“It’s going to be fine,” Dale said. He wasn’t sure whether he was lying to her or telling her what she needed to hear. He held onto her until he felt her arms loosen around his neck and then they separated and returned to the group.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They travelled along the river bank. Dale held one of Beth’s hand, Dawn held the other. Behind them the rest of the children and their friends walked in silence. He could hear Rachel talking in a low muttered voice to Oscar.
Because of the children they had to move slowly. One or two of them were crying and they’d had to convince a little boy with blond hair that he couldn’t go back to the village to find his mother. Dale had seen the look in the boys eyes as Rachel explained to him that his mum was probably a zombie by now.
The further they got from the village the more ruinous the state of the buildings. Some of them were little more than walls that seemed to stand by force of will more than physics.
The sound of the zombies became more distant but never left them entirely. It was the soundtrack to their journey and, Dale couldn’t help thinking, to their lives now. Once they were truly away from the protection of the village they would be constantly surrounded.
The children were a mixture of ages. The youngest was around five. Dawn was the oldest at fourteen. Some of them began to complain that they were tired and Rachel said that they should stop to rest.
“What do you think?” Beth said to Dale.
He was tired as well. “It might be a long time before we find somewhere safe,” he said. They would have to sleep in shifts and never let their guard down. There were only seven adults in the group and the children couldn’t be asked to stand guard. “Maybe we should rest while we’ve got the chance.”
Beth nodded.
They stopped by the side of the river. The rushing water further distanced the sound of the zombies.
Beth lay her head on his shoulder. Dawn put her head on her sister’s lap. He could hear Rachel telling the children to lay down and try to sleep. Dale stared into the distance but he couldn’t see further than a few metres ahead.
“Which way should we go?” Beth said. They hadn’t had a chance to discuss their plans beyond getting out of Harmony.
Dale shook his head. “The way we’re going is as good as any,” he said.
“What’s it like out there?” Dawn said.
Dale thought about how to answer her. Outside the village there were zombies everywhere. They would have to fight daily just to stay alive. If there were safe places they would be jealously guarded by the people who had already found them.
“I need to rest,” he said. He turned away from Beth and her head fell away from his shoulder. He lay on the ground and turned onto his side. The soldier had said this was his fault but he didn’t want to believe it.
“It’s going to be okay,” Beth said.
He could feel her hand on his arm but he didn’t turn around to look at her. He didn’t reply.
“We’ll find somewhere,” she said.
Dale wished that he could believe her. He wished that he didn’t feel the overwhelming certainty that he was leading her and a dozen kids to their deaths. But what was the alternative? Even if they stayed in Harmony and managed to survive the attack, how long would it be before they drank the water and one of them turned and it started all over again?
“Dale?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“We’re going to be okay aren’t we?”
“We’ll be fine,” he said and the lie tasted bitter in his mouth. He closed his eyes but he knew he wouldn’t be able to rest.
* * * * *
They were up again two hours later. The night had become cold but the children had brought extra clothes so it was just Dale and Beth who felt it. The sounds from the village continued as before, perhaps a little bit louder.
He led them along the river towards the forest that he couldn’t quite see. The closer they got to the edge of the village the greater the danger. They walked in silence. A few minutes after setting out they encountered the first group of zombies.
Dale stopped and Beth stopped beside him. There were a dozen zombies standing in front of them. Their pale decomposing faces seemed to shine in the darkness. They hadn’t been noticed yet.
“Keep the kids back,” he said to whoever was listening. He took the gun out of his pocket. There weren’t enough bullets to take them all out and if he shot one more would come. He put it back in his pocket.
“What are we going to do?” Beth said.
He turned and looked at her. Everyone else was gone. He’d hoped that at least Oscar, Noel and Gerard would stay to fight. “Go back to the river,” he said.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
“Beth I’m not kidding. Stay with the others.”
“I won’t.”
They argued in whispers for a moment. Not loud enough to draw the attention of the zombies. As long as he had known her he hadn’t been able to make her do what he said, even when he was just trying to keep her safe. A crazy thought occurred to him: he could just walk right up to the zombies and let them kill him so the others could escape.
“Fine,” he said at last. The longer they argued the more chance there was of the zombies noticing them. He wanted to lead them away, not towards, the children. “Grab a rock.”
They crouched down and ran their hands over the ground. There were pieces of loose gravel and mud but few rocks.
“The biggest one you can find,” he said.
They moved away from the river to look. Dale kept glancing up at the zombies but they were the slow kind. Their bodies were falling apart which might make them easier to kill or it might make it harder.
His hand closed on something large and hard. He pulled it out of the muddy ground.
“Have you found one?” he said.
“Not yet,” Beth said.
“Here, take this.” He put the rock into her hand.
“Do you want me to throw it?” she said.
Dale crouched down and looked for another stone. “Just keep hold of it,” he said. He found another one. It was a bit smaller but sharper. He stood up.
“Have you ever killed a zombie?” he said.
“Of course I have.”
“Not with a gun, with your hands.”
In the darkness he could see her shaking her head.
“We’ll circle around and come up behind them.” He hoped they wouldn’t be strong enough to put up a fight. “Come on.”
They circled back around a few metres to the side of the zombies. He could smell their flesh rotting while they continued to move and murmur amongst themselves. None of them noticed him or Beth.
“Ready?” he said.
Beth nodded.
“Come on then.”
He held the rock up and struck the first one on the back of the head as hard as he could. Its skull caved in as if it was made of damp cardboard. He felt its brain ooze out of the cracks and onto his hand. He pulled the rock away and it dropped to the ground.
Dale turned and watched Beth do the same. She had to jump to get a good swing and hit its head. She let out a tiny yelp as the rock crushed its skull and it fell to the floor.
The noise attracted the attention of the other zombies. They weren’t standing as close together as he had thought. The dead things turned towards them and moaned in their broken voices.
He struck another one around the side of the head and another on the top. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Beth take down two. She raised her leg and he thought she was going to fall over backwards. Instead, she kicked a third zombie hard in the chest and it staggered backwards. She swung her arm around and cracked the skull of another to her right.
The zombies were not as easy to kill as he had hoped but not as difficult as he had feared. Beth was a good fighter and she had no issues with killing up close. Dale took out one zombie and then another and then they stopped coming to him and he turned and saw
that Beth was fighting three of them by herself.
He swung and cracked the head of a zombie coming up behind her. There were now so many bodies on the ground that it was difficult to walk. One or two of them were still alive and tried to grab his legs but they weren’t going to get up again. Dale stamped on one of the hands and felt the bones break. He pulled a zombie away from behind Beth and smashed the rock into its head while it lay on the ground.
Beth took out two more and he took out a third. Then they stood there panting and sweating and waited but no more came.
“Did I do okay?” Beth said.
Dale was too out of breath to speak. He nodded. She had done better than he’d expected but he didn’t know why he was surprised. She was old enough to remember the zombies coming and the journey to Harmony.
“Let’s go back to the others,” she said. She took his arm and he realised she was shaking. She had done well though, maybe even better than he had.
They stepped over the bodies. Dead, they were indistinguishable from humans. A hand reached for his ankle and he thought that it wasn’t an attempt to grab him but a plea for help. He considered turning back and putting the creature out of its misery. How long would it stay like that, unable to move, unable to eat? He didn’t know if zombies died of their won accord eventually.
Beth pulled him away. They walked back down to the river where the others were waiting for them.
* * * * *
“Is it safe?” Rachel said.
The dozen children and five adults were an indistinguishable blur in front of the river. He could hear the water.
“They’re gone,” Beth said.
The children began to talk amongst themselves. Dawn came towards them and Beth let go of his hand.
“Let’s keep moving,” Dale said.
They stayed close to the river. Dale led the way with Beth and Dawn just behind him. He could hear Dawn asking about what had happened and he wondered how she would do against a dozen zombies. Maybe they all knew how to fight but they were just smart enough to run away before they had to. You wouldn’t survive for long if you kept putting yourself in danger.
Dale thought about the danger he had put them all in. If the soldier was right then he was cursed. They were all smart enough to avoid danger that they could see but none of them seemed to realise the threat they carried with them.
He stared into the darkness ahead of them. The sounds of fighting in the village dimmed with distance. They were still in Harmony but they were getting close to the end of it now. The houses were further apart and the road unpaved.
The kids began to complain about being tired again but they couldn’t afford to stop now. Unless they took their chances in one of the big houses there was nowhere safe to stop.
“Dale?”
He turned and saw Rachel standing beside him. She was droopy eyed with exhaustion. “They need to rest.”
“It’s not safe,” he said.
They carried on walking.
“They’re falling asleep on their feet,” she said. “How safe is that?”
Dale ignored her. They walked past a house that looked as if it had been hit with a bomb. The roof had caved in and the walls were starting to follow.
“If we could rest for a few hours…”
He looked around. On his left was the river, on his right the broken houses. They might afford some protection if they could get to them without being seen.
“There isn’t going to be anywhere to stop once we’re out of the village,” Rachel said.
“There’s other places,” he said.
“But how far? How long do they have to keep going before they can get some rest? They’re terrified Dale.”
“I know,” he said.
“If we could just stop until morning it would be better,” she said.
“We can’t travel in daylight,” he said. “We’ll be too easy to spot.”
“Then we need to stop now,” Rachel said. She sounded more certain of herself. “There isn’t another village for miles. If we keep going we’ll be in the middle of nowhere when the sun comes up.”
When he’d escaped from the hospital he’d woken up in Harmony. He had no idea what the landscape was like beyond it. Dale hadn’t considered that it might be hours before they found somewhere outside of Harmony to rest.
“You know the area pretty well?” he said.
“I grew up here,” she said.
They were still walking along the river. The forest in front of them was getting closer. “You could tell us where to go?” he said.
Rachel nodded.
He sighed and stopped walking. Beth walked into him and stopped. He had imagined that they would be able to put a few miles between themselves and the village before the sun came up.
“What’s going on?” Beth said. She reached for Dale’s hand but he pulled it away.
There was an old house to his right, up a little hill. It looked abandoned.
“This way,” he said.
He led them across the dry earth track towards the house. Rachel fell away behind him to rejoin the children. He felt Beth grabbing for his hand again.
“Where are we going?” she said. “I thought we were leaving.”
“It’s not safe,” he said. “We’ll wait until sunset.”
The door was white and covered in flecks of mud. He pushed it and it opened.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll make sure it’s safe.”
Beth didn’t say anything and she followed him inside. He didn’t argue with her.
The house smelled musty. Everything was covered with dust. He tried the light switch but nothing happened.
“I’m going to check upstairs,” he said.
He climbed the stairs slowly. They creaked. The air felt thick with dust. On the landing there were five doors. The first one he opened had another set of stairs leading up to the loft. He closed it and checked the other rooms first.
The first room was small. It was painted in blue and there were stickers of cartoon characters on the walls. The bed had been made and the room was empty. He picked up a model aeroplane from the messy desk. It was plastic and looked home made. He put it back down and went to the next room.
He found a little girls room. It was painted pink and there was a pile of dusty teddy bears on the bed. It was also empty.
Behind the third door he found a bathroom. He tried the taps but no water came out. There were faded plastic bottles of soap in the corner of the bath. He picked them up and put the fullest ones in his bag.
He stopped outside the final door. He could hear Beth moving around downstairs. The door handle was cold. He turned it and went inside.
The room was warm and perfectly dark. He could feel the air as he walked to the window and pulled back the curtains. The dull light came in and seemed to excite the dust. It swirled around.
Outside he could see the edge of the forest.
The dull outline of the trees and a smaller patch of something that he couldn’t identify from a distance. He tried not to think about what they were going to do. Where they were going to go.
He turned around. There was something in the bed. Instinctively his hand went to his gun. Nothing moved. Cautiously he took a step towards the bed. It was a king size but it looked full.
He stood beside the bed and looked down. Two adults, a man and a woman, two children, a boy and a girl, were huddled together. Dead. The casual horror of it made him feel as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. He wanted to cry but the ability to feel anything for a situation like this had left him a long time ago. Instead his head swarmed with questions: what had happened to them? Had they taken their own lives or had they died for some other reason?
Dale might have stood there all day but for Beth calling him. Her voice was full of urgency.
* * * * *
He ran down the stairs, taking them too quickly. He stumbled at the bottom and grabbed hold of the door frame to keep himself upright. The gun
was in his hand.
“Dale quickly,” she said.
He found her in the back of the house, in the kitchen. She was standing at the window and didn’t turn around as he walked towards her. He looked around the room but he couldn’t see any sign of trouble.
“What is it?” he said.
“Come here and look,” she said.
He walked up to her. At the back of the house the land fell away so that even from there you could see the forest from above. He looked out the window but at first he couldn’t see what she was looking at.
“I can’t see anything,” he said.
“Over there,” she said. She pointed at the small patch of darkness that he had seen from upstairs. He still couldn’t see what it was.
“What is it?” he said. Then before she answered he began to see what he was looking at.
The small patch only seemed small compared to the forest. If had been asked to guess before he might have said it was some bushes in the middle of the field. But as he looked he saw that it was growing, changing in size and shape like a living organism. A dark line connected it to the forest where he could see more of it beneath the trees.
He looked from right to left and the line stretched as far as he could see. It stretched backwards into the field. Compared to the giant trees of the forest it seemed small but it was the biggest group of zombies that he had ever seen.
“Are they coming this way?” he said. He heard the note of panic in his voice but it was nothing compared to how he felt. That many zombies could take down a city.
“I think so,” Beth said. She sounded strangely calm.
He turned away from the window and started towards the door.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“We need to get everyone inside,” he said.
At the front door he could see the kids and the adults waiting. Rachel was standing at the front of the group but she stepped aside to count the kids in when Dale said it was okay.
“No one goes upstairs, okay,” he said as they filed past him into the house.
Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Patient Zero Page 16