The One Percent (Episode 1): The One Percent

by Heller, Erik P.

  The Zombie’s dancing feet were unable to keep up, so it fell backwards, dragging my sword out of the socket. This time I made no mistake. I stood above it, holding the sword double-handed and drove it down, chopping the deflated eye in half, and hitting the back of the Zombie’s skull.

  That seemed to have worked as it stopped wriggling around. I stood on its face and with a slimy squelch, withdrew my sword.

  I would have liked to have said something over the body, it was human once after all, someone’s father, brother, uncle, son, any other male relative I could think of. There just wasn’t time. The next one was approaching.

  This time I put my back into it a bit more, aiming for its mouth this time—bigger target, less resistance—and that worked an absolute treat. A swinging jab in through the soft palette with enough momentum to carry it through to the brain. I pulled out the sword and shoved the now dead body to one side.

  I turned to grin at Jezza like a performing circus clown. That was a mistake.

  Jezza looked over my shoulder as I gurned at him and I suddenly remembered the last one. I whipped myself round and the Zombie was almost on me, too close for me to get it with my sword, so I dropped it on the ground, stepped inside its outstretched arms and grabbed it round the neck.

  The bloody thing was heavy, outweighing me and my slender frame by a substantial amount, plus he had momentum on his side. I only just managed to just stop it in its tracks, then I began to push it back until I had enough momentum behind me to push the thing over backwards.

  Then I stomped its head with the heel of my boot. The cracking sounds coming from under me and the fact that its arms were slowly losing their speed was, I hoped, a good sign.

  Eventually, just as I was almost out of breath and panting hard, its skull collapsed, squirting all manner of brain matter and blood out through every orifice.

  I’m not a violent man, never have been. I’ve always believed disputes can, on the whole, be settled by talking. The Zombies didn’t and couldn’t share that point of view. I realised now that it was no good being soft-hearted about them, they were killing machines, plain and simple, and once they got a grip on you, either they had to die, or you would.

  It didn’t stop me throwing up all over it.

  I felt like I’d already learned a tough lesson, and so far, we’d only been out of the house for fifteen minutes and hadn’t progressed more than ten feet.

  “Climb up the mound of earth, Francis. Have a look see if there are many more around.”

  “Sod that, I’m knackered. I need to get my breath back, you go and look.” I was too, heaving breaths and at the same time trying not to be sick again at the stench of the things. Jezza hinted at his disdain with a look and pushed his way past me.

  I watched him while leaning back against the wall of the tunnel, gasping for air. Oh my god I’m so unfit, I thought.

  “How’s it looking,” I yelled.

  All I could see was Jezza’s body. His head had disappeared into the open air.

  “It’s good. Only a couple around and they’re a good distance away. I’m climbing out, get the others up here quickly.”

  I pushed myself away from the wall and tapped Jean on the shoulder. She was looking away from me and the gruesomeness in the tunnel with her hands over her ears. She jumped like a startled rabbit and squealed before I had a chance to talk. The hammering on the door back into the house increased as soon as she made the noise. I reached around, clamped my hand over her mouth then slowly turned her around.

  “Follow Jezza up the mound and out of here,” I said.

  She shook her head, her eyes wide, and full of fear.

  “Don’t worry, Brian and I will be right behind you. Jezza says there aren’t any around. Go, please! That door,” I nodded toward it as it flexed and splintered under the fusillade of Zombie fists battering it, “isn’t going to last much longer.”

  “What about Brian?”

  “I’ll bring him, don’t worry. Go now.” I stepped aside to let her past and used my hand in the small of her back to persuade her to move. Once I could see she was on her way, scrambling up the muddy, brick-filled mound, I turned my attention to Brian.

  He was still shaking his head and a small trickle of blood was coming out of one of his ears which I took to be a bad sign.

  I put my hand inside his arm and gave him a quick tug to get his attention, then I did all I could do and pointed the way Jean had gone. His eyes seemed to stop swimming for a few moments, and he nodded, I assumed because he understood what I wanted him to do.

  Once he was on his way, I turned back to the door. It was cracked almost all the way down the middle and I swear I could smell the things inside the house. I could definitely hear the growling.

  I turned and ran, just as the door groaned and finally gave way completely. That helped me put a bit of a spurt on and as soon as I reached the mound I turned around.

  God knows how many of the things were there, maybe twenty? The ones at the front, who did most of the damage to the door, had collapsed when it opened and were being trampled underfoot by the nimbler Zombies who were now intent on following me.

  I climbed up, scrambling with hands, knees, and the toecaps of my boots to reach the top and scrabble out onto the grass of the east lawn.

  I took a look around. Jezza was right, we’d been lucky. Only a couple of slow Zombies were stumbling our way.

  “Head for the church,” I said. I pointed in the right direction for Brian’s benefit. He seemed to have come around a bit and gave me a thumbs up.

  We all turned in the direction of the church, took three steps forward and stopped.

  Almost as if they’d known we were coming, a shitload of the buggers headed around the corner of the church and stated scratching at the door and spreading through the grounds right next to where the car was parked.

  The ones that came out from the house were, I could hear scrambling around, trying to clamber up the mound in the tunnel, fortunately it seemed not very successfully.

  The two slow ones were still heading our way.

  Whatever was attracting the things to the estate was still bringing a handful in from time to time on the main drive in. The gate was a couple of miles at least and out of sight so there was no way we could run that distance, and even if we did there was no guarantee that it would be clear enough for us to get out.

  We might have got away with walking if all the bloody things were behind us, but they were so haphazard in their movements and direction, I didn’t think we would get there without being intercepted, and if a few did catch up with us, we were probably doomed.

  In the end we had no choice. We needed to run into an open part of the estate, get to the wall that surrounds it, and climb over.

  That way we would hopefully avoid the bulk of the things and be able to sneak away quietly.

  I made my suggestion to the group. Nobody looked particularly happy but, in the end, logic won out.

  The closest wall was the east wall which also ran alongside a minor road. Once we were over that, maybe we had a chance of finding a car.

  Because of the way modern cities have developed, encroaching onto open land increasingly since Lanchcombe was built in the 1700s, I assumed that most of the Zombies who were finding their way onto the estate, came from the housing estate that had been built a mile down the road in the 1980s.

  It housed something like a thousand people and I would have said at least half that number were milling around on the estate.

  I hoped the other half had buggered off into the city. If there were hundreds on the road outside the estate, we were in serious trouble.

  When I’d come up with the idea of getting out of Lanchcombe, I hadn’t banked on there being many of our undead friends milling around.

  As we headed off, walking rather than running, I was hoping we might catch a break and not meet any more.

  The going was not easy, having to help Jean, still in her apron and with her bun star
ting to unravel, climb over the fences that kept the deer back from the house and lawns. The ones with barbed wire on top proved the worst until we decided to kick them down rather than try to climb over.

  When I looked over my shoulder to see how we were doing, it was rather gratifying to see that the first fence we had climbed over had proved enough to hold back the few Zombies who had followed us. Evidently, they didn’t have the mental capacity for climbing fences, something I found tremendously helpful to know.

  It looked as though we were in the clear as far as Zombie’s were concerned as we made it out onto the tract of scrubland that was kept wild for, well, wildlife, that bordered the wall.

  Once we were across that, we stopped in the shadow of the wall.

  It had been a while since I’d paid much attention to it, and I’d forgotten just how tall it was.

  It wasn’t unsurmountable by any means, as the burglars who’d paid us a house call every spring for the last five years had proved. Granted, they used ladders, but I was sure we could work out a way to get over.

  For the first time since we had got out of the house it felt like we were making some progress.

  “I need a leg-up, come on let’s get this bit over with, then we can get some transport.” Jezza said.

  I clamped together my hands and got ready. He clumped his boot down onto my hands, which bloody hurt incidentally, and I strained to get him up as far as I could. Eventually, he got a grip on the top of the wall and managed to half-pull himself and half-climb his way up to the top.

  “All clear out here,” he said when he got there.

  “You next, Brian,” I said, holding my hands again.

  Brian was looking the other way, back toward the house.

  Jean tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.

  He saw what I was doing and immediately stepped up.

  One lift, a helping hand from Jezza who was sitting atop the wall at that time, and he was up and over. I heard him grunt as he landed.

  “Come on Jean, your turn now.”

  She seemed to be on the verge of crying again, so I didn’t smile at her. I might have patted my knees like I was calling a dog but eventually she decided to go for it. Compared to the two men, she was light as a feather, and I pushed her skyward. Jezza grabbed her arm and almost pulled her bodily to the top. Holding on to her skirt for modesty’s sake, she swung her legs over and disappeared.

  I held up my arm and looked up at Jezza.

  Then my bloody bastard brother disappeared too.

  IX0X0X0X0X0X0XI

  Once I finally managed to clamber to the top of the wall, there was nobody in sight. The vegetation by the side of the road was trodden down so they had definitely been there, but now, they were nowhere to be seen.

  I stood by the side of the road and looked both ways. Because of the recent rain, the road surface was damp, so I couldn’t tell which way they had gone.

  I was, in that moment, confused beyond all confusion, so much so that I just stood there, completely undecided about what to do next.

  I was just over a mile from the ancestral home that I couldn’t return to. Just me, against all of the undead roaming around there. It just didn’t work. They were too many. The estate was well-equipped with cottages when a much larger workforce was housed on-site, but over time that had changed. People moved away, to the cities, where their kids stood a chance of being more than just a farmworker.

  Most of the cottages were little more than ruins now and they would be as difficult to defend as the house itself, with less chance of escape.

  So, no going back.

  Well, that only leaves one way to go, I thought.

  Turning left would bring me back to the gates to the estate. Turning right would take me … I didn’t know where.

  Should I try and find the others?

  Where would I even start?

  “Looks like it’s just me and you,” I hesitated a moment, looking at my only weapon, my sword, “Sid.”

  I turned right. I mean, what choice did I really have? The downside to turning right was that it was towards the south, so I needed to change that as soon as I could.

  OK, so no Jean, no Jezza, no Brian. What could possibly have happened to them? I really had no idea. It didn’t take me that long to scoot over the wall, so they can’t have gone far.

  Maybe they were taken?

  They would have made a noise.

  Maybe they were hiding?

  Am I really so hideously overbearing that they would hide in a ditch to be rid of me?

  Short of any other fantastical explanation, that was all I could conceive might have happened.

  If this was a computer game, my self-esteem score would have just reduced by fifty percent.

  Bastards.

  The road I was on led to the village named after the estate. At one time, god knows how far back now, my family owned almost every building but that was in a long distant age.

  With what had happened, none of that actually mattered now. Life was, I believe all about survival and now, I was having to go it alone. I certainly couldn’t see any trace of the three of them along the road.

  Where had they gone?

  As I walked I noticed one or two Zombies wandering across the fields as I passed, all heading the same way and, I was glad to say, it was opposite to the way I was going. None of them seemed that interested in me but I still made sure I kept out of sight of them until they had stumbled past on their way to wherever it was their mindless brains were telling them to go.

  As I walked, I thought back to how this all started. The first reports came from countries whose teams played in the football world cup in Russia. Inevitably the Russians got the blame, but it was never really clear just how they might have been involved.

  Pictures beamed from around the world showed images of people dying, then coming back to life and attacking other people. Once it started nobody seemed to have any idea of how to stop it and soon every government’s emergency plans were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the undead.

  Even countries who weren’t involved started reporting problems but the fall from a civilised country to a hellhole of death and destruction seemed to hit everywhere and almost at once. Even Russia, so if they were involved that was a massive own goal.

  The last news report I saw showed worldwide chaos with barely a government left standing.

  The Undead Revolution.

  Sort of. By default.

  I mean it’s not like they did anything meaningful. That was, as usual, down to the politicians and they proved about as useful as they usually were.

  My guess was that somewhere, there was a bunker full of politicians who were all set to see out the first couple of years, then emerge and be as useless as they were before.

  OK. Political rant over, back to me.

  The fields and meadows were a lush green, helped no doubt by the rain that had been falling pretty much all day. It was lighter now, barely a drizzle, and in the distance to the west I could see a break in the clouds with the first rays of sunshine starting to poke through.

  The chances were, I wasn’t going to get too much wetter than I already was.

  It took me about fifteen minutes to reach the village. It was a compact, picture-postcard kind of place where progress, architecturally at least seemed to have stalled back in the 1800s.

  Most of the buildings were in the local grey stone or red brick or a combination. The only modern-looking buildings were when houses had been built on space between other houses. They looked so out of keeping it was difficult to not wonder how on earth they received planning permission? Well-greased palms at the local council was my guess.

  Call me a cynic.

  There was just the one road through the village which on one hand was good, because I’d already made my mind up to check all twenty odd houses to see if anyone else was alive and kicking.

  The downside was that whatever undead there were dotted around, would all be on
that one street.

  As I approached, I suddenly started to feel a little nervous. I was on my own. What if there were a hundred Zombies waiting for me?

  There were probably less than fifty people living in the village from what I remembered, but still. Even fifty would completely outnumber me.

  I slowed down as I headed to the side of the first house. Its rough stone walls were softened by climbing ivy and pink climbing roses. The small back garden looked well-tended through the wooden fence, with neat lawns and tidy borders.

  I neared the corner, keeping close to the house and peeking around before continuing. The road through the village looked just as it always did on the odd occasion I drove through on my way somewhere.

  I couldn’t see any movement at all. Visibility, now it had almost stopped raining, had improved, and looking through to the houses on the other end of the village, nothing seemed out of place.

  I crept around the corner.

  It was the kind of village where none of the houses had front gardens. Their front doors all opened out onto the street, apart from what used to be a pub. That was set back and had a small gravel-covered space out front.

  I stepped forward slowly, still of a mind to search, or at least knock on the door of every house.

  In the end, I didn’t need to.

  At the first house, I looked in through the window and nearly crapped myself when a brain-dead granny almost threw herself at the glass. I could see, once I recovered from the shock, a half-eaten old man lying on the carpeted floor of the poky living room I was looking into. His clothes were shredded and if the bloody old woman had got out of the way for more than a second before her toothless old mouth slapped against the glass again, I’d have perhaps seen more, but by the time she’d deposited what seemed like half a gallon of slightly pink saliva, I could barely see her, never mind anything else.

  What I could see was along the lines of what had been reported, and what I’d already seen for myself in that tunnel.

  Weak, vicious, a face covered in the white pustules that had originally been a gift for the press and news outlets, calling it the White Death. Fingers desperately clawing away blindly and those horrible, milky eyes with the black pinprick at the centre.