by Talia Mason
She could hardly go jumping ditches with a super sharp sword in each hand at best she might drop it, losing or damaging it, at worst she could end up impaling herself or severing a limb, end up stranded and bleeding to death at the mercy of any creature that happened by and caught the scent of her blood...And what of the ditches that she couldn't simply jump?
The consideration of the lighting for her journey was decided quite easily. Two nights from now, she calculated, it was to be a full moon which should give off enough light to see her way by providing the sky was clear enough, yet if all else failed she still had the option of the torch as long as she could obtain more batteries.
Not that either scenario was ideal, both left Gracie vulnerable to the sight of those that she so desperately needed to avoid.
The next issue was the swords, she could hardly run around jumping over and climbing in and out of ditches carrying two super sharp swords.
With them in their case had been two highly polished wooden sheaths, but this wouldn't really help her much without means to secure them about her person.
Using cable ties Gracie secured the sheaths to her backpack, across the inside of the part that rested against her back with the tops of the sheaths secured to the shoulder straps, so that her hands were kept free for climbing but the swords were in reach if needed.
Gracie’s next priority was to get the batteries, up until now she had met most of her needs by looting houses but over the last few months Gracie had taken all there was to be gained from the houses immediately surrounding hers.
A street away to the south there was a shop, it was only a small shop like the kind you would find on most estates and that sells the everyday essentials that you might run out of.
After checking the coast was clear and wearing the newly adapted backpack Gracie snuck off of her property and along the back fences that had once belonged to her neighbours.
She managed to get to the cover of the row of houses across the end of the street and slip into the alleyway between two of the houses.
While she was concealed there Gracie saw one of the undead, he was across the road from the shop heading away from her along one of the side streets that ran off of the main road.
Gracie waited silently, hoping he would keep going out of sight and not return.
Although she was sure it was only a few moments it felt more like hours and her heart pounded in her dry throat the whole time.
Once Gracie was sure he wouldn't be returning she made her dash across the open car park and up the few steps to the front of the shop.
Pushing against the shop door for a moment Gracie thought that she had taken this risk in vain as the door refused to give.
Then it moved by an inch, it was only a mere inch…but it had moved.
Gracie peered through the glass between advertisement stickers to find the cause of the obstruction at the other side was the badly decayed body of the shop keeper.
She wouldn't be heartbroken with grief over the death of this man who in life had been an ill mannered penny pinching miser who did his best to shortchange his every customer.
Giving the door as hard a shove as she could Gracie managed to move both the rotting corpse and the door enough to squeeze through, holding her breath against the stench of putrid rotting flesh as she did so.
It wasn't until she had squeezed through the door and stepped over the decaying body and released the door allowing the weight of the dead body of the shopkeeper to push it shut that Gracie realized her mistake.
If the man lay dead against this side of the door and had not been moved then there was a strong chance his killer was still in here... with her.
.
Slipping a sword free Gracie quickly decided between once again prying open the door and exiting the way she had entered or cautiously proceeding in the hope that the killer had left via the rear exit of the shop.
It appeared that the man had been dead for a while and there didn't seem to be any fresh evidence of anything feeding off his corpse as the creatures tended to do when faced with the lack of fresh meat.
The sudden thought of becoming one of those things sickened Gracie anew.
Gradually, slowly, she stalked from isle to isle looking for a potential attacker, although in this scenario she believe that it was actually herself that might be considered the aggressor.
When she found no trace of the undead in the shop Gracie slipped behind the counter and helped herself to her first pack of batteries, opening them with shaky fingers and dropping them into the relevant compartment of her torch before screwing on the end and cursing when nothing happened as she flicked the switch.
Unscrewing the cap once again, Gracie dumped the batteries out onto a pile of three week old newspapers on the counter and again placed them, this time more carefully, into the torches shaft.
The first two she got in successfully but the third she dropped and cursed as it rolled under the shelves of wine by the counter.
After quickly tearing open another packet Gracie managed to get a third and final battery into the torch and screw on the cap.
Just as the torch flickered into life Gracie noticed the bunch of keys on the shelf under the counter.
Snatching up the keys she leant over the body of the rotting shopkeeper and locked the door, her nerves settled a little by knowing that whatever may lay before her there was no threat behind her.
Gracie quickly made her way to the storage room, quietly checking the door between the two rooms would close behind her if she needed it to.
Not only did the solid door close but it also had sturdy bolts that when closed bolted into the floor at the bottom and the lintel at the top that would easily barr the way of anything that she needed to keep off of the shop floor.
After propping the door open with a nearby fire extinguisher Gracie cautiously slipped through the door into the storage area of the shop.
The storage room, like the shop, was set out in isles but unlike the shop these isles had shelves that reached to the ceiling and couldn't be seen over.
The door was set in the center of the wall that separated the shop from its storage room and directly opposite it was the gaping maw of the open doors and shutters of the loading bay that would give allow any of the undead that roamed close enough to pick up the scent of rotting flesh that filled the shop and store room to wander in and find her.
Gracie walked first in one direction and found nothing but empty isles before she turned and silently walked in the other direction.
She was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when turning the final corner she found the reason the man in the front shop part of the building had remained relatively untouched.
There crouched over the decaying body of the shop's worker was an even more decayed undead, happily feasting on the corpse.
For a brief second her eyes met the soulless dead eyes staring out of grey decaying skin that brought to Gracie's mind an image of a rotting fish, for a split second both Gracie and the undead hesitated out of shock, then as the undead lunged at the fresh meal…..Gracie....out of instinct swung the sword cleaving the attacking corpses head from its body, it's rotting bloodless mass hitting the floor with a squelch.
Gracie quickly ran into the shop and snatched a pack of bright yellow rubber gloves from one of the shelves and tore open the packet, pulled on the gloves and then fighting the urge to vomit grasped the undead by the ankles and dragged it out of the shop before returning to remove the remains of its final meal and then with one hard squelching kick she kicked the undead’s severed head, sending it rolling out of the storeroom door and into the rear yard of the shop.
Gracie closed and locked the shutters to the back loading bay of the stock room and then closed and locked the doors so that if she were at any point to need to return for any more of resources that the shop held she could do so without fear of the place being infested by the undead.
Gracie then went into the shop and pulled the dead shop
keeper out of the way of the door and peered between the notices taped to the inside of the door to ensure that there were not any of the undead outside in the street before she unlocked and opened the door and dragged the dead shopkeeper out onto the forecourt.
Pulling off the gloves and dropping them on top of the body of the shopkeeper Gracie hurried back into the shop and relocked the door.
The smell of rotting flesh still lingered but was not as overpowering now that the corpses had been removed from the shop leaving streaks of putrid bodily fluids and rot in their wakes and at least Gracie knew that she could find all that she needed without the risk of being caught off guard.
She wandered more slowly and comfortably now from shelf to shelf as she filled the backpack with batteries for her torch and fire lighters and matches in the hope that when she got to her new abode she would find herself in a position to need them.
She also took long life snack bars and cartoned drinks, thinking them easier to carry than the tins and bottles she had stored in her present home, and a few boxes of candles and other necessities she may need in the long term
Gracie closed and bolted the door to the store room and once again unlocked the front door to the shop, checked that the way was clear of the undead and then slipped out and locked it behind her, pocketing the keys.
Gracie kept the sword at the ready on the way back home extremely shaken by the encounter in the store room now the adrenaline of the moment had worn off yet she encountered no more of the undead.
Once safely locked inside her own house she ran up the stairs to her room without even checking the doors and windows and locked herself in her room.
She collapsed on her bed out of nervous exhaustion.
It was nearly mid afternoon by the time Gracie awoke the next day with one hell of a migraine still feeling shaky and belatedly struggled through security checks.
She then cleaned the sword of its stain of putrid flesh that she had forgotten to clean last night due to her fragile state of mind, as she did so she suffered bile rising anew in her throat at the smell of the black gunk that coated the blade and was thankful that she had remembered not to re-sheath it.
With that done she began to prepare her back pack for that night's expedition, wrapping everything that went into it in polythene to make sure they stayed dry and including a change of clothes.
By the time she had finished she still didn't feel any better.
“What I wouldn't give to be able to have a steaming cup of strong black coffee right now.” Gracie whispered to the empty room as she slipped into the wardrobe to view the front square outside her house.
The shadow cast by the house opposite crept inch by agonizing inch across the turfed central communal square towards her own front lawn as the sun sank lower in the sky.
Just before it became fully dark Gracie slipped from the house in the usual manner and rushed across the grass to the fence between the two houses opposite and climbed over dropping out of sight into the weed choked jungle beyond that was what remained of the garden.
She passed three more streets in this manner.
She hurried through the front garden and around the side of the house into the back garden, then after checking that the way was free of the undead, out the gate across the back access road and through the next house's rear gate and back garden through to the front garden and so on until grassed squares and gardens ran out and fields began.
Then moving as quickly as she could Gracie crossed the fields until she came to a small patch of forest where she waited for darkness to set in completely.
As the sun set completely and the moon began to climb Gracie could see far enough in front of her to walk comfortably.
It was so quiet that even if another thing did move she would hear it before it saw her, or at least before it got within an arm’s reach of her.
Gracie walked across the fields at a fairly relaxed pace and for the first time in a long while was enjoying being outside, the only sound was the familiar call of the owls in the distant forest.
Out here in the middle of the moonlit fields the world felt to Gracie as though it had never changed.
When she came to the first ditch Gracie threw over her bag and swords then took a running leap a few feet further along its banks to avoid landing on either.
The second ditch was crossed in pretty much the same way but the brief run up and jarring landing made Gracie's muscles burn and ache.
The third ditch was wider and deeper but a lack of maintenance had caused a collapse in it banks further along and meant that this part was dry which made it easy to climb in one side and out the other.
The following two were again easily jumped in the exact same manner as before and when she came to another wider ditch she walked it's length for a few yards and by the light of the moon saw that it had a giant concrete slab had been laid across its span so that the farmers tractor could be driven over to the field on the other side.
The last ditch was by far the worst, Gracie scrambled down the bank that was easily higher than her head just as a cloud blocked out the moon's light.
Gracie found herself in darkness, knee deep in mud and waist deep in water as the night air chilled her wet clothes and they clung cold and heavily adding extra weight that she could do without as she waded across the ditch.
With each step the mud sucked at her boots and slurped its protest at its enforced and reluctant release.
The ditches wet bottom was only a few meters wide but with the resistance of the mud it felt like miles, then once Gracie had fought her way step by step to the other side the slippery climb began.
Each time she tried to climb up the bank her boot failed get purchase, the water from her boots and clothes made the grass and soil of the bank even more slippery and by the time she managed to get out of the ditch she had slid back in eight times and waded another ten meters downstream through waist high mud and water by torchlight until she managed to find a rocky outcropping in the bank.
Once out of the ditch and having retrieved her bag and swords Gracie was exhausted... cold, wet and exhausted ...but however much Gracie wanted to rest the memories of the creatures attacking in her dream spurred her on and crossing the remaining farmland she came to the dirt track that joined the estate manager's house to the public bridleway.
CHAPTER FIVE
The moon's light again shone brightly illuminating her way as Gracie came upon the house and its surrounding gardens all contained behind a wall that was at least twelve foot high and iron gates that were only a few feet shorter than the wall.
The gates stood open, as she remembered them always being when she had seen them as a child, and the moon hung full and round in the sky above her as if urging her on with its brilliant light.
The garden and driveway were empty except for a silver land rover parked before the open doors of the house, its driver’s side door and boot standing wide open deserted and eerie looking in the silver moonlight.
Nothing rustled in the bushes that bordered the huge lawn at the front of the three story Georgian house, nor was there any sign of life or the undead in the blackness beyond the open front doors as Gracie skirted her way around the Range drover and approached the house.
Turning on her torch Gracie cautiously stepped through the cavernous maw of the front door and with her heart pounding in her ears and the cold sweat of terror pouring down her back she shrugged off her backpack and carefully and silently lowered to the floor by the open front door before opening the first door, sword at the ready.
She found nothing more than a comfortable looking sitting room, and so room by room, this pattern of panic and relief continued until she reached the kitchen door at the end of the wide hallway.
Opening the door slowly, but not quite as nervously, she stepped into the room and shone the beam of her flashlight around the room illuminating bags of shopping left on the kitchen table.
Gracie had to walk around the large room to get a p
roper view of all the room’s corners and open every door large enough to conceal a flesh eating fiend.
Gracie relaxed a little feeling more sure of herself in the belief that the downstairs of the house was free of its inhabitants either living or undead.
Gracie let out a sigh of relief and crossed to the other side of the room and the huge, antique, black range stove built into the stone arch that would have once been the kitchens fireplace, stove top and oven.
Gracie unlatched and opened its heavy iron doors and shone her torch into each cavity to reveal three ovens and a fire box over another compartment containing an ash pan full of ash.
Clearly the range had been used at some recent point in time and was fully operational, her days of living off of cold tinned goods were over.