Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 2 | We Will Rise [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel]

by Meadows, Carl

  “We’re here, flower,” came Norah’s crackling whisper. I heard her response on the radio lying among the undead, so that cheered me, knowing Nate and company had been able to hear me while I was losing my shit at his selfish ignorance of my demands regarding his whereabouts. They knew I’d been on my way, so I guess that was the reason for Nate’s smug mode.

  “Everyone, I’ve got eyes on Nate, Mark, and Alicia. All three are in good health, appear to be injury free due to their happy hugging, jumping, and general victory twerks. No further responses please as I need the airwaves to try and sort out with Nate what we’re going to do. But Charlie, your dad is absolutely fine, and I’m going to bring him home, okay?”

  They followed my instructions and didn’t respond to avoid risking giving my position away, but I couldn’t help a little grin of my own, as I imagined the collective cheer back at the lodge, and Charlie’s grinning face as my news was delivered, no doubt getting the world’s biggest hug from Norah. All I had to do now was keep that promise.

  Scanning the yard, I could see our pickup pointed front first towards the gate, just a few feet from the opening. There was an ocean of monsters between them and the vehicle. There was also the big truck they had planned on using, fully loaded, and secured with bricks, bags of sand and cement, a small cement mixer, bags of plaster, plasterboard, varying bits of lumber, and all that good stuff. They must have been literally finishing as the horde arrived, which is some shitty luck.

  The truck, however, was pointed in the wrong direction. It was at ninety degrees to the gateway, and the cab was pointing away from the gate, so it would either have to be reversed out, or turned round fully further in the yard where there was space to swing it in a three-point turn. An idea started to form. A reckless and stupid idea, but that’s all we really had, and I was the only one with the appropriate skills to pull it off.

  “Nate,” I said over the radio. “Are the keys to that crane truck in the ignition?”

  He turned to Mark and asked the question, which made me swear as Charlie’s dad shook his head, dug into his pocket, and lifted them up so I could see. Bollocks.

  “Have you got the pickup keys?” Nate pointed to the vehicle. Okay, so that was a bonus. The keys were still in the ignition. “Where’s your rifle?”

  Nate pointed down into the mass. I later found out that he’d had to unclip the rifle strap as a zombie had somehow grabbed it and started dragging him back, otherwise he’d have been a dead man. Shit, things must have been close and tense for Nate to nearly get himself killed; he’s usually five steps ahead of the game. When that strap whipped back, it had caught the radio hooked on to the top pocket of his tactical vest. In one swoop, he’d lost his primary weapon and his means of communication with home.

  I quickly rolled my eyes along the outdoor containers – you know the ones, like you see in the movies that are stacked up in shipyards? - and stacked pallets of materials that created long outdoor aisles for all the big stuff that couldn’t be stored inside the warehouse. Their brick tower was at the very end of one of those aisles.

  There was a gap of around fifteen feet between the edge of the office building and two of those big containers stacked on top of each other, and they’re about eight feet high each. The lowest part of the roof was about level with the top of the stacked containers, but my worry was I would be running down at speed and have to go straight across. My intended target area wasn’t at a lower elevation, which would have made the whole thing easier as I could have hit it with my feet and gone into the safety roll you do at the end of parkour leaps to disperse your impact and keep momentum. With the extra weight and baggage on my back, it was a difficult jump and I couldn’t do the safety roll even if I could land feet first, so I would have to time it right. My only real chance was to try and land at the lip in a cat jump, gripping the edge with my hands as my feet cushioned the impact against the container wall, then pull myself up.

  Piece of piss, right?

  “I’m coming to you,” was all I said. I caught their expressions which clearly said, “You’re going to do what?”

  I don’t know why, but whenever I do something that people clearly think is either insane, or impossible, those reactions give me a little kick. When Nate said I had a hero complex a while back, he wasn’t totally wrong. However, I don’t do it for the praise and recognition like dads who change their own baby’s nappies, or clean the house once every three months, then expect to be lauded as heroic and noble by their wife for doing something they should be doing anyway. However, I do have a borderline insane desire to help, and that was given to me by Dean and Maria. They do such thankless jobs on a daily basis, but they did those jobs because they wanted to make a difference, to help others. Mine’s the same.

  I’m only human though, full of flaws and insecurities, and now and again it does give me a little buzz when I get the chance to colour outside the lines a little. Everyone likes to be liked, no matter how many times they say they don’t care what people think of them. If I don’t know someone, or I don’t like them, then I don’t care what they think. Unless they think I’m awesome, in which case they are obviously correct.

  Deep down though, everyone gets a little kick out of someone saying, “Dude, that was awesome!” before demanding the highest of all fives.

  And this was going to be spectacular and absolutely fucking stupid, but realistically, it was the only way I was getting my friends out of this alive.

  Packing the radio into the backpack and zipping it tight, I made sure the rifle was tightly slung across my back in a diagonal from shoulder to hip, slipped the backpack on over it so it didn’t flap about, then altered the straps of the backpack as tight as I could without affecting my mobility. The moon provided enough light as the sky was pretty clear, so I took off the NVG’s and packed them away too. Shit if I lost those, I’d have to leave Nate behind as he’d straight up throttle me, but I’d never be able to judge the run and jump wearing those things anyway.

  Once they were safely stowed, I stood up, sucked in a breath, told myself what a fucking moron I was, and started a hurtling run down the far side of the roof, picking up a pant-shitting amount of momentum.

  I had once chance to get this right. One stumble or fall, or if I missed my grip on the landing, and I was going ass or teeth first into the concrete yard. If the fall didn’t kill or cripple me, the nearby undead would get to me before I’d have any chance to get my shit together.

  As I hurtled down, I was acutely aware – in the periphery of my vision – that the banging of my feet on the metal had drawn the horde’s attention. My focus, however, was entirely on not dying from this insane jump.

  When you leap in parkour, there’s a brief period where time seems to slow. The moment you leave the safety of your launch and you’re in the air, your whole world shrinks to the point of your landing and control of your body. You’re beyond the event horizon, the point of no return, and there’s a weird hybrid of heart-stopping fear and absolute freedom that is hard to articulate.

  Imagine adding, “there are zombies waiting to eat you down there if you do fall,” to that mix. This was a literal all-or-nothing moment.

  The balls of my feet cushioned against the container’s metal side, and my hands locked to the lip with arms slightly bent, adrenaline burning through my veins as I hauled myself up. There’s no feeling like it. It’s even better when you hear your mates cheering for the insane thing you just did.

  Once I was on the top of that container, navigating the containers and stacked pallets of assorted materials to the brick tower of my buddies was relatively simple. As I traversed the top of the outdoor aisle, concentrating on my route and balance, I had a wholly unnerving experience.

  You ever see that card trick magicians do, when they have one card on the top, touching the edges of the deck? They move the top card along like it’s a magnet and the other cards rise and fall on their edges as the trickster moves it, like a wave going back and forth.
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  Well, I was the top card in the magician’s hand, and the zombies below were the rest of the deck. Where I moved, they swarmed and followed, almost forgetting that there were three other living people above them, clamouring beneath my location as I moved along. Eerie shit, Freya. Eerie shit.

  “You,” said Nate as I dropped on to their brick tower beside him, “are a few bullets short of a magazine.” Then his big arms were round me, and he actually kissed the crown of my head. “But fucking hell, I’m glad to see you.”

  “You all okay?” I asked.

  All three nodded, and I was happy to see that was the case. They were all hungry, thirsty, and cold, but uninjured, and that was such a relief. I’d been going mad with worry back at the lodge when I didn’t get any answer from them, so seeing them now up close and being assured they were all okay was like a vent for the pressure of my tension. I dropped the backpack off my shoulders, then passed my rifle to Nate.

  “There’s more ammo for the rifle, Glocks, and shotties in the bag, and a bottle of water. I’ve only got the one, so the three of you will have to share it to wet your whistles.”

  Nate’s grin was wide as he unzipped the backpack, and as he did so, I was certain he murmured something like, “That’s my girl,” but I can’t be sure. The three of them shared the bottle of water and the gasps of relief were nigh on orgasmic as they washed their dry mouths clean.

  “So, this is weird, huh? This ‘every zombie hates Lockey,’ thing seems to be a regular occurrence lately.”

  Nate nodded. “Every time your voice came over the radio earlier, it was like a shock in their collective arse. They’d crowd the radio, despite just standing there before that, all idle.”

  Well, that puckered my butt. I really don’t like this, so you can see why I said at the beginning that this feels weirdly personal. However, in our current situation, it was an advantage. My initial plan involved bouncing all Tigger style across the various elevations to get to the truck with the keys, then going all Grand Theft Auto on them with that big bastard as I turned it, letting my three friends jump down on to the bed of the truck, get Nate to the pickup, then we all clear out.

  Granted, that plan would have been far more cinematic when they inevitably make the movie of my outstanding heroism, but there was now a much simpler and safer plan, where the only risk would be to me, and not to my friends, or to the truck tyres as I crushed undead bones beneath them. The guys had worked so hard during the day acquiring all these valuable materials; losing them to a flat because a bony spike fucked the tyre would be a royal shitter.

  Hearing how the undead seemed solely intent on devouring me – as much as that terrifies me beyond my ability to convey - I forged an entirely new plan.

  “Well, let’s use this to our gain then. I’ll draw them off if they want me so bad, then you three get down into the empty space, get in the truck and the pickup when you have a chance, and get ready to move.”

  Nate looked at me aghast. “You’ll do what?”

  “I’m the only one that can, Nate,” I shrugged. “These fuckers, for whatever reason, have decided to make me zombie enemy number one. There’s plenty of space for me to run in this yard, so I’ll draw them off in a mass, while you three blast any rear stragglers that are in your way and get the vehicles out of here. You can also pick up that rifle you tried to throw away,” I added with a wink. “I’ll leave everything with you, and just use my sidearm to plink a few of them to get their attention. If they react as they have been doing, they’ll just come for me. We only need to thin the herd to give you three a chance to safely drop down, retrieve your rifle and radio, get in the vehicles, then get the hell out of here. If it doesn’t work, I can always go up again and we’ll make a Plan B. We’ve got more ammo and you’re rifled up again, so we could probably take them all over time. I’d rather we didn’t burn through all the ammo though, or risk jams from overheating or dirty weapons.”

  “And how do you get out?”

  “Same way I got in. I can lead them all the way to the back of the yard to give you time.” I tapped the NVG’s now in Nate’s hand. “You’ll have to alter them to fit your Jupiter-sized bonce again, but now you can shoot freely, you’re better with them. I’ll take my little flashlight to see where I’m stepping where the moonlight doesn’t reach, plus my Glock for protection, and I’ll be faster and lighter than I have been.”

  “I don’t like this, Erin,” said Nate.

  “Hey, I got here to save your grumpy ass, didn’t I, Eeyore?”

  He snorted. I was going to keep hitting him with Winnie the Pooh references for a good while yet. Ever since I busted him on his Kadie story to us all when his profound ending wisdom was quoted from Pooh Bear, I’ve been milking that one for all it’s worth. And I am not yet done.

  I could see his internal war raging, but I knew he was going to agree, by the fact he was already opening the straps on the NVG’s to fit his giant head.

  “One condition,” he said eventually. “You take your radio, and you let us know you’re safe and clear. We’re not driving all the way back without knowing you got out safely.”

  “Deal,” I said, taking the proffered handset from him and clipping it to my waist. “You guys just head back, put the kettle on, and I’ll follow you back in my Twatmobile.”

  “Your what?”

  “Never mind,” I said with a dismissive wave. “Let’s do this, shall we? There’s a little guy waiting for his dad back home.”

  Mark beamed at that as he refilled his cartridge holder and pockets from the ammo bag.

  Once we were all set, I fist bumped my three homies before moving back along the top of the materials aisle, trying to ignore the hungry eyes staring up at me as they followed my every move. They were on both sides of the aisle, completely surrounding Nate and the others so they couldn’t clamber down at any point, so I made my way back towards the main office roof, doing the jump in reverse.

  It was a hell of a lot easier this time around without all the extra awkwardness and weight of the rifle and backpack, and the fact I was running along a flat surface and not a downward sloping one. I made the jump easily, ran along that slanted roof towards the back of the yard, found a suitable point I could return to and climb back up with ease, then dropped to the yard and flicked on my flashlight.

  Shit, it was so dark, and I was questioning the sense of my plan. Suddenly I longed for the sickly comfort of the NVG’s. I need to get some of those, if possible. Actually, the better, less insane plan is to never come out at fucking night again.

  Night has the ability to terrify far more than the day ever could. Your imagination runs wild at every tiny sound, every looming shadow. I’ve never been afraid of the dark, but these days I’m bloody terrified of the silent, monstrous things that hide in it. In this new and messed up world, we really do have things that go bump in the night. And lunge. And bite. And murder.

  Running to the end of the aisle – just to escape the heavier darkness that existed between the towering aisles of containers and materials - I looked down to the front of the yard, seeing the ominous silhouette of the undead mass rippling like waves as they shuffled to the position where they thought I was, then clicked the handset.

  “Get ready. Firing in three, two, one.”

  I aimed the Glock down to the front of the yard and squeezed off a single round in the horde’s general direction, then lifted up the flashlight to draw them in. I should have been happy that my plan seemed a good one, because the horde took my cue, and the monstrous, boiling mass of nightmares began their ominous slow charge towards me.

  But then, who can really be happy about a monstrous, boiling mass of nightmares starting an ominous slow charge towards them?

  It was a chilling experience, seeing the faceless horde swarm towards me, their twisted features shrouded by the night. After about a half-minute it looked like the whole mob was coming my way. Another half-minute passed before the crack and boom of my friends’ weapons echoed in
the night, muzzle flashes strobing the darkness behind the horde.

  Ever see that Dr Who episode, Freya? Blink? The one with the weeping angels who don’t move except when you blink and each time you do, they’re a little nearer?

  Yeah, it was like that. Every time the flashes of gunfire lit up behind the horde from Nate and the others, the front ranks of the undead seemed to teleport that little bit closer.

  The best part, however, was when I heard the thunder of the flat-bed’s diesel engine rumble into life, and then a few seconds later, the familiar throaty roar of our beloved pickup. They were on board, safe, and ready to get the hell out of here, so that was my cue to start moving. I didn’t want the horde any closer than they had to be. The job was done, so it was time to depart.

  I returned quickly to the point I’d marked for getting back to the warehouse roof, and scampered up it, headed up and over the apex and thought, “Hey, I can just run down the slope and easily leap straight over the fence.” So that’s what I did, and that, my lovely Freya, is where I did myself an injury.

  Note to self; running parkour jumps in the dark, with only a flashlight to lead the way, when you can’t really see where you’re going to land properly, is fucking retarded. Don’t get me wrong, there weren’t any big obstructions - as I would have seen them when I scanned the area with my flashlight - but when I soared over the top of the fence, landed on my feet on the ground and went forward into my shoulder-tucked safety roll, there was a half-broken brick on the concrete and I managed to roll right over it with all my weight, halfway down my back on the right side.

  For a moment I thought I’d managed to shoot myself somehow, but my Glock was safely tucked into the holster at my hip. I am a safe and responsible firearms owner, Freya, because Nate would put his massive boot up my dainty little butthole if I were anything but.

  But Jesus Christ, that agony was sharp, sudden, and fierce. It knocked the shit out of me, and it took me a minute just to make sure I hadn’t punctured my lung or some other horror, even though it felt I’d taken a direct punch to my lung. Fucking hell, it hurt at the moment of injury, and it’s still hurting now.