listened to its frantic moaning for a few more seconds before wrapping a length of thick rope around its scrawny neck. Getting it to the outside wall hadn’t been a problem; the dead thing just followed Calvin like an eager puppy. He had had to push it away a couple of times but otherwise the journey had been uneventful. Climbing the wall and trying to lift the heavy fucker up and throwing it into the yard was a different kettle of fish; he had almost pulled its fucking head off, trying to pull the struggling dead thing up.
Calvin got down on his knees and gazed under the car, he could see where it had been lying. It must have been under there for months just waiting for a live one to pass the car. “Ha! You picked the wrong one to mess with, Mr. Dead thing.”
He hurried over to the compound wall, eager to get this over and done with. Calvin had already decided what he’d have for his first meal. He was going to open a tin of corned beef and a tin of processed peas and mix them together in a bowl. He began to drool; God, he had not tasted corned beef since before the outbreak.