Undead at Heart

by Calum Kerr

She peered into the light, trying to make out features. “Tony?” she asked, recognising the voice.

  The man-shaped shadow at the front of the group moved round so he was now half-lit, and she saw that it was indeed the man she had left in the forest only a few hours ago. A few hours which felt like a lifetime. In the red light, he seemed to have a patch of black covering the side of his face. She guessed, after a moment, that it might be blood.

  “Yes. It’s me.” He stepped forward and she could see him more clearly. He looked like a different person; older and calmer. Then she realised what was different. It wasn’t the head wound or the dirt on his clothes. He wasn’t staring at his cellphone. She almost laughed at the banality of the thought. “What happened?” he asked again.

  “Do you know?” she asked, unable to find the words to describe the images in her head. “Have you seen?”

  “Zombies? Yeah. Well, we’ve heard.” He pointed to one of the others who still stood in the scarlet glare. She didn’t see which one. “There’s one in the farmhouse, apparently. Why? Did you see one?”

  She snorted. The edge of condescension she remembered from the afternoon was still there in his voice, but she didn’t care anymore. “Seen one? I beat one to a pulp with a frying pan, and there are another – what, thirty?” she asked Dave, who nodded. “Thirty, following us. They were chasing us down the lane. We just stopped here for a moment’s rest.”

  A male voice sounded from the group, “Thirty? Shit?”

  A larger figure stepped forward to where Nicola could see him without squinting. “How far behind you were they?”

  “Not far,” said Dave. “They won’t follow us in here while it’s still light. But, listen, when it gets dark they-“

  The other man cut him off. “We know. They don’t like the light but they love the dark.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked Nicola.

  “We were just discussing this and we think we have a solution. It’s not the best, but we hope it will do.” The man turned and led them towards a barn. The rest of the group followed and they entered into the almost complete blackness of the building. A young voice said, “Hold on.” There was a rattling noise followed by the scratch and fizz of a match being lit. A teenager was standing by a bench at the side of the barn, holding a large lantern. He applied the flame to the wick and the room grew measurably brighter. “This way,” said the boy, and led the way round the side of the tractor and the red side wall of a Combine Harvester.

  Reaching the rear, he gestured under the body of the monstrous contraption. “There,” was all he said.

  Nicola watched as the large man who had spoken to her last in the yard crawled under and opened a trap door in the floor. He took the lantern from the boy and held it down into the hole. For a moment, they were plunged back into darkness, and Nicola felt her skin crawl. She was sure, for that moment, that there was something in the dark with them. Then the man pulled the lantern back out and the feeling went away, but she thought she heard noise in the distance. Could it be the sound of feet on the road? Maybe in the farmyard?

  “It’s okay,” said the man. “There’s room for all of us if we squeeze in. There’s no food or water, but we’ll be okay overnight.”

  He stopped talking and cocked his head. Tony started to ask something, but the man held his hand up to shush him. Nicola realised that the footsteps weren’t just in her imagination. He could now hear them too.

  She stepped back and peered around the side of the harvester. There was still the glow of sunlight in the yard, but it was even darker now. If they were somehow allergic to sunlight, they wouldn’t have to worry about it for much longer. She didn’t wait to be asked, but rushed through the darkness to the door. Dave was at her side. Working in silent accord, they pulled the barn door shut, and slotted a large beam she had seen when the boy had lit the lamp into two hooks on the backs of the doors. She rooted around on the bench from which he had taken the lantern, and found some lengths of rope. She passed them, working by touch, to Dave, and the two of them lashed the beam to the hooks. It wasn’t totally secure, but hopefully it would do.

  She had just finished when she felt a groping hand reach hers in the darkness. She drew breath to scream, but Dave shushed her. “It’s okay. It’s me,” he whispered then pulling on her hand led her back round the side of the barn. The group of people had climbed down into the cellar, and soft light spilled out of the hole into the darkness of the barn.

  Dave helped her down into the trapdoor, hands reaching to help her down, and then he followed after her. He pulled the hatch shut and the boy was at his side, helping him bar it.

  The cellar was about twenty feet to a side, so was large enough for them all, if not exactly palatial.

  She moved down and found a wall to sink down next to, finally aware of her legs shaking from the run, and her body aching generally. She wondered where Alyssa was as the night settled in, and hoped with all her body and spirit that the girl was okay. She was still full of questions, but like the others, she knew that this was not a time to speak.

  She looked around at the group she had joined and was surprised to see a woman carrying a baby. She hadn’t noticed her before. Nor had she seen the older couple, or seen that the young blonde who had attached herself to Tony earlier was still with him.

  They all sat round the edges of the underground room, their backs to the earthen walls, the lantern in the centre of the room, lighting all of their faces. They looked like she felt – shaken and drained. But there was a stoic quality which helped her keep calm, for now. But she knew it was going to be a long night.

  No-one spoke, no-one moved, except for the mother rocking her baby. Every ear was cocked, listening for sound from above. They had done what they could. The headlong race of the afternoon had led them here, and now they finally had to stop and see what happened next.

  In the solitary light from the old paraffin lamp, they waited.

  Twenty-nine

  Sam woke with pain in her back and neck from sleeping on the earthen floor. The room was in darkness, as it had been before she fell asleep, the paraffin having run out after only an hour’s light.

  They had sat around the room, whispering occasionally to remind themselves they were not alone in the solid darkness. Mostly, though, they had listened. They knew when night had fallen because they heard banging and groaning coming from outside. It wasn’t any attempt to get in. If those creatures knew there was anyone inside the barn, they didn’t have the wit or co-ordination to get in. After a while the banging stopped and the screaming started.

  It was loud and terrified and when it started Sam felt everyone in the room become still and tense. It took her a moment to work out, but then she realised it was the sheep who had been in the field next to the barn. The – god, she hated even to think the word – the zombies were slaughtering them. She wondered if they would become zombie sheep, but she didn’t dare air the thought. She didn’t know whether she’d laugh or scream.

  All too quickly the noise stopped. After that there was nothing but silence.

  They had waited, all of them trying to be as alert as they could, but the silence simply stretched into the night. Without a way of telling the time, the seconds and minutes stretched ever longer. Eventually they felt they could talk.

  At Nicola’s insistence, Tony told her about what had happened since they last saw her. Sam noticed that his story seemed more accurate than when he told it in the pub. If anyone else noticed, they didn’t say anything.

  When he finished, Nicola started to tell her tale. She spoke calmly, her voice almost inflectionless, even as she spoke about her daughter’s disappearance. She had told of Dave and the others disappearing from the yard, and the way in which he had returned, chased by the transformed group of which she had been the leader. Sam wondered how she felt about having lost so many people who had looked to her for guidance, but again she said nothing.

  She finished her story with the moment of reunion with
Tony and Sam, and fell silent. Sam was surprised she hadn’t asked Dave to tell his story. Surely she must want to know what had happened to her daughter. She was about to say this, and then realised that Dave might not have good news. In fact, he might not already have told her because he didn’t want to tell her that her daughter was dead.

  The room filled up with unasked questions and unspoken thoughts, until finally Dave started talking.

  “It happened almost as soon as Nicola ran inside. We heard a scream from her, and then there was a shadow over the sun. It was one of those huge metal spider things that you were talking about, Tony. I guess it must have been while you were in the pub telling your tale, or you’d have seen it. Hell, maybe it was even the same one that crashed in on you. I don’t know, I didn’t stay to watch. It was moving straight towards us. I scooped Alyssa up into my arms – that was when she called to you, Nick – and then I was running. It only took me a moment to realise that the others were following me.” He paused, and Sam wondered if he was also thinking about the way these people had cast him as their leader and he had led them to, well, to their living deaths.

  “I led them down the road to the left. It twisted to the right and took us in a straight line away from that huge thing. But it was moving so fast, it was over us before we knew it. And then… it was over us and gone. Just like you said, Tony. It didn’t look at us twice, just carried on over the countryside. Soon it was gone, but we were still running. We slowed down, and I would have come straight back for you Nick, I really would, but we’d reached another farm. I thought it made sense to see if we’d come far enough for power to be working before we came back for you. It would only be a minute.”

  He fell silent, and a pregnant stillness swelled to fill the room. Then he sighed and it blew like a chill wind through the silence, causing Sam’s hair to raise on her arms and her neck to prickle.

  “We didn’t know about the darkness, you see. I looked in the farmhouse, taking a spade I found in the yard with me just in case. But it was deserted. After that, we were just complacent. We started looking the barns. A whole group went into one and…” Again he let out a huge sigh. “And they didn’t come out. We didn’t hear any screams or anything, but I think there must have been a whole family in there, maybe some farmhands too. I think they jumped the group as soon as they walked in and ripped out their throats before even one of them could scream.”

  Sam heard him shift and realised he had turned to Nicola. There was a tone of pleading in his voice. “I would have gone in after them. Maybe I could have done something, but Alyssa wouldn’t let me go and kept asking for you, so I stayed outside. The rest of the group – all of them – grabbed whatever they could find and went in after the first lot. Oh, God!” He let out a wail which was immediately muffled as someone – Nicola maybe – put a hand over his mouth.

  Eventually he calmed and his breathing slowed enough to continue. “This time there was screaming. It sounded like a massacre. God, they weren’t soldiers, or fighters or anything. They were just people. They went in, without fear, to try and help strangers, and…” He trailed off.

  “I waited. Alyssa was crying for you, but I waited. I hoped that one of them - at least one of them, for God’s sake – would come out. But they didn’t. Well, not as they had been.

  “It all went quiet and then a man came to the doorway. His head was split and not only was his throat gone, but so was most of the side of his face. I could see his – his – his teeth and his tongue through the side of his face. He watched me for a moment and then he leapt. I grabbed Alyssa and started to run. He followed me across the yard. God, he was fast. But soon I heard him slow. I looked back and stopped. He had slumped to his knees. I saw his skin catch fire and he melted to jelly right in front of me.”

  He paused, but no-one filled the gap. Sam thought she heard a sob from the far corner but couldn’t tell who it came from.

  “That was when I ran properly. I headed across the yard, past the house, over the fields. At the top of one of the fields I found a shed of some sort. It had no windows, just stone walls, a roof and a single thick door. I took Alyssa in there with me. She was screaming blue murder by then, and I hid.”

  “You have to understand, I couldn’t believe what I had seen, and I couldn’t… I just needed some time. I needed to work it out.”

  His voice was shaking so hard that Sam couldn’t understand how he could keep going, but somehow he did. “I should have come back. It didn’t take me long to work out that it was sunlight which had done for that… that… thing. But I couldn’t. Once we were in there with the door locked, I just wanted to stay. I just wanted to hide until it all went away.”

  Sam heard him turn to Nicola again. “Alyssa quieted down. There was some hay in there and she went to sleep on it. I sat and tried to think what to do. It was only when I realised the light was fading that I knew I needed to come back and find you, if I could, before it got dark.”

  He started crying quietly as he continued. “I left her sleeping. I didn’t think we’d end up here. I thought I’d find you and we’d go back and we could all be there when it finally got dark.”

  Sam imagined this new pause was to allow Nicola to say something, but there was only more of that silence. When he realised she wasn’t going to say anything, he carried on. “It wasn’t that dark when I left. It would have been okay, but I hadn’t thought about the long summer shadows. In order to get back to you I had to pass through the farmyard, and the shadows of the buildings were long enough that they had come out of the barn and were milling about. I saw them before they saw me, and I ran through them, but they followed. The shadows were long enough, from buildings and then from trees and hedges, that they only ever had to be in the sun for a moment at a time. I think some of them didn’t make it, but you saw how many were still with me when I reached you. I’m so sorry I left her. I’m so sorry. I – I –“

  He had stopped talking and just cried.

  Nicola hadn’t said anything more for the rest of the night.

  Thirty

  With no way of telling the time, in a cellar under a barn, they had no way of knowing when it was light outside. They tried their best to judge it, but James had, with everyone’s consent, opened the trap door three times before he told them he could see light coming through gaps in the barn’s walls.

  They emerged, stretching and groaning, into the half-light of the barn. Nicola could tell that it was another sunny day outside as the light streamed in, causing dust to dance. Feeling the weight of her legs under as she walked, she stumbled to the big double doors which she and Dave had roped shut the night before. In the gloom it was hard to tell, but she thought that the door looked untouched. Everything was as it had been. She guessed they had been right in the night. The zombies weren’t trying to break in. The banging they had heard was just the less co-ordinated among them hitting the barn on their way past.

  The others came up behind her and the large man who had introduced himself as Dan helped her to remove the ropes and the beam.

  They pushed the doors open, causing them all to blink in the brightness of the day.

  From the height of the sun, Nicola could tell that it was already mid-morning. Maybe ten o’clock. They hadn’t been able to see the light before then because the barn was still in the shadow from the buildings beside it. They’d spent longer than they’d needed to, waiting for the sun to rise high enough to be seen from inside. Nicola cursed under her breath. They had probably been safe to leave for hours. And each of those was 60 minutes more that she could have been using to look for Alyssa.

  She stepped straight out into the sunlight, squinting as she looked around. The others emerged behind her. Despite her desire – her need – to go after Alyssa, she couldn’t help being drawn, like the others, to the field which bordered the barn. It was a massacre. There were parts of sheep strewn all over the field. Not one had been left alive. Bite marks covered the torn flesh.

  She turned away, n
ot wanting to look. Her fear that the same fate might have befallen Alyssa was too strong, and she felt that she would be tempting fate if she stared to long. If she confirmed that this was real, then maybe that would be too.

  She stepped back from the rail, behind the others. “Right,” she said, in a firm voice, to get their attention. She didn’t want them looking at the slaughter anymore either. They turned and looked at her, and she realised that once again she was the leader. At least now it was justified. She was the one with something to lose. They were all in danger, but she was a woman with a mission.

  “You don’t need me to tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to find my daughter and you –,” she pointed at Dave, “you’re coming with me. The only question is, what are the rest of you doing?”

  Tony spoke first. “I’m coming with you.”

  The blonde girl, Sam, looked at him and Nicola could see surprise on her face. She studied him for a moment and then turned back to Nicola. “Me too.”

  “And me,” said Dan. His friend Darren nodded his agreement. Where his mate went, he would go.

  The others just looked at each other for a moment, but said nothing. Finally, Bert spoke, “Me and the wife’d just slow you down. I think you want to move fast and that’d be no good.” His wife nodded.

  Debbie didn’t need to say anything. Even as they had been talking she had calmly raised her top and started breast-feeding young Heidi as if this was a perfectly normal activity for such an occasion. However, her eyes met Nicola’s and she gave her a hard smile and fierce shake of the head, one mother to another. If she wasn’t going to come, neither would Ryan, so that was that.

  Alan and Andy looked at each other, their arms around their respective partners and nodded. Alan spoke for them, “I think we’ll stay with this lot. They could do with looking after, I reckon, and you’ve got the three Ds: Dave, Dan and Darren.”