“So what are the options? I think we’ll all agree that the airport is a no-no. Sounds like the routes are all blocked and even if we did get there, we might be on a hiding to nothing. The Downs. How do we get there, and how safe is it?”
“Safe as you like though we’ll be pretty exposed as it’s pretty much just hill. I’m not sure I’d trust being in a house at the moment, and going back to our own home is out the question. You’ve said yours has already been compromised. Where were you?”
“Up in High Salvington. I thought it was a freak chance as our neighbour was caught. But then we saw quite a few of them wandering around. Had half a dozen playing jump on the car bonnet as we left our drive, so it was cutting it pretty close.”
“This thing travels pretty quickly, doesn’t it?”
“Well the transport they haven’t stopped is what’s killing everyone. Our neighbour told us a train came in from London literally full of them. The thought of them pouring out of train stations and in to cities is… petrifying. Bennington’s not a big place so once it got to us it was going to get pretty messy pretty quickly.”
Dan tilted his head at me. “You were in London yesterday. How did you manage to get out unscathed?”
“I caught it pretty early. When I say pretty early, I mean probably almost the start. It was the early hours of the morning and I saw one in the street. I shat myself, checking social media and decided to leg it just in case. I say leg it… I cycled. Worst morning of my life.”
“Sounds pretty risky. You did well. You always that naturally paranoid?”
“I don’t often come across undead old ladies shambling in the street. Let’s just say it got my attention. I wasn’t going to hang around to see what happened.”
“So you’re not. That’s a shame. Edgy paranoia is probably useful in situations like this. Good to have someone that can pull out the worst case scenario in all our options.”
“Oh don’t worry, Warren can still do that.”
“Shut up Rick. We’re not getting anywhere rambling, and we’re lucky we haven’t had anyone come across us whilst we’ve been standing around yapping. What’s the vote? Head back for the downs?”
“Have you got a car?”
“No. We had a blow-out up the road. You?”
“We have, and fuel. The roads are still pretty quiet. People are either bedding down or they’ve already got out of Dodge from what I can gather.”
“Either that or the third option: they were out in the centre of Dodge, and they’re still there waiting to feast. Is anywhere going to be actually safe now? I like the idea of the Downs the most, but how long are we going to last?”
“We have food in the car.”
“We have food and water, and some other basic stuff. But we’ll be exposed and I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly a class A pro at shelter building. We’ll need to collect some supplies before we make a stay in the wild, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking.”
“There are loads of stores, but they’re all by populated areas.”
“Hang on hang on, we need to get the ladies in on this too.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “It’s shopping.”
Dan shook his head. “Don’t let my wife hear you saying stuff like that mate, she’ll tear you a new one.”
“I’ve threatened it enough times but apparently there are laws against it, even when they are family. Now, what are we deciding?”
Carla elbowed in to the middle of us all and I enlightened her, despite the fact we hadn’t made any pertinent decisions yet. She swivelled her eyes back and forth between us all. “So our decisions are head for high ground, or head for high ground. But get some gear first. So we’re fucked, is what you’re basically saying?”
“Shit creek is severely lacking in paddles, yes.”
“We can sleep in the car so it’s not as if we’ll get exposure or anything like that. No wait… how big is your car?”
“It’s a Touran, don’t worry we can all fit in it. Shouldn’t even be too much of a squeeze.”
“Then let’s take the car up to the Downs, hide out for a bit. We can last more than a couple of days if we pool resources and we don’t have to worry about shelter. We’ve got weapons. We’ve got water. Why are we even debating this? Let’s get the hell out of here?”
“Well that makes sense. What were we talking about?”
“I suppose we should talk about plans for when… they arrive…”
“Well when…” I began, they I turned in the direction Anna was looking. There were three of them shambling towards us. There wasn’t much else in the area now; we were closer and the occasional set of car headlights in the distance didn’t appear to deter them from the meal that was much closer to hand. It was another set of three slow-coaches. I remembered back to the ones that had thrown themselves on the car in the driveway. I sent up a little thankful note that we hadn’t ran in to any of those yet in our wanderings. Rick clutched his shotgun and I waved him down. I slung down my backpack and pulled out my hammer. It had done well enough so far, and I know there was another one in Rick’s. I checked on Dan. “You got anything we can use to get the job done quietly? One each?”
Dan spared a glance for the shuffling incomers and hustled to his car. Carla and Anna looked on in muted and calm interest, though I could see the mother’s protective arms had tightened that little bit more around her son. Were we all so immune to the bloodshed already that the sight of three walking corpses was becoming unspectacular?
Dan came back and grinned as he showed off a gigantic wrench he had salvaged from his car. I gave him a low whistle of appreciation and Rick gave him a slap on the back.
“Ever taken one of these out Dan?”
“Just the one, but it wasn’t exactly mobile. You?”
“Three for me. Rick’s the virgin, so he gets to go first.”
“Hey fuck you Warren, I’ve got six of ‘em so far.”
“Hitting ‘em with the car doesn’t count. Do I have to show you how to do everything?”
Same as ever. Bold as brass on the front, shaking like a shitting dog on the inside. I moved to the right, deciding I’d pick off one on the side. I gestured for Dan to do the same as he had actual experience of this and I genuinely didn’t want to see Rick hurt. Quick and enthusiastic to keep his family sage, Dan followed my lead. I hesitated to get a good look this time, at what this person might have been. All my kills so far had been frenetic and charged with bloodlust. This was the first zombie I had seen up front and with time to take the situation in; at least in person. YouTube doesn’t really count.
This time, it was a woman. She might have been the same age as Carla, though it was difficult to tell now. It was hard to look at her for long without bile and an overwhelming sense of revulsion involuntarily rising in my throat. One arm may as well have been stripped clean of flesh. The shape of the bone was barely held together with thin strings of meaty sinew. The fist was mainly intact, though was covered in blood. It hung limply; there weren’t enough tendons left for the limb to function. The feasting had stopped just beneath the shoulder, but had carried on across to her right breast, generous red gouges now all that remained. Blood was striped across her naked torso; her pelvis and legs were thankfully still clothed. I don’t know why, but the sight of the woman naked and so prone was somehow worse than the bloodied and tortured torso I had stumbled across earlier that night. If she had been completely naked, then I would probably be attacking from the right flank and leaving this particular dirty task down to someone else.
Dan caught my eye and we synchronised our attacks. The zombies were so much slower than us. Perhaps it was rigor mortis. Perhaps it was the trauma the bodies had already suffered in death before being reanimated. Each agonising step was a slow fight, as if there was an internal dialogue where even in the afterlife the people they had once been were trying to fight against the monsters they were destined to become.
Dan’s lu
cky victim was an androgynous youth. I say androgynous; I mean flat-chested, and with very little face left to give me any sure fire way of identifying gender. There was an older man in the middle and I began to wonder if they had perhaps been a family, all caught unawares at the same time and victim to the same blunt teeth and tearing fingers.
They were all victims now. Though perhaps, if there were some inner voice trapped in their begging for release, we were the ones to give it to them. Even if there were a cure, and I had no doubt that humanitarian debates would be raging about whether or not it was right to be dealing the killing blow, I’m not sure I would want to be revived only to find out that I had no arm left, and the majority of my family had been eaten alive. So whilst I had to avert my eyes from her one remaining naked breast and could not meet her own salivating and voracious gaze, it was with a guilt free heart and a calm mind that this time I brought the claw of the hammer around in one clean and heavy sweep, burying it deep in to her temple. She crumpled. Dan’s went at the same time too, and Rick followed suit mere seconds after. None of the zombies even managed to react to us, and I began to wonder how much of a threat they were after all. Again though, the memory of the driveway and the videos of the nightclub massacre shook me from my complacent haze. This wasn’t going to be so simple and easy all the time. We had already taken a lot of risk by standing out in the open discussing our options here. The marina would have been a prize destination for many people, and it seemed only our delay in making our decisions had actually saved us from any confrontations or conflict.
The women had moved back a few paces, but they didn’t same fazed. They even seemed slightly relieved that it had all been dealt with so calmly. I nodded my thanks to the other guys and suggested that we head for the car. I didn’t need to suggest it twice.
As the welcome doors of the VW Touran closed around us I thought of asking how recently the tyres had been changed. I’d been sarcastic enough for one evening, so I left it. I put my head back and closed my eyes. I guess I hadn’t known how tired I was until I stopped moving. The soft vanilla of the car scent and the warmth still gently radiating from the seats had me yawning. The backs of my eyes pulsed and I thought “what harm could a few minutes’ do?”
I closed my eyes. Within moments, I was asleep.
+++
Chapter Six
“quis custodiet ipsos custodes” - Juvenal
I know I was asleep. I know I must have been, because I wouldn’t have been jolted upright by the car, then blasted awake by the noise of the horn. I think I would have remembered when the screaming, the shouting and the arguing started. I wouldn’t have had to fight through the murky fog of my frontal cortex to figure out what the hell was going on. It seemed to be that Carla was beating at the back of Dan’s headrest and Anna was waving her arms in blind panic. Rick looked like he’d just been jerked awake too, and based on Carla’s ‘I thought you lived around here, how the hell have you gone the wrong way’ I’m guessing she hadn’t been paying much attention to proceedings either, for whatever reason.
Anna was blubbering. “I’m sorry, I just… I just started going home! What do I do now?”
“Turn the car around Anna, just turn it around!”
“I can’t, I can’t! You haven’t looked behind us! You can’t see in the mirrors!”
Whatever few minutes of garbled sleep I’d managed hadn’t been enough. Before, my eyes had just been hot and blistered. Now there was a full orchestra in the throes of the Flight of the Valkyrie playing on my forehead. I snarled. I was sat in the middle seat between Rick and Carla, so I shoved my head through the middle of the two front seats and demanded to know what had happened. Anna shrieked at me. The shrill squeal felt like a canyon being split in to the side of my skull. I ground my teeth. My knuckles went white around her headrest as I resisted every angry and morally wrong impulse coursing through my body. I turned to Dan. His face looked as white as my clenched fist. “Answers?”
“Anna went a wrong turn. And fell asleep. It’s okay Anna we’re just talking about it… she hit something. Okay Anna, I’m… and then hit the horn. Anna, I’m telling him. Anna, just shut up. Shut up will you?” Dan realised quiet coaxing wasn’t working and finally caved in, shouting at his wife as his son began to squirm and cry in his lap. “I’m sorry Tommy, go back to sleep. Anna, I’m sorry, but crying and shouting isn’t going to help. What’s wrong?”
“Look out the back windows, for Christ’s sake!”
Carla turned around. And didn’t say a word. Rick turned around.
“Fuuuuuck.”
I turned around. My heart dropped out the bottom of my feet.
“How long did you lean on the horn for?”
“Not long, it wasn’t long, but there were so many other cars. I must have… I must have just…”
“How did you fall asleep at the wheel with all of this going on!”
“The rest of you got to sleep just fine! I’m only human, I couldn’t help it!”
“She’s right Warren, if no one else was watching her then who can we blame?”
“We can blame her, she could have shouted any one of us awake! She could have wound down a window, turned on the air con. Anything expect crash, lean on the car horn and alert every fucking zombie in Bennington to the fact that we’re on the road, alive and well and waiting to be eaten!”
I was panting and Tommy was now in full flow, tears and screams both muffled against his distraught father’s chest. Carla hauled me back and mouthed ‘not helping’. I pushed her hand away. “I don’t care how it sounds Carla. We’ve got in to a car with two strangers and now look!”
I was the one screaming now, but I suppose we all had reason to. Behind the car, in the static floodlights of sporadically abandoned cars and streetlamps, there were zombies following us. They were coming out of houses and across from a park. Anna had turned the wrong way and we were going through a residential area. And now the road behind us was virtually cut off with a wall of the walking undead. I realised then that she was still going forward; of course she was, she wasn’t exactly going to stop the car. But where were we heading?
“Where does this road go?”
“Town. We’re heading towards the town centre.”
“No fucking way. Turn around.”
“In to that lot? No way – we’ll be overwhelmed!”
“They’re slow – they’re not exactly going to be ploughing in to the windshield.”
I looked around as if to reinforce my point, and nearly threw myself in to the front seats as a body slammed itself against the back of the car. The VW jolted forward and I shouted at Anna to speed up. “But we’re still heading to town!”
“Can’t you go around? There must be a way around!”
“There are plenty of ways around Anna, just calm down. Keep the driving steady and keep your eyes on the road. We’ll cut through and… geez!”
The car rocked to the side as another body threw itself against us, this time to the right. The back shook again as the same zombie had another go at throwing itself through our rear window. One of the smaller windows shattered. “How fast are we going?”
“Only about 20.”
“Then go quicker!” I yelped as I saw another sprinter heading straight for us. They might not be able to call each other, but there was apparently enough of a commotion to keep drawing every dead thing in the night to our spot. The shambling dead were now a long way back but the Bolters seemed to be heading at us from all angles now. Some were slower than others and it was clear that, despite their comparable speed, they would never be able to catch us. But I didn’t know when they might stop, or if they’d just keep on running in the same direction they last possibly saw lunch.
“I can’t keep going. The traffic lights are red and there’s cars everywhere. What if some of these are real people?”
“Real people don’t run in to cars, it usually happens the other way round! Just put your foot down, we need to get clear of this secti
on of road!”
Anna did as she was told and I could feel a small acceleration in the car as we began putting some safe distance between us and the following horde. Well I say horde. Thankfully they hadn’t got close enough to us to make a difference. Then the car started weaving and still looking out the now-cracked back window I made sure there wasn’t anything else heading for us. But as my body began to sway from side to side I began to see more and more cars left at the side of the road. The majority of them were heading out of town. There were one or two minor accidents, but the most worrying thing was what I couldn’t see: people. Where was everyone?
“Carla, don’t you think it’s pretty weird? I mean, we haven’t seen anyone yet. Pretty much at all. Where do you think everyone’s gone?”
“You mean the ones that weren’t just trying to throw themselves through the car window? Everyone sensible is still at home big brother. That’s where we should have stayed.”
“With that front door and commotion? I don’t think so!”
“We could have barricaded upstairs and kept quiet. Hell we could have just gone in to the loft. I don’t think these things can work ladders. Why are we still heading towards town?”
“We’re not,” Dan called over his shoulder. “We’re going to cut through past the train station and then we’re going to…”
“No.” I cut him off abruptly. “Not the train station. Avoid that route.”
“Why?”
“W… well we’ve already been told that hundreds of zombies got off just one train. I don’t even want to think of what might be happening around there. Where are we now? Can’t we just cut through some back streets and get back up to the main road?”
“How did we manage to go this far the wrong way? Aren’t we already almost at the station?”
Great Bitten: Outbreak Page 9