Why did I get out of the fucking car?
Jack smashed his fist against the nearest unit. It splintered. A pain shot through his hand. He let out a cry. The door tumbled off the cupboard, crashing to the ground, making more noise than seemed feasible for a simple kitchen unit door.
Jack cradled his hand and looked at the ceiling, closing his eyes, crying. “Why,” he whispered. “Why?”
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
Jack forced a smile, turned to Annie, her face creased in concern.
“Nothing’s wrong, Annie. Daddy just hurt his hand on the door.”
“It’s broken,” she said, showing severe concern over the splintered cupboard door.
“Don’t worry. I was just looking for something to keep the water in.”
“Why? The stream is only there.”
“I wanted to store it in the house, so we didn’t have to go out and get it.”
“You shouldn’t store water in plastic,” she said. “If it warms up, then bad things from the plastic can go in it. That’s what Harriet at the school said.”
Jack didn’t know whether to laugh or cry again. “Ok, darling. We won’t store the water.”
“No, we can use that to put the flowers in,” she said pointing to the plastic bottle in the cupboard. “They don’t mind about the chemicals I guess.”
“You have some flowers?” he said, noticing for the first time the colorful bouquet of wildflowers in his daughter’s hand.
“Yes, I thought we’d put them in the lounge, make it pretty.”
“We could,” he said. He crouched down and held out his arms. “Can Daddy have a hug?”
Annie thought about it for a moment, then said, “Of course.” She walked over to him.
Jack wrapped his arms around her. “I’ll always do my best to look after you, honey. Always. I might not be the best, but I’ll try.”
“I know,” she said.
It would be dark in a few hours. They had just finished another can of beans to fight off the hunger pangs. Annie had been relegated upstairs while Jack got on with business: he had a job to do. A nasty job.
The half-body seemed to stare at him. Empty sockets in brown leathery skin, like wells as deep as the earth.
Jack fought nausea in his stomach - and the fear, there was always fear - and grabbed the old farmer’s ankles. They felt thin and brittle. Jack pulled, expecting the legs to come clean away from the body. They didn’t. He gently slid the body off the chair onto the floor. He didn’t want to touch any more than the ankles. He dragged the body out into the hall, to the kitchen, and into the back garden.
Where to put the body?
The outhouse. That would do. Jack dragged it the further ten feet to the outhouse and past the various pieces of old farm equipment and gardening goods into the far corner. Out of the way. He covered it in some empty plastic grow bags.
He pulled the door closed. He would tell Annie the outhouse was out of bounds. Whether she listened to him or not was another thing, but at least he tried.
It would be dark soon. Shadows crawled across the valley floor, and red glowed under the clouds. Tomorrow he would address the food question. For now, he was just glad they were still alive.
He stared a little too long into the distant valley. He was scared again, his imagination walking up with the night. He went back into the farmhouse and closed the door behind him. He thought about looking for a key to lock it. It was late, though. There might not even be one. It would be fine.
Crowe preferred the darkness. He always had. Even as a child he had relished the nights under his duvet, the lights out, just him and his torch and his books. Books about Bear Grylls, about Navy Seals, books about Bruce Lee. The darkness was a respite from the noise and fuss of the real world outside his room. The real world that always seemed to have him in a fight; he never liked stupidity and he called it, even when he was a kid. His quickness of temper and strong opinions brought him through three different schools, and his parents close to despair. Usual parents, usual upbringing, he supposed. Dad worked as an electrician, Mum as a beautician. Past his youth and heading into his teens he lost his respect for them once he realized their lives consisted of nothing but slogging it at work for a week then settling down with a few beers and mindless quiz shows at the weekend.
The army had been his savior, his grace, and his path to freedom to be who he really was. He liked confrontation, he liked reality, and there was nothing more real than army life. You sunk or you swam, and Crowe swam. Respected by peers and officers alike he found he didn’t need to read books in the darkness anymore, he was home.
Given his predilection to pragmatism, he still had inner voices telling him he should be long gone from Unity, but another voice told him it was his duty to do just a little digging first; get to the bottom of what was going on. And, if he was honest, he needed to find out what had happened to Sarah. Against all his better reasoning, he was worried about her. He cared about her. Dammit.
He crouched by a chalet, waiting for the soldier to pass - soldier being a broad term, given the girth and gait of the lazy looking fat man with the gun. It was only lack of pale complexion and trailing guts that betrayed him for man and not a zombie. Some people just have no respect for themselves, thought Crowe.
He moved from chalet to chalet under cover of darkness, hiding and scoping, checking for guards, until he reached the reception area. This was Dalby’s hub. He had set up camp in the old reception building, James’s old office. His ‘troops’ were always coming and going, carrying their guns and new dictates from the self-appointed Grand Vizier, Major ball-bag.
Halogens had been set up around the car park, illuminating all paths into and out of the car park and therefore the reception and surrounding buildings; the bar, the sports hall, the gym. Crowe crouched behind this building out of sight of the glowing eyes. Many soldiers were stationed around the edges of the car park. Nothing for Crow to do but sit and wait in the darkness.
That suited him fine.
Jack sat up. The scream was unmistakably Annie’s. In his dreams, or in real life? He felt the bed beside him, it was empty. The cry was in real life.
He jumped from the bed. “Annie!” he shouted as he ran from the room. He needed her to scream again, so he could find her.
Another scream, thank you, Annie. Downstairs, the lounge? The kitchen? He bounded down the stairs two at a time. He reached the bottom. He had no weapon. He’d left the shotgun by the bed. No time. A sound from the kitchen, something crashing to the ground. He ran, praying he wasn’t too late; for what, he didn’t want to think about.
Dark shadows moving. The kitchen door was open, waving gently in a new breeze, framing the dark ink of the night outside. A scream from the corner of the room. Two shadows, one cowering in the corner, another walking towards the cowering shadow. It hissed and clicked.
It was one of them, a zombie. In his kitchen. Jack tried to move his legs, but he couldn’t. They were frozen. What the fuck, move, dammit, move. Fucking move! He had no weapon. His body froze solid in fear.
Another scream, the figure moved another step closer to his daughter. It would eat her. He had seen what they did to his wife. They grabbed and pulled at the flesh with their blunt fingers; pulling the skin apart. Ripping into it with their teeth. Tendons and muscles and yellow sebaceous fat would spill like the remains of a dirty kitchen’s waste bin.
Unless he moved. Panic, eyes wild in the darkness he looked to the worktop for a weapon. Nothing there, nothing he could see. He took a step back out of the kitchen, you don’t want to see this, said a voice in his head. His foot kicked against something. He looked down; the cupboard door he had knocked out. He picked it up. He was only a few feet from his daughter. The zombie was on her; it leaned over, its hands reaching out like Nosferatu. Annie’s scream, the loudest and most desperate he had ever heard, was ended with one word, “Daddy!”
He stepped forward and brought the unit down on the zombie’s h
ead. Once, twice. The door snapped, but still, the zombie didn’t stop. Annie’s hands were pushing out against the dark form, her little arms buckling under the weight of the undead. Its teeth clicked liked a terrible metronome in the dark, keeping time to the tune of the devil.
He threw down the remains of the unit and grabbed the zombie’s head. His fingers crushed the soft skull, the sound of cracking, and brain matter squeezed out from under the shattered bone, over Jack’s fingers. He squeezed harder, shouting. He didn’t realize he was shouting, but he heard it. It was him, seized with desperation.
The body of the zombie went limp and fell to the ground. He didn’t have time to wipe the brains from his hands before Annie had jumped on him, her arms gripping tight around his neck. He struggled to breathe.
“You ok?” he spluttered.
“Yes,” she managed through sobs.
He’d saved her. He’d done it, and he’d killed one of the fuckers.
But it never ended, this life. It kept on throwing the shit at you, ’til it stuck. She screamed again.
“Daddy!”
He turned and slipped in the spilled effluent of zombie on the floor. He fell on his back, Annie with him. Both of them on the floor. Shadows at the door, his eyes now used to the light made out the rotten carcasses as they shuffled in from outside. He could see two but heard more. The strangest thoughts at the strangest times: what is the collective noun for zombies?
The first zombie tripped on Jack’s feet and fell on top of him. Jack managed to get one hand up to hold it inches away from his face. It snapped and snarled, its stinking breath promising death of the worst kind.
“Run, Annie,” he managed.
But she couldn’t; Jack's body pinning her against the wall. Another zombie fell on top of the first. Jack’s arm began to shake. How long until one bit…
Annie screamed in his ear. He hoped he would die first; he didn’t want to see her go. Selfish until the end. He cried. Seconds to live and he started to cry. She was watching him, seeing him cry.
A thunk in the darkness. Like a small drum. Followed immediately by a crack and a soft squelch.
Then another thunk. Cutting through the hisses and the clicks of the undead.
The corpse on top of Jack went still. Mercifully still. Jack pushed the body off him. He was shouting and yelling, rubbing his hands down his body, like a man covered in ants. Something glinted in the moonlight in the body next to him. It looked like the cold of steel.
More thunks, followed by the sound of falling. He looked up to see the zombies falling one after another.
Annie had grabbed his neck again, she was lying on top of him. He should get up, but it was better on the floor. Getting up meant accepting that life was still going on around him. He looked again at the body next to him on the floor. The glint was steel; sharp and pointed. It was an arrowhead.
“Jesus, get up,” said a voice that made Jack jump. He looked up. A woman stood at the door. Her silver hair, shining in the moonlight, tied back tight. In one hand was a crossbow. “Come on, get up, we have to leave.”
Jack just stared.
“Now!” she reached forward and grabbed Annie by the hand. “You coming, or am I getting her out of here?”
Jack sat up. “What the hell are you doing, let her go!”
The woman shook her head. “I haven’t got time for this, let’s go, now.”
She picked up Annie. The little girl reached out her hand, “Daddy!”
Jack jumped up. “Hey, wait,” he followed the woman as she ran out of the back door.
“You coming now? Good. This way,” she pointed up one side of the valley. “We haven’t got long,” she said, motioning to the other side of the valley. It moved like an ant’s nest, undulating in the dark.
“Medium-sized horde,” said the woman as they ran.
“Wait,” said Jack. “Let me take her, I want to carry my daughter.”
“Be my guest.” The woman put her on the ground. Jack swiped her into his arms as they ran. She hugged him.
“I’m Grace,” said the woman as they ran up the hill.
“I’m Jack, and this is Annie.”
“Pleased to meet you. This way.”
Jack pumped his legs. This was fine, this was something he could do. He could run.
Chapter 19
Crowe didn’t mind waiting, especially on mild nights like this one. He could wait for hours. He could stay up all night. His dreams were never pleasant, and he preferred to be awake. Since joining the army he had been running on no more than six hours a night, that was his standard. Four hours when deployed. And he didn’t mind. His lack of sleep instilled a kind of unreality in the world that he liked.
And there it was; the activity he had been waiting for. Good things come to those who wait. Three soldiers emerged from the main reception building, carrying a tray with food and drink on it. They set off towards the sports hall, their frames disappearing into the shadows as they moved out of the glare of the halogens.
Crowe set off, keeping to the edges of the buildings, his feet light. He got to the sports hall just as the two soldiers turned around its far corner. Crowe would need to sprint across open ground. A quick look left and right; nothing to see. He burst out of his hiding place, his legs moving as fast he could will them. It didn’t do to wait, to second guess yourself. Just move. It’s the fuckers who think about it who get shot.
He hit the sports hall wall, literally; he didn’t slow down, he had let the wall do that for him. He reached the corner of the sports hall. There they were, about fifty feet away, over more open ground, unlocking the door to a small concrete building. Crowe made out yellow hazard signs on the building; big black sparks indicated he was looking at a substation.
He waited for the soldiers to open the door and enter the building; only two did. The third stood waiting, his gun held casually by his side. He wasn't expecting any trouble. He took out his phone, and his face was illuminated by the screen. People still couldn’t get those fucking things out of their faces. Didn’t matter; worked for him.
The soldier was twenty feet away. What Crowe was thinking was a gamble, but Crowe thought it worth it. He had made the decision; no more thought, just do it. Crowe took a few deep breaths, gripped his baseball bat and ran from the edge of the sports hall.
The soldier wasn’t expecting anything. It took him a few seconds to register the sound of someone running, so by the time he looked up, Crowe had already covered about six feet. The soldier's expression under the light of his phone first showed incomprehension, then surprise. It wasn’t until Crowe had covered ten feet that the surprise turned to fear. Another few feet before it showed the determination to act.
Crowe raised his bat.
The soldier threw down the phone and fumbled with his gun; it settled behind him while he had been scrolling through his phone. By the time he managed to get his finger behind the trigger guard, it was too late.
Crowe brought down the bat with a satisfying thump. The soldier wobbled and fell. Crowe threw the bat to the side and unwrapped the gun from the young man on the ground. He looked at it and shook his head. It was loaded, but the safety was still on. “Fucking amateurs.” He turned off the safety and put the gun over his shoulder.
The door creaked gently as he pushed it open into a dark corridor. He made out stairs going down. He took them slowly, the sight of his gun leading the way. The echo of footsteps scuffling on concrete came from below. The sound of a lock in a key and a door opening.
Crowe got to the bottom of the stairwell and peered around the corner. Light spilled from an open doorway, about ten feet away, into the corridor. One soldier stood on the other side of the door. The sound of voices echoed.
“Food and drink. Eat it up, traitors.”
“She needs help,” said a woman’s voice.
“We decide what she needs. And I decide she needs to sleep it off.”
Now or never. No point in waiting. Crowe popped round the corn
er, quickly took aim and fired. The shot filled the corridor like a thunderclap. His shot was true, and the soldier by the doorway fell. Crowe waited, his aim on the door. The other soldier popped his head out, and Crowe fired immediately, with only a slight adjustment to the height of his aim. The soldier’s head was blown clean off.
Crowe ran to the doorway. He saw Sarah first, against one of the walls, her face bruised and bloodied, all closed black eyes and swollen jaw. Her mouth hung open. Anger filled him. He was aware of other people in the room, a quick glance: a woman, a man, and a young boy.
“Adam?” he said.
“Yes,” said the boy.
That was all he had time for. The concrete next to Crowe chipped in time with another thunderclap. Without thinking, Crowe ducked back into the darkness of the corridor. If he had gone into the room, he would have have been caught. Like a rat in a trap.
Instead, he ran down the corridor, shots following him. He fired behind, not aiming to hit anything, just to give himself some time. The corridor turned. Doors lined along the wall. Dirty and dusty and not used. He pushed one of them open, hoping his pursuers would waste time checking that door. He turned into another corridor.
A ladder on the end wall, leading up. Crowe climbed it, his boots clanking against the metal. No hiding now. It ended in a metal manhole. He pushed at it, it was stuck, but there was give. He thanked whatever maintenance men had used this and kept it free. It scraped clear, and Crowe pushed himself into the night. A shot followed him, and he felt a sting on his ankle as he pulled himself onto the grass.
Only a graze.
He jumped up and ran, ignoring the burning in his ankle. It would keep. For twenty feet ahead was an open field, then the main road, then some woods. Halfway across the field, Crowe dropped to the ground and aimed at the manhole. The first soldier emerged. Crowe fired, and the soldier fell back into the earth with a cry. Crowe sprang up and ran for the road.
Ten seconds later and more shots followed him, but Crowe was sure they couldn’t see him, never mind hit him. He leaped over the fence, across the road, and into the woods.
The Fall Series (Book 3): The Fence Walker Page 25