by Shane Carrow
We kept running. The zombies seemed to be coming closer now, screeching and howling. In the flash of our muzzle flares I could briefly make out their appearance as something more than just dark figures. They were mostly civilians, wearing jeans and jackets and heavy coats, although I spotted the occasional soldier in camouflage here and there. And they were fresh. If they weren’t covered in blood and slightly pale and screaming out for human flesh, they could almost pass for human. It was like being back in Perth, right at the start of it all.
The problem with fresh zombies is that the can move a lot more freely than one that’s been rotting away for months. They’re not as agile or as fast as a living person, but when dozens of them come swarming out of the darkness towards you, and you’re acutely aware of just how many bullets you have left before you need to reload – well, that’s where the panic comes from.
I threw a quick glance over my shoulder as we ran, our guns cracking, dispatching undead left and right. My heart sank. Stumbling along in our wake were thirty or forty of the bastards, and I could make out even more of them further in the distance. Like running a magnet through a field of metal filings, we were drawing them from all over the fields, and their hunting cries were attracting those even more distant.
As we approached the back patio of the farmhouse there was more bad news. The entire place was boarded up, wooden planks across the windows and doors. Not a single entrance open to us.
Blake, in the lead, quickly re-evaluated the plan. There were two big grey LPG cylinders next to a water tank, right up against the farmhouse wall. As we drew nearer he shouldered his rifle, jumped, grabbed the top of the cylinders and hauled himself up onto them, then onto the tank. He tossed his duffel bag up onto the roof and then knelt down, extending a hand out to the next of us to reach the LPG tanks. It was Jones, sprinting in mad fear, and he shot up the side of the tanks in an impressive adrenaline-fuelled scramble, barely needing Blake’s helping hand, and scarpering further up onto the farmhouse roof as soon as he made it.
I was the next to arrive, but I paused to wait for Jess, trying to catch my breath. With her arm in a plaster cast she’d need help, so I knelt down, letting her jump up onto my shoulders so Blake could more easily grab her. “You next!” he shouted, after pulling her up towards him.
I looked behind me. Rahvi, Cavalli and Zhou were backing towards us, rifles in hand, shooting at the wave of approaching undead. As they drew closer Rahvi had swapped his Steyr for his Remington shotgun, the heavy blasts interspersing the bursts from the rifles. The dead were closing in.
“Matt, come on!” Blake barked.
I didn’t need to be told again. I gave it a short run-up, jumped, grabbed the lip of the LPG cylinder with my good hand and let Blake grab the wrist of my crippled one. He seized the scruff of my jacket with his other hand and hauled me up onto the water tank.
Jess had already climbed up onto the rooftop; I slipped out of my backpack and tossed it up after her, before kneeling down next to Blake and reaching out a hand for the next person, shouting words of encouragement. It was Zhou, a look of bug-eyed terror on his face, and he gave Jones a run for his money for the fastest climb. Now only Cavalli and Rahvi were down below, firing bursts at zombies that were only metres away, with more staggering out of the darkness every second, dozens of them – no, hundreds of them…
Cavalli’s rifle ran dry, and he turned to run towards us, tossing it up onto the water tank, Zhou catching it with both hands. The clearance diver took a running jump and leapt up at us. Blake and I grabbed his arms. His weight caught me off balance – he’s a big guy – and I nearly got pulled over the edge, but Zhou grabbed me around the waist and pulled me back. Together the three of us slowly hauled Cavalli up onto the water tank.
Rahvi was still down below, his back to the tank now, firing shells at point blank range, tearing the zombies’ heads apart. They were coming fast, frighteningly fast, lurching forward at a speed just barely below a jog. “Corporal, get your fucking ass up here right now!” Blake screamed, lying flat on his stomach with his arms stretched down as far as they could go.
The Remington emptied its last shell. Rahvi swung the butt out into the face of a zombie, spending it sprawling, and then threw the shotgun at another, knocking it off balance. Then he turned around, looked up at us and jumped.
Blake grabbed one of his arms with both hands. Cavalli and I seized the other, and started pulling him up with all our strength. But we’d all seen it, up on the water tank, we’d all already seen it. There were too many of them. They were clustered all around him now. Rahvi kicked at the zombies grasping for his legs, but within a few seconds they’d wrapped grey fingers around his boots and pants, pulling him down towards them. Zhou pushed between us, reaching a hand out to grab the collar of Rahvi’s jacket, four of us now, playing tug of war with the zombies. Every inch of ground had to be fought for. My muscles were screaming, and there were more zombies grabbing at his legs every second. “You shoot me, sarge!” Rahvi screamed at Blake. “Don’t you let it happen to me, fucking shoot me!”
We pulled and pulled, while down below us the horde shrieked and pulled back. Suddenly there was a sharp tug, as Rahvi slipped down further. His eyes shot wide as he realised, as it truly sank in, what was going to happen. All of us realised that we were going to lose him.
Then there were gunshots. On the roof of the farmhouse, just to our left, Jones and Jess had come to the edge of the roof and were shooting at the crowd of the dead below. Jones was gripping his Steyr, while Jess had taken a Browning from someone’s backpack, from the gear we’d tossed up on the roof, resting her wrist on her cast. As bullets ripped through the skulls of the zombies hauling Rahvi down, they began to relinquish their grip, and we slowly dragged him up onto the water tank, puffing and gasping with the effort.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Rahvi was pulling up both cuffs of his pants, checking his skin for bite marks. He was clean, although there was a deep tooth-shaped indentation on his left boot. “Little too close for fucking comfort,” he panted.
Together, we pulled ourselves up onto the roof of the farmhouse. “Nice shooting,” Blake said to Jess and Jones, still out of breath. “We would have lost him.”
“I wouldn’t celebrate yet,” Jones said bleakly, gesturing around us.
The howls of the dead were echoing out into the night, nearly drowning out the sound of the battle to the west. The undead horde was ringing the farmhouse, swarming all around it, clawing at the brick walls and banging at the boarded windows. I had a sick, horrible flashback to Eucla, when half the town had been stranded on the second floor of the Amber Hotel.
“Fucking hell,” Zhou swore. “Where the fuck did they come from?”
Another round of AA fire from Tamworth lit up the distant horizon, answering his question.
“They came out of nowhere,” Jess breathed. “They just... that’s not supposed to happen! The Army killed them all six months ago!”
“Well, now they’re making some new ones,” Rahvi said.
Sergeant Blake had walked away from the group slightly, further down the roof, and knelt over to start pulling up tiles. I followed him. “What are you doing?”
“Getting down into the house,” Blake said.
“Um. Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Somebody boarded this place up,” Blake said, lowering himself into the hole he’d created. “If they’re still here, I want to meet them.” And with that he dropped down into the crawlspace.
I sighed, and whistled over to Rahvi. He saw what we were doing, tapped Cavalli on the shoulder, and the two of them came after us. I dropped down into the hole after Blake, pulling my Browning from my belt and cocking it with my thumb. A rifle is no good in an enclosed space, even with two good hands. I left it on the roof.
It was pitch black below the tiles, but Blake had pulled a tiny keyring flashlight from his backpack, which he placed in his mouth as
he crawled across wooden beams and fluffy insulation, searching for an entry point. I set out after him, hands and knees brushing across rat droppings and dead electrical wires. Behind me, I heard Cavalli and Rahvi climbing down into the crawlspace.
I thought about who might be down in the house below. New England farmers. People used to living away from the strongholds, dealing with the occasional stray zombie. People who, given the events of the last week, might not be too keen on seeing Republic soldiers dropping out of their ceiling. But my gut feeling was that the house was empty, abandoned.
My gut feeling was wrong. Blake found a skylight and removed the plastic casing. He gripped a wooden beam and slowly lowered himself down into the house, flashlight still in his mouth, then dropped onto the floor. Rahvi, Cavalli and I gathered at the edge of the hole to stare down at him. He’d entered the kitchen, gripping the edge of a counter to steady his landing.
From above, we saw him put his hands in the air, slowly removing the flashlight from his mouth. “Whoa there,” he said. “I’m not an enemy. Put the gun down.”
“You brought them here,” said someone we couldn’t see. A gruff man’s voice.
Rahvi looked at me and Cavalli and put a finger to his lips. No shit, I thought.
“I’m sorry,” the sergeant said. “But we didn’t have anywhere else to run.”
“Take the gun out of your holster and slide it across the counter to me. Throw the backpack over, too.”
Blake did as he was asked, removing his holster and backpack, putting them on the counter.
“How many of you are there?” the man asked.
“Seven. We were heading south across the fields when we were attacked.”
“Tell the rest of your boys to come on down out of the roof.”
Blake glanced up at us. “Matt! Cavalli! Come down.”
I wasn’t so keen on that, but I wasn’t going to run back up to the roof and leave Blake in the lurch, either. I glanced at the other two, and Rahvi nodded. I holstered the Browning and lowered myself down into the kitchen, Blake moving aside slightly to give me landing space.
The occupant of the farmhouse was standing on the other side of the counter, holding a double-barrelled shotgun aimed directly at us. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, and had several days’ worth of stubble across his face. Blake’s Browning was now shoved into his jeans, and the backpack was over one of his shoulders. “You said there were seven,” he said, as Cavalli dropped down out of the roof behind us.
“Still up on the roof, on the tiles,” Blake lied. Rahvi was staying perfectly still at the lip of the skylight, not making a sound.
“Guns, both of you,” the farmer said. Cavalli and I drew our Brownings and passed them across the counter to him. He tucked them into his belt, and, now bristling with weaponry, he asked: “How many more guns do you have?”
“Six Steyr Augs, a few Brownings, and about a thousand rounds of ammo,” Blake said. “It’s all up on the roof. Come up with us. We can take down this horde in less than an hour. There’s only about a hundred, maybe two hundred of them.”
The farmer shook his head. “No. You’ll just attract more of them.”
“Where the hell are they from?” Cavalli asked. “Tamworth?”
The farmer nodded. “That’s what I reckon. They started showing up a few nights ago. Saw a few of them during the day, but they come in strength at night.”
“No, they don’t,” I frowned. “Night or day doesn’t make a difference to them.”
“I’m telling you, son, they move more at night.”
“Wouldn’t that just make it harder for them to see?”
“Maybe they don’t use their eyes,” Cavalli said.
“Then what’s the difference? Why would they hunt at night instead of during the day?”
“Maybe,” the farmer said, still pointing the shotgun at us, “they know we use our eyes.”
I thought he was full of shit. But that still creeped me out.
“Are you alone here?” Blake asked him.
“I got my family down in the basement,” he said. “We got food, water, supplies to last us a few weeks...”
“That’s a bad idea,” I said, cutting him off. “You need to get them out of the basement and onto the roof right now.”
“Why the hell would I do that?” he growled.
“Look,” I said. “You live in New England. Maybe you have to pick off the occasional zombie that comes into your fields, but that was about it until now, right?”
The farmer said nothing, so I continued. “You’ve got the right idea. Boarding up your windows and using furniture for barricades. But the last thing you want to do is hide in the basement. There’s nowhere else to go from there, and sooner or later, as the horde gets bigger, they’ll get in. They’ll break the door down through sheer force of numbers. What you want to do is get up on the roof. They can’t do shit then, because they can’t climb. And you’ve got a better chance of being rescued from the roof than in your basement. Maybe a chopper will come along. Or at least you can shoot at them from up there. Trust me, man, I’ve been in exactly that situation.”
“This isn’t something you can just wait out,” Blake agreed. “Tamworth is going to fall. There are, what, twenty thousand people there? This is just a trickle compared to that. You should come south with us. Help us fight off this horde, and we’ll move out.”
“And where exactly are you planning to go?” the farmer said, raising his voice – the horde of the dead was starting to screech even louder, slamming and banging on the window planks.
“Snowy Mountains,” Blake said. “We have a hideout there.”
The farmer gripped his shotgun a little more tightly. “You’re not Republic soldiers, are you?” he said.
“No,” Blake replied. “We’re from the Globemaster that was shot down. We’re with the government on Christmas Island. The real government. The real Army. The Australian Army.”
The banging was getting louder. My heart raced faster. Even with the thickness of the planks and barricades between us, I didn’t like being on the same level as the undead. I wanted to be back up on the comparative safety of the roof.
“Doesn’t make a fucking difference to me,” the farmer said.
“Look,” I said, nearly shouting now over the howls and screeches. “There’s a hundred or more zombies outside and you’ve got the gun pointed at us?”
“They’re not getting in here, son,” the farmer said. “Don’t you worry about that. You just worry about me…”
There was a sudden sound of breaking glass from another room. Splintering wood, and the howls of the undead growing louder.
The farmer dashed into the next room, and the three of us followed, Rahvi still lurking up in the crawlspace. It was a small lounge with an empty fireplace, the couches and coffee table piled up against the window. One of the couches was moving, as the weight of the corpses on the other side pounded against it. A long grey arm was snaking out through the gap, grasping at the air.
The farmer threw his weight against the couch, pushing it back against the force, and reaching around to point his shotgun into the gap the arm was protruding from. The blast was deafening in the enclosed space, and left my ears ringing as Blake, Cavalli and myself joined the farmer in pushing the barricade back up against the wall. Blake had grabbed his Browning back from the man’s belt without him noticing, and was peering through the gaps in the barricade, squeezing off precise shots at the dead outside. The weight slackened a little, and we managed to push the couch back over it, panting for breath.
More sounds were coming from other rooms – breaking glass, cracking planks. “Oh, no, right – they’re not getting in here, don’t worry about that!” Cavalli yelled, over the hideous shrieking of the undead. “Tight fucking ship, eh, mate?”
“The roof!” Blake yelled. “We have to get up on the roof!”
The farmer wasn’t listening – he was already fleeing down into the hallway. Blak
e screamed at him, dashed after him, and I followed, arriving in the corridor in time to see a door slam shut. Blake was tugging at the handle, which was locked. The farmer had disappeared down into his precious basement. “Open the door!” Blake screamed. “Open the fucking door!”
“Forget him!” I yelled, grabbing his arm.
“He has my backpack!” Blake yelled, beginning to slam a booted foot into the door over and over again.
“So what?”
“So the codebook’s in there!”
That was one of those moments: a horrifying, crystallised realisation. If the undead managed to break down the barricades and enter the house, they’d seal off the basement. The codebook would be lost to us unless we managed to take down a horde that was growing larger every minute.
So we had to defend the farmhouse.
Or just kick the door down. I stood next to Blake, both of us levelling kicks at it, trying to knock it down. But it was a thick door, strong and old, and nothing short of a battering ram was going to bring it down. Blake turned to me. “Get back up onto the roof, get the ammo down here. We’re going to need it.”
I ran back out through the living room – Rahvi had come down and joined Cavalli, the two of them with their backs pressed against a couch, trying desperately to stop the undead from pushing through the barricade. Both of them yelled something at me as I ran past, but I was gone, back in the kitchen, scrambling up onto the counter, through the skylight, through the crawlspace and onto the roof. Zhou, Jones and Jess were standing around the tiles Blake had removed, holding their guns. “What the hell’s going on?” Zhou hissed.
“Down there, there’s a dude with the PAL codes in the basement, we need to stop them from breaking into the house,” I babbled. Didn’t have time for a complex explanation. I grabbed the duffel bags with the ammunition in them and ducked back into the hole. “Down!” I yelled. “Everyone needs to come down! All hands on deck!”
I dropped the bags into the hole. The weight of them broke right through the insulation and plaster ceiling, dropping down in a powdery cloud into the living room below. Well, that was a timesaver. I dropped down after them, rolling on the carpet as I landed, covered in white dust. Rahvi and Cavalli still had their backs up against the couch and were losing ground. “For fuck’s sake give us a hand here!” Cavalli screamed.