Undead at Heart

by Calum Kerr

  Tony walked in silence. At the head of the group Doreen and Bert were keeping up a constant stream of chatter with Dan and his apprentice. Tony had stayed at the back, not wanting to take part. Sam hung back with him, and despite his reticence, Tony was glad.

  He didn’t know if she was aware of his need for isolation, or if she was lost in her own thoughts, but she didn’t say anything and he was glad of that too.

  He kept running over the events of the afternoon, wondering what was going on. Was this really an alien invasion? He couldn’t come up with any other answer. He ran over all the things he had done and realised that he felt ashamed. He’d acted like a coward and that didn’t fit with his image of himself at all. He’d just wanted to run and hide and save himself. He remembered, as though it was months ago, the exchange in the woods, and he wondered where Nicola was and how she and her group were faring. He wondered if they’d seen the same walking machines as he had and what she had done about it. He was sure she would have done more than stand and stare in awe and horror. She would have been like Dave, he was sure. She would have made plans and done her best to keep the people around her safe. She wouldn’t have hung back and let everyone else take care of her.

  For some reason, Tony’s thoughts drifted, for the first time in a long time, to his mother. Could it really have been so long? It seemed so very recent. She had always taught him to be brave and strong. That was her mantra for him during her illness. She never showed weakness and she didn’t want to see it from him either. He knew that if she had seen him today she would have been disappointed in him.

  His father has been weak. Maybe that was where Tony had got it from. Maybe he could blame his genes for his need to run and hide. When his mum had become ill, his father had retreated from both of them, leaving Tony as her partner in her sickness. His father had always liked a drink, but when she started to go downhill he had started drinking more and more. Tony thought of his earlier urge to give up and climb inside a bottle of whisky and felt a hot blush creep up over his face. He was just like his father and he found he hated himself for it.

  He really did wonder if Sam could read minds as he felt her slip her hand into his. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even turn his head, but he gripped her fingers and held on as if her hand was the rope that was keeping him from falling to his death.

  “What I don’t understand,” Tony realised that Dan had slowed down, allowing the group to pass him so he could come and talk, “is why here? What is there here in the middle of nowhere that those things – whatever they are – would find so important? I mean, I could understand them attacking London, or New York or Washington, or whatever, but why here?”

  “Maybe they are attacking all those places. How would we know?” Sam responded before Tony could even process the question.

  Dan nodded. “True.”

  “And, after all, that’s what they do in all the movies, so it has to be the case, doesn’t it?”

  Dan gave a soft laugh and nodded again. Tony couldn’t decide if he was jealous of the look Dan was giving Sam, or of the fact that her brain still seemed to be working well enough to not only think about their situation, but to joke about it too.

  “I wonder-.” Tony was only aware he was going to speak when it happened. “I was driving down the road and, well, I have to admit I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, but I’m sure I saw a sign for an army base.”

  Dan nodded. “Yeah, there’s a few of them round here. An army base, and an airforce one too. And, of course, Salisbury Plain isn’t a million miles away from here. Why? What are you thinking?”

  Tony wasn’t sure what he was thinking. Something was rising from the depths of his brain and he was still trying to make out the shape. “Well, it just occurred to me. If you were going to attack somewhere, why would you start with a city? Okay, if you wanted to just arrive here and kill everyone that would be great. You’ve got a dense population of people and all that. Blow up London and you take out millions of people in one go.” He could start to see where his thought was going and he didn’t like it, but he kept going.

  “But what if you wanted to keep the people alive? Okay, you might lose one or two along the way; collateral damage. But if you wanted to remove resistance and have the people left behind, then you’d start by attaching the military targets.”

  Dan was nodding and the look of respect he gave Tony gave him an almost physical jolt which he could feel run through his spine. “That makes sense. You take the enemy by surprise, take out their weapons and their fighters, and then you just have the ordinary population to deal with. You remove the initial resistance and also the people who might be able to come up with a plan to fight back.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Sam interjected.

  “Good?” asked Tony. “What’s good about them coming in and wiping out anyone who could stop them?”

  “Well, it means they’re worried. They feel that the army, or the airforce, or whatever, actually have the ability to harm them. They’re not coming in as an overwhelming force unconcerned about what we might do to them in return. They’re trying to take out any resistance before it can start because they know it could stop them.”

  “Okay, that makes sense. That’s a good thing.” Dan smiled at her, but Tony no longer cared. His train of thought had taken a different route.

  “Yeah, that’s good. I mean, then we just need to hole up, find somewhere safe, and wait until our guys win. But, if they don’t, there’s something that worries me.”

  “What?”

  “Why do they want all the people? If they’re not here just to kill us all and take over the planet, then what do they need us for? Slaves? Subjects?” He glanced back over at the cows staring over at them. ”Or food?”

  Twenty-two

  After that they walked in silence. There didn’t seem to be anything they could say to Tony’s question. They now seemed to have some idea what was going on, maybe even an answer to why those walkers hadn’t stopped to kill them, but without understanding the bigger purpose there was nothing they could do. In the end Tony’s earlier comment had been right. All they could do was try and find somewhere safe and hope that the good guys won.

  After Tony’s final question, Dan had moved back to the front of the group, a sombre expression on his face. She didn’t know if he would tell the others the conclusions they’d come to, but Sam doubted it.

  She slipped her hand back into Tony’s, unsure just when that had become uncoupled, and they continued to walk in silence.

  The path twisted between the fields, cutting south and then east as it followed the fields.

  The farm appeared on the horizon sooner than Tony had expected. He started to seriously doubt that it was far enough away to have escaped the electro-pulse thing. It was a cluster of buildings around a courtyard. Sheep were cropping grass in a field next to one of the barns and a tractor stood silent in the centre of the yard.

  As they grew closer, Tony saw two dogs lying in the shade by the open door to what seemed to be the farmhouse.

  They passed through the gate at the end of the path, Dan holding it for the party and shutting it with a clang behind Tony and Sam. They all stopped at the edge of the yard and waited, but no-one came out to greet them. The whole place seemed deserted.

  Dan walked back through to position himself at the front. “Hello?” he called.

  There was no response.

  The group walked slowly into the courtyard, listening carefully but hearing nothing but silence. Dan and Daz set off towards the house, the dogs rising to greet them, friendly rather than threatening. The chef, the waitress – Tony thought he really should learn their names – plus Debbie and her family, waited in the middle of the yard, watching them. Tony decided not to just wait to be told what to do, but to take some kind of action which wasn’t just running away.

  With his screwdriver gripped in his hand he approached the nearest barn. The large door was ajar, but he
could see nothing in the inner darkness. He glanced back and saw Sam was following him, a few steps behind. He nodded to her and then stepped in through the open door.

  There was a smell of rotting grass inside which made Tony wrinkle his nose and try to breathe through his mouth. Some shafts of light were shooting through gaps in the roof and walls, and Tony realised the barn was quite old and a little dilapidated. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he made out large shapes in the room. He raised his screwdriver protectively, and nearly yelped when he felt Sam press against his back, but then realised that the huge metal shapes in front of him were another tractor and a combine harvester. Around the sides were smaller metal machines which Tony imaged could be attached to the tractor for cutting grass and ploughing fields.

  He stepped in further, walking round the side of the harvester.

  He jumped when Sam called out, “Hello, anyone here? We’re friendly, don’t worry!”

  There was no response.

  The rounded the back of the harvester and were faced with the rear wall of the barn. Tony could just make out various tools – spades, hoes, axes – hanging from hooks on the wall. He thought about replacing his screwdriver with some a little more wieldy, but decided to wait until they found the farmers and ask them, rather than simply stealing.

  He turned back to Sam, who had followed him round. “Looks like there’s no-one h –”

  He stopped, mid-sentence, as a grating noise came from below the harvester.

  He stepped back, turned and grabbed an axe from the wall, then faced the source of the noise.

  “Hello?” he called, his voice shaking despite his best efforts to control it.

  He crouched down and squinted under the large metal machine. There was a two foot gap under this end and he could see a hatch of some sort, which must lead down to a cellar.

  He held the axe in both hands and waited, as the hatch opened a little further.

  A pale hand emerged and thrust a stick out to keep the hatch open, and then the face of a young man was looking out at him, fear etched on his face.

  “Have they gone?” he asked.

  Twenty-three

  “Has who gone?” Tony asked, crouching down to address the young man face to face. Even as he did so, they heard a shout from outside. Tony jerked and fell back onto his bottom and the man yelped. His face disappeared from the open trap-door and it slammed after him. Sam could hear a bolt being thrown.

  “What?” asked Tony. He looked from the hatch to where the shout had come from and back again. Sam could tell he was torn between the two and felt something akin to pride that he so obviously wanted to do something. She liked Tony, but she had been slightly ashamed of him on a number of occasions already. She had thought at first that he was strong, but then she started to wonder if she’d been mistaken. Something seemed to have changed in him, though. He had a sense of agency that had been missing, and she was pleased to see it.

  She stepped back from where she had been half-crouching behind him.

  “I’ll go,” she said. “You try and get him to come out again. Something’s happened here and I think we need to know what it was.”

  Tony had climbed back to his feet and was wiping the dust from his trousers, and rubbing his bottom where he had fallen onto it. It was a comical vision, watching him massage his own behind, but Sam didn’t smile. Tony nodded and she quickly stepped around him, around the side of the harvester and headed for the door.

  The brightness of the light stung her eyes, forcing her to blink and squint. She looked around and saw that the others, Andy, Sandra, Charlotte, Debbie and Ryan were still standing in the middle of the courtyard. Ryan was still holding onto the handles of little Heidi’s pushchair. Of Dan and Darren there was no sign, but all the others were looking towards the open door of the farmhouse.

  She rushed over to them. “What’s happened?”

  Andy, the chef from the pub, glanced at her only quickly before fixing his eyes back on the doorway. “Dan and Daz went in to see if anyone was in there. Maybe someone was hurt, I think Dan said. There was nothing, and then one of them just shouted.”

  “It wasn’t a shout, it was a scream!” Charlotte was upset, and Sam noticed that Sandra seemed to be holding her back. “Alan went in to see what was going on. I told him not to.”

  “A scream? Was it one of them or someone else? Did they say something or was it just a scream?”

  “It sounded like Dan,” volunteered Sandra. “He cried out, that was all. Then Alan ran in.”

  “Should we go and help?”

  “I don’t think so,” Andy shook his head. “If there’s something in there that the three of them can’t handle, then I don’t think there’s much point the rest of us rushing to our death.”

  Sam looked at him, incredulous. “And would you want them saying that about you if it was you in there? God, are all men cowards?”

  She ran for the house, and Charlotte broke free from Sandra and followed her. As they reached the doorway, however, they saw Alan running towards them. He was looking behind him and nearly ran straight into them. They moved back, half catching him as he stumbled on the threshold. He was quickly followed by Dan and Daz bundling through the door after him.

  Alan threw his hand out and dragged Charlotte by the arm towards where the others were standing. Daz did the same for Sam, leaving Dan behind them, watching the door warily.

  “Is it following?” Daz called back to him.

  “I can’t see it! I don’t think so!”

  “Move back, you saw how it could leap, for God’s sake!” called Alan.

  “I can’t see it!” Dan sounded panicked.

  “You won’t.” The voice came from behind them. It was quiet and unsure, but it carried across the courtyard, causing even Dan to turn.

  Tony had emerged from the barn with the young man – not much more than a boy, really – who had been hiding under the harvester. It was the boy who had spoken.

  “I don’t think they like the light. I’m not sure, but I think as long as we’re out here in the sun, we’re safe.”

  “Who? What? What is in there? What are you talking about?” Sam had caught the panic that was emanating from the three men who had been in the house.

  “It’s my mum.”

  Twenty-four

  Nicola knelt on the tarmac of the road running past the farmhouse with no memory of how she had got there. The pains in her knees told her she had dropped to them, but the last thing she could remember was being in the courtyard with no sign of anyone. No sign of Dave and certainly no sign of Alyssa.

  She remembered screaming but then nothing until finding herself here, panting, in the middle of the road. She got up, needing to search, needing to find her daughter, but her legs were weak and wobbly. She sucked in air, steadying herself, and started to remember running from building to building around the farm, searching, and realised that she had already tried to find her daughter and been unsuccessful. From the position of the sun she had lost an hour or more.

  She stood in the middle of the road, looking up and down its length, trying to decide what to do next.

  She walked slowly back into the courtyard, more of her memories of searching returning to her. There had been no sign of disruption, no sign of a struggle, no explanation for the disappearance of thirty or more people.

  She looked again but could see nothing that she wouldn’t expect in a farmyard: scuff-marks on the cobbles; scatters of grass and miscellaneous animal feed; muddy patches with paw and hoof marks printed in them; various types and amounts of animal dung; nothing unusual.

  She walked back around the buildings, remembering more clearly now her dash as she went in and out of them all. She hadn’t stopped to consider the possibility of meeting another creature like the one in the farm house, but she had been lucky and the rabid pensioner seemed to have been a one of a kind.

  She walked back into the darkness of that kitchen once more, driven by a morbid desire to
look again at the woman. Part of Nicola wanted to make sure that the woman had been real, and that she hadn’t been hallucinating. Another part wanted to make sure that the woman hadn’t moved.

  The body was still there. Her head had been caved in by the weight of the pan Nicola had wielded, and she could see bone and brains showing. She looked closer at the damage which had been there before Nicola had encountered her. Even in the thick of the battle she had noticed that the woman’s left eye seemed to have been gouged out, but amongst the mess of Stan’s blood which had been trailing from her mouth, Nicola had failed to notice the large part of the woman’s own neck which seemed to have been bitten away.

  Not for the first time today, she wondered just what the hell was going on.

  She made to leave the kitchen, remembering again the scene that had greeted her when she first came in: the old lady gorging herself on Stan’s throat, and she realised something that had been tickling at the back of her mind. Stan? Where was Stan?

  She went over to the patch of floor where he had been. It was increasingly dark in the room. The sun was dropping down below the trees. But she could still see the patch of blood that had been left on the floor when the woman had torn his jugular. She could see that so clearly because there was no Stan in the way. He was gone.

  Then, looking closer, she saw the hand-prints he had made in the blood when he had struggled back to his feet. And she could see the footprints which led from the puddle to the door in the far corner of the kitchen. A bloody handprint was smeared on the white woodwork of the frame.

  She started to follow after him. He had only been hurt and needed her help! And then she stopped. She looked down at the copious amounts of blood washed over the floorboards. No, he had been more than hurt. He had been dead.