The Fall Series (Book 3): The Fence Walker

by Cross, Stephen

  “Go away!” came the angry voice of a little girl.

  Ellie moved up to the door. “Annie, I’m Ellie. Would you like to meet Eddy?”

  A pause, then, “Who’s Eddy?”

  “He’s my little baby boy. He’d like to meet you.”

  After a pause, the door opened slowly. A little girl, blond hair, around six or seven in a pretty pink dress. Ellie looked at Jack, he was smiling at his daughter. His dirty clothes, face, hair. His daughter clean, angelic almost.

  “This is Eddy,” said Ellie, leaning down and smiling.

  Annie smiled a wide and happy smile. She tentatively reached out a hand. “Can I touch him?”

  “Of course you can,” said Ellie. “He’d like that.”

  Annie gently stroked the baby’s head. She giggled. “He’s soft!”

  “He is isn’t he,” said Jack.

  “Look, Daddy, he’s smiling at me!”

  “Of course he is. He must like you,” said Jack, leaning down to join his daughter, whatever falling out they had obviously forgotten.

  Chapter 3

  Sergeant Allen crouched in the darkness, his forty-four-year-old knees clicking too loudly, and peered around the doorway. In the half blue light of the hospital’s abandoned corridors, a shadow moved in the distance. A dull clang echoed as the zed walked into something metal, probably a trolley or a filing cabinet - a piece of debris the desperate doctors, nurses, and patients had used to barricade the doors. These dying efforts to survive had made it difficult for Allen and his party to find their way through the hospital; so many doors, routes, and rooms barricaded. Invariably two or three zeds behind each barrier.

  He pulled away from the corridor and crept to where the group - Two soldiers, the young Corporal Lewis and Private Singh, and Lynsey, a strong-headed nurse, now promoted to their group’s doctor - was waiting.

  Singh stood by a window. Grey light from the heavy clouded sky illuminated the room. Spilled boxes and containers of tablets on the shelves and floor. Rain speckled on the glass. “That storm’s on its way, Sarge,” said Singh.

  Their base was a few miles away, in nearby woods. It was two in the afternoon.

  “You get everything?” he asked Lynsey.

  She nodded. An attractive woman once, but, like everyone else, now only a sallow reminder of who she had been. Her skin pulled tight around her face, bags under her eyes. Her hair tangled and dirty, stuck together in large clumps. She refused to cut it, though, as most of the women had. Something about holding on to who she was.

  “A few hundred tabs of ibuprofen,” said Lynsey, “lots of paracetamol. Bandages, anti-bacterial wipes. Penicillin, amoxicillin.” She paused. “Lots of other stuff you don’t need to worry about. I got what I need.”

  “Who’s out there?” said Lewis. A stocky, reliable corporal. He’d grown up quickly. Seen more in the past year since the Fall than Allen himself had seen in years of tours of the middle east.

  “There’s one for sure at the end of the corridor, where we came in. Making a racket.”

  The zeds loved noise.

  “How’s it look like down there, Singh?”

  “No change," said Singh, staring down at the ground, many floors below. "A few milling around. We’re good to go out the front.”

  They had arrived early morning, expecting to find the hospital swamped, but, unusually for large municipal buildings, it had been relatively clear. They had only needed to dispatch a handful before getting in. Finding and reaching the pharmacy and supplies room had taken four hours, avoiding or killing the zeds that occupied the locked off wards, that bounced along the chaotic corridors, that stood motionless by high windows.

  “Well, let’s get going then,” said Allen.

  They followed Allen as he crouched and peered down the corridor again. Only one. Worth the risk rather than try to find a new route out.

  His empty rifle was on his back, and he held an ax in his hands.

  Allen stepped carefully along the corridor. It was dark. Missing ceiling tiles spilled cables like an injured animal. Empty paper cups, rolls of bandages poured over the floor. Bodies, now and then. Always treated with respect by Allen - you never knew when they could animate.

  The corridor ended in a T-junction, headed by a lift. The doors were half open. A trolly was against a fallen metal pillar from the ceiling, blocking the corridor. They had squeezed through before. Far too complicated a journey for the zed. It bounced against the trolley, a rhythmical noise, either terrifying or hypnotizing, depending on your constitution.

  On seeing Allen and the others approach, the zed moved with sudden excitement. It moaned and clicked, its jaw snapped.

  “Looks like a doctor,” said Lewis.

  “See if he wants to join us,” said Lynsey, smirking. “Could do with the help.”

  Allen smiled. He walked to the barrier. The zed reached across, hissing. Its skin rotten and grey, blisters red and peeling. Tendons visible. Barebone on a few fingers.

  Allen raised his ax and brought it down quickly. He kept his ax sharp, spending a good time with it every few nights. No use in getting the ax head stuck in bone. It needed to slice, to cleave with unerring and unforgiving merciless precision.

  The zed’s head split cleanly in two, and the zed slumped forward onto the trolley, sending plastic bottles and metal medical tools to the floor. The cart collapsed in a mighty crash. Noise like an alien invasion in the silence of the empty and dark hospital. Too loud. Far too loud.

  A metal bottle rolled across the floor; its lonely journey like a steam train in the dark.

  Allen held his hand up and put a finger to his lips. He nodded to Lewis and Singh who carefully, but with haste, took opposite positions in the adjoining corridor.

  Allen crouched facing the direction the group had just come. He raised his gun, not in preparation to shoot - they had run out of bullets many months ago - but to use the scope.

  Nothing in the yawning maw of the dark, except its eternal promise of horror.

  The silence surrounded Allen, slowly and surely, like a thick fog. Broken only by the shuffling of a foot as Lewis or Singh positioned themselves. The heavy breathing of Lynsey behind him. His own heartbeat. The patter of the rain. Sounds emerged like blossoming flowers.

  The darkness ahead remained.

  “Contact,” said Lewis, his quiet voice a bump in the dark.

  A pause.

  “Fifty yards. One,” said Lewis. “Blind.”

  “Hold,” said Allen.

  Another block of silence. Allen’s heart beat faster. Could have been seconds, could have been minutes. His eyes fixated on the wall of dark ahead of him.

  “Contact,” said Singh, covering the other corridor. “Three. Forty yards. Blind.”

  “Hold,” said Allen.

  Another shuffle of feet. It was Lynsey, moving closer to him, her breathing faster.

  “Thirty yards,” said Lewis. “Contact. Five. Blind.”

  Lewis was watching the corridor they had arrived from, their escape route; it had the first waypoint marking they had made, which led to other markings that guided them around the locked doors, the hasty barricades, the zeds.

  “Contact,” said Singh. “four, no five. Six now. Blind.”

  Too many, they had to move and find another way out.

  Allen paused. The dark vibrated. A figure emerged, then disappeared, then reappeared. Left and right, backward and forwards, non-linear, like an ant in the dirt.

  “Contact,” said Allen as a zed emerged from his dark corridor. “One. Blind.”

  “Twenty-five yards. Blind,” said Lewis.

  “Contact, nine,” said Singh. “Sir?”

  “Hold,” said Allen staring ahead. The dark undulated like the sea. Peaks and troughs of the living world and the dead.

  “Contact,” said Lewis. “Fifty yards, four more... six, shit. Group, sir.”

  “Sarge,” said Lynsey in a hushed whisper.

  “Contact,” said Allen. He
was no longer staring at the dark end of the corridor. Like a wave of death, a vibrating mess of dead flesh, they filled the hallway. Hissing and moaning chased away the silence.

  “They have sight, sir! Have sight!” said Lewis. It wasn’t panic in his voice, but the urgency of a soldier trained and comfortable with the new enemy the world had unleashed. It didn’t do to panic.

  Moans filled the corridor. The sound of clicking and hissing exploded in the air. They had seen Lewis.

  “They have sight, sir!” said Singh, now shouting to be heard over the caucus of the undead.

  Three corridors, now full of the dead.

  Allen stood up. It was too late. He looked around frantically for an escape. A few doors led to supply rooms, consultation rooms; like rats in a trap.

  “Rope, do you have the rope, Singh?”

  “Sir,” shouted Singh.

  “Ok, fall back, the elevator,” shouted Allen.

  The door was half open. Allen ran to the intersection of the three corridors and looked left and right. Full of zeds - two marauding, squirming delivery tubes of death.

  They would be on them in seconds.

  “Lewis, get that door,” shouted Allen, grabbing the other door of the elevator. They pulled them open. He looked down the shaft. The glint of metal below, the roof of the elevator cab, a drop of about ten feet,

  “Lynsey, go!” He grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her into the shaft, not allowing her any time to think. “Singh, go!”

  Singh jumped through the gap.

  The nearest zombie let out a cry and reached for Lewis. Lewis backed away; Allen grabbed Lewis’s shoulder and threw him into the darkness of the shaft.

  A zed grabbed Allen's’ shoulder. He shook it off and took a step back into the abyss. He dropped and landed hard on the elevator's roof.

  The first zed dropped in. Lewis shattered its head with his sledgehammer.

  “Lewis, Lynsey, take care of them. Singh, help me get the roof.”

  Another zombie dropped, and Lynsey swung with her baseball bat, hitting its head several times, turning its brain to pulp.

  Allen and Singh swung at the maintenance trap on the roof of the lift. He glanced above, the light blanked by the crowd of bodies at the entrance to the elevator shaft. The zeds pushed against each other, each so desperate to get down to the living flesh that they created a writhing traffic jam, allowing only one or two to pop through at a time.

  Allen hewed at the trap with his ax, Singh with his sledgehammer. The door creased and buckled. The sound echoed through the shaft, loud and incoherent, mixed with the moans and hisses and clicks of the invaders.

  Another two zeds fell through. Allen felt something hit his shoulder. The trap creased. A few more swings would do it.

  Blood splattered across Allen’s face. It dashed across the walls of the elevator shaft. Something thick and wobbling and warm struck his cheek.

  “Fucking come on!” shouted Singh. He hit the trap, and it fell through, clanging on the floor of the elevator cab below.

  “Go!” shouted Allen. He grabbed Lewis and pushed him towards the gap. Lewis fell through followed by Lynsey, Singh, and finally Allen.

  Singh and Lewis grabbed the doors of the elevator and pulled them open.

  “You ok?” said Allen to Lynsey. Blood decorated her face in thick splatters. A thread of black liquid ran down her cheek.

  “I’m good, and you?” she said.

  “I’ll be better in a few minutes.”

  A hand reached from the roof. A zed was on its front, hanging half through the trap. Allen took a well-aimed swipe with his ax and spiked the zed’s face with his blade. It stopped moving. Another hand reached from behind. Another face appeared next to the first, then a third.

  “Got it,” shouted Lewis, opening the lift doors. They were three feet below the floor, allowing a small space to climb through.

  Lewis went first. He reached through for Lynsey, who went second.

  The zeds had jammed the trap. Hands and faces clawed helplessly, mindlessly at the space between them and the prey they would never reach.

  Singh climbed out, then put his hand out for Allen.

  Allen climbed out into a corridor similar to the last. Trolleys; bodies; chairs; medical supplies; a fluorescent light fixture hung from the ceiling by one wire, rocking gently.

  “We have to go,” said Lewis, pointing ahead. Zeds filled the corridor. “We’re in sight, sir,” said Lewis.

  “Indeed we are,” said Allen. He turned to Lynsey. “You still got the bag?”

  She nodded, patting the bag of medical supplies and tablets on her back. “Don’t worry Sarge; I’m not letting this go anywhere.”

  “Ok,” said Allen, addressing everyone. “Let’s move quickly, stay tight. Seems we’ve woken up every fucker in the hospital.”

  They hustled down the corridor with Allen taking point, Lewis at the back. They threaded their way through loose barricades, moving cautiously past open doors.

  Echoes and moans hummed through the building like it was the walls of the hospital itself. Impossible to tell from what direction the sounds came. Clicks and groans. Echoes.

  Allen’s torch lit the way ahead. His heart beat fast against his chest, double whenever a shadow caught him off guard. Was it moving? Was it a zed? Just a curtain. A bundle of clothes. A dead body. But how dead?

  “Sir!” shouted Singh. Allen spun round to see Singh bring his sledgehammer down on a zed’s skull. It crushed instantly, and the zed fell like a collapsed paper bag. Blood and fragments of bone stuck on the wall before slipping down slowly.

  “Came from that room,” said Singh.

  Allen nodded at Singh and motioned for them to keep moving.

  They reached a junction, a broad arrow pointed to the left, ‘STAIRS.’

  Allen sighed as he reached the stairs. Many filing cabinets piled upon the stairwell. Chairs and trolleys, various medical equipment stacked on top completed the barricade.

  “Can we get through?” said Lynsey.

  “We may have to move some of the larger parts. Its time and noise I’m worried about,” said Allen. The stairwell sat at the end of a long corridor, with only the faintest streaks of light from under closed doors.

  “Let’s get started,” said Lewis grabbing a chair and taking it off the top of the pile.

  “Singh, keep an eye out for us,” said Allen.

  Lewis pulled himself up a filing cabinet, so he was straddling the top of the barricade. “It goes all the way down sarge. He started grabbing furniture and passing it to Allen and Lynsey, who set them aside.

  They moved slowly, carefully, trying not to make noise. Whispering when they had too. Even so, every movement was taken by the bare walls of the dead building and thrown around, amplified. Silent became loud.

  “Contact,” said Singh, crouched a few yards from them, the scope on his gun pulled tight to his eye.

  The barricade was not nearly cleared enough for them to get out.

  “Two. Blind.”

  “Lewis?” whispered Allen.

  Lewis shook his head. “No way through.”

  “Get down.”

  Lewis crawled down slowly and picked up his sledgehammer.

  “Four,” said Singh. “Five. Still blind. Thirty yards.”

  Between them and the zeds was one door.

  “Seven, blind,” said Singh.

  It could be locked.

  “Eight.”

  “Go for the door,” said Allen.

  Walking directly towards the zeds.

  A loud moan rattled through the corridor. The zeds started to snap their jaws. Warming up like a wind-up toy. Undead teeth clicking in unison like a shop full of broken clocks.

  “Run!” shouted Allen.

  They reached the door. The zeds only yards away. Allen turned the door handle. Locked.

  “Shit.”

  He shouldered it; it didn’t budge.

  “Lewis!” shouted Allen.

 
Lewis took a swing at the door with his sledgehammer. The handle and lock shattered under the weight of his full swing. They piled into the door. Once everyone was in, Allen pushed the door closed behind him. Lewis joined him as they fought to keep it closed against the wave of zeds. An arm prised its way in, creating a gap. Allen hewed at it, and the rotten flesh and brittle bones broke. Half the forearm hung on strands of tendons. Allen snapped the door shut and the forearm fell to the floor with a wet thump.

  “Is there a way out?” shouted Allen.

  The door rattled with the weight of dead flesh behind it.

  They were in what looked like a consultancy room. Desk, a bed, a cabinet with drawers, all pulled open and empty. A window exposed the grey day. The white noise of rain on the glass throbbed gently behind the desperate cries of the zeds in the corridor.

  “Another door,” said Lynsey, running towards an interior door in the left wall.

  “Wait!” shouted Allen.

  She didn’t. She pulled the door open. She screamed as a zed fell onto her. It wore a blood-stained grey suit. Like most building zeds, it was reasonably well preserved: no exposure to rot their skin; no branches to tear their flesh; no great falls to break their bones.

  Singh swung his sledgehammer and connected with the zed’s head. A heavy thud and the head hung at an unnatural angle against its back. Its jaw clicked. Singh brought down another swing. The head came clean off. The zed dropped dead.

  The door throbbed as the zeds outside heard the commotion inside. Smelt the blood. The fear.

  “Lynsey?” said Allen.

  She fell to her knee, her hand on her neck.

  “Lynsey?”

  She raised her hand and showed her palm to Allen. Red, wet with warm blood. A gaping hole in her neck revealed dark streams of blood dripping onto her shoulder.

  “Shit,” said Lewis.

  Noise from outside. Banging, thumps. Human-sounding grunts. Heavy objects falling to the floor.

  “I’ll get them away,” said Lynsey, standing up. “I can go, lead them away. You escape.” She wobbled and steadied herself, placing a hand on the desk.

  “No,” said Allen.

  "Why not?" said Lynsey. Allen didn't know.

  The sounds from the corridor lessened. Lewis gave Allen a quizzical look.