Dark and Deadly Land

by Richard Murray

  Ryan led the way back to where he’d caught a glimpse and stood on the pavement as he leant forward on a garden wall to better see the tableau unfold. I joined him and saw that he’d been right. Something I was intensely grateful for since it gave me hope for him.

  A young couple crouched on top of a refrigerated lorry that had been abandoned in the middle of the road. Around it were perhaps twenty or more undead all jostling each other and reaching up to try and claw at them. Around the edge of that crowd, three zombies circled the lorry, each seeming more alert than the others and my heart sank as I realised they were Ferals’.

  “You see them?” I asked and he nodded. Of course, he did.

  “What do you think?” Pat asked as he hefted his club in one large hand. He seemed both eager to release some pent up frustration while at the same time, wary of the danger Cass would be putting herself in.

  “We get their attention,” Ryan said in that quiet tone of voice he tended to use before he killed something. “We have this garden wall and the one at the rear of the house. They’ll come up against the wall and we kill them.”

  “What about the others,” Gregg asked as he pointed to the three Ferals’.

  “Leave them to me,” he said with a predatory smile that sent a shiver down my spine.

  The sound of all too familiar moans rose and I glanced over to the lorry to see one of the Ferals had tried climbing over the cab and been struck over the head with what looked to be a cricket bat. Ryan uttered a curse and when I looked at him he seemed irritated that one of the Ferals had been killed.

  “You going to be ok with the other two?” I asked and he grunted as he vaulted the wall. I took that for assurance that he would be and gestured for the others to follow.

  We dashed across the garden and Gregg let out a yell to grab the attention of the zombies. An unsettling number of heads turned toward us at the sound and we were seen. Fully two-thirds of the undead lurched towards us and came up short against the garden wall.

  They were slow and definitely starting to decay. I tried not to think of the people they had once been as I took a deep breath and swung my club. My swing came up short and rather than crush the skull it caught the zombie’s cheek, tearing off most of the rotten flesh of the face with a slurping sound.

  I coughed and staggered back as the breakfast I’d eaten came straight back up and then out to splatter against the unkempt grass of the garden. I swiped the back of my free hand over my mouth and sent silent thanks after Pat as he stepped into my place and finished off the zombie.

  Half of them were already dead and I saw the Ferals look our way. Ryan, with a deadly grace, was upon them before they even saw him, distracted as they were by us. A punch, kick, knee to the back and blade to the skull and the first one fell.

  He moved almost like a dancer when he killed. A sidestep here, quick turn there, all smooth motion with no wasted energy. Three of the Shamblers’ that had remained by the lorry died in quick succession, almost an afterthought as he passed them on his way to the last Feral.

  It lunged at him and he ducked, dropping his shoulder to catch it in the midriff and surging up to throw it over his shoulder. It rolled and came to its feet as he swung around, booted foot lashing out to catch it on the chin.

  Dazed, it staggered back as he dashed forward. His knife darted out as it twisted away and slammed into the creature's shoulder. It lashed out and he narrowly avoided its filthy claws raking his face as he released his knife and darted to one side. I stepped forward without thinking as I saw him suddenly weapon-less.

  He wasn’t perturbed. With a grin, he swung around past it and wrapped his arms around its neck. With a quick twist and an audible sound, it dropped lifelessly to the ground with a broken neck. He retrieved his knife and slammed it down into the skull for good measure before going after the Shamblers.

  I shook my head as I realised I had been standing in the garden watching him rather than doing anything to help my friends. I moved back to join them but it was just about over and the last two zombies fell to heavy blows from Pat and Becky.

  Silence fell as Ryan finished off the last of the Shamblers, looking for all the world as though he were having fun. The young couple on top of the lorry had watched it all unfold with jaws hanging open. The whole thing had taken less than two minutes.

  “You guys okay?” I called up.

  The young couple looked to each other and their hands moved in a way that I’d seen before. I sighed as Becky barked out a laugh and exclaimed, “They’re deaf.”

  “No, my sister is but I’m not,” the young man said.

  “Come down, we should leave before more arrive,” I said with a wave towards the scattered corpses.

  “No offence, but how do we know we can trust you?” he called back and I shrugged helplessly.

  “You can’t know, it’s a choice you need to make though.”

  “Come on mate,” Gregg called. “Why would we save you if we wanted to harm you?”

  “We’ve been fooled before,” he said and I could see a shadow pass across his face as he remembered difficult times. “This winter was bad for everyone and it brought out the worst in people.”

  “More coming,” Ryan called softly. I looked over to see him leant nonchalantly against a garden wall as he cleaned off his knife. He caught my eye and tilted his head to the right. I followed the direction and saw a couple of Shamblers turn into the road about three hundred metres away.

  “Look,” I called. “No offence meant here but stop being an idiot. We have a car and while it will be cramped we can just about fit you in. We’ve just saved you and have no intention of harming you but we’re leaving. Come with us or not but you need to leave before those damn things get here.”

  The young man, probably barely into his twenties, gestured rapidly to his sister. She looked to be sixteen at most and she had a wariness about her that spoke of past harm done. I sighed once more as I realised it was likely more the norm these days than it would be to find someone who hadn’t been through hell.

  Finally, the man turned to us and nodded abruptly. He didn’t look happy and as he helped his sister down from the lorry, he kept his eyes on us and the cricket bat to hand.

  “Follow us,” I said. “What were you doing here anyway?”

  “Looking for someplace safe,” he said. “Not that we had much hope of finding anywhere.”

  “Amen to that,” Gregg said with a grin.

  I couldn’t help but agree. The last place we’d found that was safe had been invaded by a madman. The world had gone to hell, the undead were walking and human monsters were preying on those who survived. I was willing to try to get to Scotland for the sake of Cass and her baby but I didn’t actually believe we’d find anything there.

  Chapter 9 - Ryan

  Aiden and Emily Campbell were the names of the two idiots we had rescued. They had been crammed into the cargo compartment of the range rover with Gregg which looked as uncomfortable as it sounded.

  They were quiet at first as we carried on our journey but with some gentle probing from Becky who seemed to have a knack for getting people to open up, they told us their story. I admit that is when I stopped listening.

  More of the same old stuff. A lot of blubbering about family and friends they’d lost, tales of woe and ineptitude as they hid away as long as possible before finally running out of food and having to actually stand up and fight the undead.

  I watched the world go by through the window as they told their story and tried to ignore all the sounds of commiseration from the others. It was almost enough to make me regret pointing them out to the others. Not that the Ferals had been disappointing. While not quite as much fun as killing a living person, they were occasionally challenging enough to provide some pleasure. Even the animal resting its weight against my legs seemed to share my disdain for their nonsense.

  “So what brought you into the Lakes?” Lily asked with a tap on my k
nee and a meaningful look that I took to mean she expected me to pay attention.

  “Nowhere else to go,” Aiden said.

  “Where are you from?” I asked and ignored Lily’s eye roll. I guess they’d already said that.

  “Thursby,” he said. “South-west of Carlisle.”

  “Big place?”

  “Tiny, why?”

  “How many zombies have you seen?” I asked, ignoring his question. “How many people survived out there?”

  “Few,” Aiden said quietly. His voice dropped and I glanced round to see he had a faraway look in his eyes. “Whatever caused the undead, spread through the towns and villages all the way to the coast. People stayed indoors as much as possible but it didn’t help. Then tens of thousands came marching down the roads from Carlisle.”

  He shuddered and took a deep breath as his sister placed one hand on his knee to offer comfort at his distress.

  “We hid while most of them passed and tried to scavenge what food we could. Our neighbours, the ones that survived started to fight over what was left. Peter, an old fella who was on the local council managed to sort things out and decided on gathering everything together and rationing it.”

  “It’s all farms out there though isn’t it?” Gregg asked. “Should have had plenty of food for the winter.”

  “No,” Aiden said. He shook his head vehemently for emphasis. “Those undead things, they killed everything in their path including animals. They spread everywhere and when they moved on, nothing was left alive.”

  “What about grains and vegetables?” Gregg pressed. “Surely those farms would have that stuff stored?”

  “Most of what they’d produced in the summer harvest had already been shipped out to market. The remnants they had kept for the livestock and themselves was little use after the zombies had trampled through the farms. No idea what was safe to eat and anything that might have been was snatched up by other survivors. Then they came back.”

  “Came back?” Lily asked softly.

  “The undead. They’d gone all the way to the coast and when they got there some followed along north and south while most just turned round and came back,” he shuddered once more, his body visibly trembling as strong emotion gripped him. “We just weren’t prepared for them and they killed nearly everyone.”

  His sister, Emily, signed rapidly to him and his wiped his nose with one sleeve and nodded to her before moving his hands in response.

  “We hid,” he said. “Em, she saw our mam torn apart and later when our food ran out we went looking. Mr Thomas from down the street, he had a gun. He’d always seemed so nice to us.”

  He started crying and I sighed as I waited for him to finish. His sister definitely was the stronger of the two and she did her best to comfort him while the rest of us sat in embarrassed silence. At least I did, the others seemed embarrassed but I probably misread them. It’s so hard to guess their emotions sometimes. Give me fear any day, I could recognise that easily enough.

  “We moved around,” Aiden said as he pulled himself together and continued. “The people who’d survived banded together and didn’t have enough for themselves, let alone for strangers. We found a few isolated places where we could earn some food and shelter, but not for long.”

  From the expressions of disgust on the faces of my friends, I gathered they knew what he meant by earned and I resolved to ask Lily later. It probably wasn’t anything pleasant and I just wished people would actually say what they meant instead of just having a meaning hidden behind their words. It was most irksome to me.

  “You made it through the winter, that’s what’s important,” Becky said. “You and your sister survived.”

  He nodded and sniffled for a few more minutes as I tried to curb my impatience.

  “Why come south and not head north?” I asked. Okay, I could have tried harder to curb it.

  “We know how to fish, to live off the land and figured the best place to do that would be here. Away from people,” Aiden said.

  “How did you end up on top of that lorry?” Gregg asked.

  “Village up ahead,” Lily interrupted and silence fell. She’d been driving along the back roads and aside from the occasional swerve to avoid damaging our only means of transportation by hitting a zombie, it had been a quiet journey.

  My friends readied their weapons and I pulled my knife from its sheath, eager for the chance to kill something. Sadly, I was to be disappointed. The village was devoid of the living and the dead. We passed through quickly, the handful of homes all had doors open and I guessed that Lily was willing to bet they’d already been looted. Not worth the time it would take to go through them. I sighed as we passed the last house and slid my knife back into its sheath. Lily looked over and grinned as she patted my leg. She understood me at least.

  “We were desperate,” Aiden continued. “Some zombies found us further north. They were fast and chased us. We thought we could lose them amongst the buildings but had the bad luck to run straight into a group of undead. Our only chance was to get up high out of their reach.”

  “Those were Ferals,” Gregg said and when the younger couple showed no comprehension he explained about the difference between the two types we’d seen.

  “Sounds right,” Aiden said. He was interrupted by his sister who signed rapidly at him and he raised his hands before him as a gesture to stop.

  “She ok?” Cass asked.

  “Em… she wants to know what we have to do for you,” Aiden said.

  “What do you mean?” Gregg asked before answering himself as comprehension came. “Oh Christ! Nothing.”

  “She doesn’t believe you,” he said as he watched his sisters rapidly moving hands. “She thinks you can protect us and wants to know what you want us to do.”

  His face reddened and he looked away. I saw Lily’s face tighten as disgust filled her and from the reactions of my friends, they were perhaps thinking the same and no one seemed to have any response.

  “We aren’t like that,” Cass said. She spoke gently but there was anger in her tone.

  “More likely to stop people l who’re ike that,” Gregg muttered as Lily brought the car to a slow stop before she turned to look at the two frightened young people.

  “I’ll say this once,” she said. “Whatever others have made you do, we won’t. We saved you because you are people and because we could. That was our only reason.”

  She glanced around at each of our friends who nodded their agreement in turn.

  “You have no reason to trust us and in this new messed up world, that’s understandable. If you are worried, you can leave right here and now. No one will stop you and we’ll give you whatever supplies we can spare to help you on your way. You can try and make your way south towards Windermere where our people are. They’ll take you in with no expectations of anything other than your helping work with them to stay alive.”

  Whatever the young siblings were saying seemed intense as their hands moved with an almost furious speed. Finally, the silent exchange stopped and the man turned his attention to us. He swallowed hard before speaking.

  “We aren’t fighters,” he said. “Em can’t hear and some of those we met turned us away because of that. They figured she’d hold them back.”

  “None of us were fighters back at the beginning of this,” Lily said before glancing at me. “Well most of us. The thing is, we learned to defend ourselves and others because we needed to. You can do that too. We’ll help you if you want.”

  He trembled as he clutched his sister’s hand and seemed to be on the verge of crying again. I hoped he wasn’t going to, there was only so much I could take.

  “The things we had to do… please, we don’t want to have to do that again,” he said. He stared down at the floor, afraid to look at any of us and see condemnation or perhaps amusement at his humiliation.

  I glanced at Lily and saw fury cross her face and an idea formed.

 
“Don’t worry,” Pat said and he too seemed to have a burning rage in his tone. “No one here will expect anything of you but to carry your weight.”

  “Perhaps it would be a good time to start thinking of a place to stay the night,” Becky said with a look to the sky. “By my estimation we’re not far from the edge of the District and we could do with somewhere secure where we can get a hot meal going.”

  “Agreed,” Lily said as she started the engine. Her eyes met mine and her brows lowered as she read something in my expression. She paused and her head tilted for just a moment before she turned her attention to the road.

  For a brief moment, I thought that perhaps she had read my intention and agreed, but I cautioned myself to be careful. While these others of my friends were adept at reading so much from a facial expression and body language, I was sadly deficient in that area and may be wrong.

  Still it was something to consider. Which is what I did as we drove for the next hour or so. It was hard keeping track of the time without a watch and it was amazing how much we as a race had come to rely on such things.

  The sky was darkening and rain had begun to fall as Lily drove, hunched slightly forward as she peered out into the gloom, in hopes of finding somewhere to stay. We’d been travelling almost entirely west for an hour and if my vague recollection of the map was right, before long we’d be coming upon the town of Cockermouth. A name that had raised fits of giggles from my companions for some reason.

  Needless to say, we didn’t want to be anywhere near it in the dark and if we couldn’t find a house to sleep in, we’d have an uncomfortable night spent in the car.

  “Take a right,” Pat said breaking the silence.

  “What? Why?” Lily asked.

  “Sign in the bushes beside the road said there’s a bed and breakfast coming up.”

  We travelled along in silence for several minutes as we kept an eye out for the building. Cass spoke into the silence, her voice wistful and when I looked over to her, her expression was distant as she rested her head against Pat’s chest.