Mike brought up the hatchet in one hand and pulled a screwdriver from his belt with the other. As the three RAMs converged on him, it was difficult to establish who looked more menacing, him or them. He raised his right foot hard and fast, pushing the sole of his boot against the first creature’s chest with all his might. Its face did not change expression. There was no frustration or surprise, just the ferocious grimace of a rabid animal. It shot backwards, losing its footing and collapsing to the ground. The other two reached Mike at the same time. With equal power, he brought down the hatchet onto the head of one and pushed the screwdriver up under the chin of the other. Both dropped like bowling balls, and the sludgy mixture of blood and tissue enveloped the shining metal blades.
By this time, the first RAM had regained its footing and was heading back towards Mike. He withdrew his weapons from the fallen creatures and, with perfect synchronicity, dropped the hatchet square in the middle of his attacker’s forehead while plunging the screwdriver into its left temple. He held on to them as the beast fell. Its grey eyes flickered and Mike noticed how small its shattered pupils were in the strong morning light. He looked at his hands, expecting them to be covered in gore, but to his surprise, the gaping wounds merely pulsed rather than gushed.
When he was sure there was no life left to extinguish, he withdrew his weapons and wiped them off on the clothing of the fallen. He looked up and saw that the remaining two RAMs had made it into the kitchen. Although adrenalin was pumping through his veins and he was confident he could deal with them as convincingly as he had the previous three, escape was the more sensible option.
He turned back to the fence and saw Samantha, still perched half in, half out of both gardens, her face a confused picture of horror and awe. He signalled for her to go. Mike followed, picked up the rucksack and together they ran through Mrs Green’s garden to the front of the house where the ambulance was waiting, its engine running. As he ran by the kitchen window, the house looked like it was long abandoned and he fleetingly wondered what had become of the Greens.
The back doors of the vehicle swung open and the pair dived in, pulling the doors firmly shut behind them.
Inside the ambulance, both children were still crying, but the noise lessened to a degree with Mike and Samantha safely in the back. Mike held on to a support strap on the ceiling as the vehicle moved off. Samantha tumbled backwards, but he caught her around the waist. When he let go, she flopped down onto the gurney and felt her entire body shake. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she wanted to get out of the ambulance and run, run as fast as she could, run back home to her childhood, where monsters were only found in fairy tales, and where her mother would hold her in her arms and protect her from any harm. She looked around at the frightened and confused faces, mirror images of how she felt inside. She looked up at Mike, but he was already heading into the cab of the ambulance. “Thanks, Mike,” she called after him, her voice wobbling, but nowhere near as much as the rest of her.
“You’re welcome,” he said to her, before climbing into the cab. “How’s it going, Doc?” he asked as he dropped into the passenger seat, releasing a few more shards of glass from the folds in his clothing. Lucy looked across at him, eager to hear the story of how they had won their freedom, but she knew that it would have to wait until later. Her eyes ran up and down his frame with expert speed.
“Your leg’s bleeding,” she said, gesturing down to a dark purple patch forming at the back of Mike’s calf.
Mike looked down. He hadn’t even felt it, but it must have happened when he went through the window. He took out his handkerchief and pulled up his trouser leg while he tied a makeshift tourniquet.
“You should get into the back and let Samantha look at it.”
“When we find somewhere safe I’ll get it seen to. I want us to get out of the city first.” Mike pulled his trouser leg back down over the temporary patch and realised his hands were shaking. He balled them into fists and placed them in his pockets, hoping Lucy wouldn’t notice.
“So where am I going?” Lucy asked, with her eyes nervously flicking from side to side as the ambulance trundled up the middle of the road.
“We need to keep straight on for about a mile. Then we come to a roundabout. We turn right there and keep going for—”
“Whoa! There, boy. Just give it to me a little at a time.”
The crying in the back had abated for the time being, but there was the sense it could begin again at the slightest provocation.
“How’s everybody back there?” asked Mike, turning round in his seat.
He saw that both Jake and Sammy had red eyes. Emma was rubbing Jake’s shoulder frantically. He was obviously still in pain from being manhandled into the back of the ambulance. Samantha was holding Sammy close to her, the fear and uncertainty reflected on all of their faces. Mike decided not to push for an answer and turned back round.
The carriageway was deserted. Once, the same streets would have been packed with rush hour traffic, but now they were clear. Mike guessed that it being a main road explained the absence of movement; the side streets and housing estates would be the real battlegrounds.
“Okay, so we’re coming up to the roundabout. We turn right here and then where?” asked Lucy, her eyes less fidgety now and her frame a little more relaxed behind the wheel.
“Stay straight on. There’s another roundabout, go straight over that and stay on that road for about four miles.”
The ambulance slowed down and the gears crunched as they navigated the roundabout. Then they crunched again as Lucy changed back up and they gathered speed.
“This is a lot quieter than I expected it to be,” Mike said, trying to glean a little information from Lucy, who had been on the road virtually every day since the quarantine began.
“This is pretty much what it’s been like, but I thought I’d see a war zone after what happened yesterday. I didn’t expect this.”
Mike looked back into the ambulance. The two adults were soothing the children with gentle words, but the specifics were not audible over the sound of the engine.
“Tell me, Doc, there are a couple of things I don’t understand.”
“Jeez, just two? I could fill the Grand Canyon with all my questions,” replied Lucy, only half joking. She took her eyes off the road for a moment. “Well?”
“How come these things only go down with a shot or stab to the head? I mean, there are a lot of vulnerable points on the human body. How come it’s just the head?”
Lucy sat back a little in her seat. She was happy to answer Mike’s questions, because it showed he was thinking of ways to kill these creatures, and that beat hiding under the dashboard hoping they’d all go away. “Significant trauma to the brain stops the RAMs instantly. If enough damage was done to other parts of the body, that would probably stop them too, but it would need to be considerable, and when these things are on top of you, you don’t have that kind of time, so going for the brain is the safest option.” She looked across at Mike and saw he was taking it all in, but needed a little more information. “The most in-depth testing on the RAMs took place in France. They had a lab based in the Alps. We lost contact with it about a month ago, but they passed on all their results to us. The RAMs do actually have some attributes significantly different to humans.” She said the words before realising how stupid they sounded out loud.
“No kidding, Doc. I’ve been pretty hacked off with people in my time, but I’ve never wanted to bite their face off.”
“Yeah, there is that, but other stuff too. The RAMs have almost perfect night vision.” Mike remembered the pupils of the beast he had killed in the garden, and how he had thought they resembled those of a cat caught in sunlight. “So we need to make sure we’re not on the road at night. We have to be somewhere secure. There’s no way we can outsmart these things in the dark.”
“But we used to hear lots of gunfire at night. How did the soldiers fight them?”
“The reason you heard mo
re gunfire at night was because there were more of them hunting at night. That seems to be their preferred time, but there are plenty of them around during the day, too. As far as fighting them at night went, our soldiers had some of the most advanced night-vision equipment available. I don’t see any of that around here, so I’m telling you: we do not stay on the road after dark.” She looked at him to make sure he’d understood.
“Fair enough, Doc.”
Once satisfied he had understood, she continued. “Another big difference is their healing capability. When you or I are cut, our body senses it and produces something called thrombin. It’s a chemical manufactured by the liver and it slows down the bleeding and heals the wound, but it takes time. When a RAM gets wounded, its liver goes into overdrive. Massive amounts of thrombin are produced and the wound heals at unbelievable speed; this is why their wounds don’t gush like you’d expect. That’s another reason you’re always best going for the brain when trying to take these things out.” Lucy switched from fourth to third gear. Confident there was no risk of running into traffic, she went straight through the second roundabout and was back in fourth gear before fully exiting.
“So how come, when... when Alex died, I had to put that thing on his head to make sure no blood got on me?”
“The blood in a RAM who is newly turned is thinner than those who have been turned for a while. When you... when he died, his blood flow would have been only marginally different from when he was alive. If he’d been turned for a few hours, you wouldn’t have needed to worry about it.” She tried to be as sensitive as possible, but it was only understandable that the memory was still raw for her passenger.
Mike moved back a little in his seat trying to absorb all this information. They sat for a few moments with just the sound of the engine to keep them company. They drove past a large school that Mike remembered as good opponents on the rugby field. He wondered to himself how everything could turn to hell so quickly. “One more question, Doc.”
“Shoot.”
“RAMs... Where did that name come from?”
“It rolls off the tongue a hell of a lot easier than ‘reanimated corpses’. The soldiers started using it at first and then it just became part of the language.”
“Makes sense, I suppose.” Mike sat there trying to think of other pertinent questions, anything that could help him learn more about these creatures, but none came. He knew the best way to kill them and that’s all he needed for the time being.
They had speeded up to sixty miles per hour and were making much better time than Mike had anticipated. Up ahead there was a gentle fork in the road. They needed to veer right, but Lucy slowed down a little, as about quarter of a mile in the distance, on the left fork, they saw an old camper van chugging along.
“Looks like we’re not the only ones heading out.” Mike squinted at the old camper. His gran had one, with a psychedelic design that she had sprayed herself. From what he could make out, the one in the distance was far more conservative.
“Most people wouldn’t know where to go. I’ll be honest with you, Mike. I think there has been such a huge presence of trained military in the quarantine zones that we’ve been protected from an awful lot. I’d heard rumours of some horrific shit going on all over the country, but since the government controlled the news cycle, there was never anything official.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Things along the lines of what we experienced yesterday. Conscripts forming armed gangs, taking over whole cities. Lawlessness, turf wars, ration shipments being stolen, looting. That’s before you even get to the problem with the RAMs. Put it this way, if we make it to your gran’s place, I honestly think it’ll be something approaching a miracle.” Lucy took her eyes off the road momentarily to look at him while uttering the last few words.
“So why bother? Why try, if you think it’s so hopeless?” Mike demanded.
“I’d rather die trying than not try at all,” she answered, with an already defeated look on her face.
“We’ll get there, Doc. My whole world is in the back of this ambulance. I don’t care what it takes. Whatever I need to do to get them to safety, I’ll do it.” Mike’s face was solemn and serious; he meant every word.
Lucy looked across at him and started laughing. She took his hand and Mike looked confused. “Oh, Mikey, Mikey, Mikey. Oh man, you’re beautiful. You’ve got this whole Norman Bates meets Captain America kind of thing going on in there, haven’t you, kid?” She gave his hand a firm squeeze and then let go. “Oh, man. It feels good to laugh,” Lucy said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
The ambulance hurtled through the quiet city until Mike snapped to attention.
“Okay, in about a quarter of a mile we’re going to turn left. This is where it might get tricky,” he said, reaching down to the bag in front of him and pulling out the hatchet and crowbar.
“What do you mean, tricky?”
“I mean, the only way to get to the entrance to the farm is through a bit of a built-up area, but it beats the other routes,” Mike replied, with his eyes fixed firmly on the road. “Okay, Doc, start slowing down now. It’s our next left.”
Lucy crunched down into second and the ambulance lurched a little as it went around the corner. It was only a few seconds before they saw the first signs of trouble.
“Okay, Doc, you might want to put your foot down a little,” said Mike, holding onto the support handle above the passenger door.
Lucy didn’t need telling twice, and the engine roared as she pressed hard on the accelerator. THUD! THUD! THUD!
“What was that?” Emma asked, unable to see anything and echoing the thoughts of everyone in the back.
Mike turned around and made eye contact with the two women to explain that there was a situation. “There’s just a lot of debris on the road. It sounds worse than it is because we haven’t got a bumper.”
The two women understood what was happening, but the children seemed placated. He turned back to the road and spoke in a lower register. “Why the hell do they just run at us like lemmings off a cliff? It’s like they’re completely devoid of any intelligence.”
“I know,” replied Lucy. “We’ve seen this before. I don’t know if it’s the movement that confuses or angers them or the fact that they don’t seem to respond to pain so there’s nothing that’s off limits. The thing is, when a lot of them do this with a smaller car, they can slow it down or even stop it, and that’s when the problems begin. I think we’ll be okay in this baby, though, she’s armoured and very heavy.” She tried to sound confident but couldn’t hide a nagging doubt.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
“Okay, Doc. Up ahead, you need to take a hard right and really put your foot down, because we’ve got about a mile of straight road before we take the final corner that will get us to the concealed entrance to the farm, and I don’t want any of these things still chasing us down when we get there.” He looked across to make sure she had heard over the thudding and the engine.
She jammed on the brake and the tyres screeched as she turned the wheel. For a moment it felt like the ambulance was going to tip, then it corrected itself and they were heading out of the estate and picking up speed again. There were fewer RAMs visible now, but the odd one still jumped at the ambulance like a fly hitting a windscreen. There were some speed bumps, but they were barely noticeable as the heavy vehicle sailed over them at high speed.
“Okay, Doc, you’re going to need to slow down because we’ve got a tight left at the end of this road.” The ambulance began to decelerate and Lucy checked her mirrors to see a few small figures in the distance still heading for them.
She turned the corner and sped up once again. The road was a narrow, windy country lane with thick hedging on both sides.
“Okay, about half a mile along this road there’s a concealed entrance on the right. It’s going to be a really tight turn. There’s a gate which I’m going to have to open and close and we’ll have to get away real
ly quickly to make sure we’re out of sight before anything that’s following us knows where we’ve gone. So keep the engine revved. Okay?” He looked across at Lucy, who was biting her bottom lip in concentration.
She nodded without taking her eyes off the road.
“Okay, Doc, this is it.”
She slowed right down and forced the wheel to the right as hard as she could. There was a scraping sound as hedgerow got crushed and uprooted and a thud as some more sprang back into place. By the time she had finished manoeuvring the vehicle, beads of sweat had formed on Lucy’s forehead, her blonde hair almost brown with moisture. Mike was just about to get out and open the gate when there were two muted thumps from underneath the ambulance.
“What the hell was that?”
“Oh no. Shit! This happened to a team a few days ago. They drove through a crowd of RAMs, and it turned out that a couple of them had held on underneath. When the truck stopped and they got out, they were attacked.”
“Brilliant.”
“We’ve got a problem, Mike. It won’t be long before the ones that were chasing us come round that corner. Some of them are going to head in this direction.”
Emma had edged her way beside them and caught the drift of the conversation.
“You can’t go out there. We don’t know how many there are. We’ll just have to turn around and find another route.”
“Em, I don’t think we could reverse out of here if we wanted to.” Mike reached down into his bag. He took out a folding knife with a serrated edge and handed it to Emma. Next out was a kitchen knife with a long blade which he gave to Lucy. He then pulled out his trusty hatchet and checked that his screwdriver was still tucked into his belt. “There are more in there just in case. As soon as I open this door, get ready.”
“Mike, don’t you dare...” Emma’s words broke off as Mike released the door handle and jumped out. He slammed the door shut and looked down just as two arms dragged out a battered body from underneath the ambulance. The creature headed towards Mike but was obviously walking on a broken leg. A second RAM appeared from the back of the vehicle. Mike backed up as the figure with the broken leg closed in on him with a snarl of pure hatred on its face. His back hit the gate and he knew there was nowhere else to go. He was hoping he could take them both out at the same time like he had in the garden, but this time, he might lose sight of the second one while he dealt with the first. It was a far from ideal situation. The creature lurched for Mike, baring its teeth. He swiftly raised and brought down his small axe with a fluid motion, making an almighty crack like the sound of a coconut being crushed by a sledgehammer. The beast dropped to the ground, and Mike tried to bring the hatchet back out but it was buried too deep and he didn’t have enough leverage against the dead RAM to remove it.
Safe Haven (Book 1): Rise of the Rams Page 9