He had split both their heads with a hatchet just moments before.
Now they both lie, smitten and emaciated on the dirty hardwood, their tattered hair matted with thick, viscous blood from deep splits in their skulls.
Lifeless eyes upturned to the ceiling, staring endlessly into the void.
He didn’t allow himself to dwell upon it.
These people were dead long before he found them here; there was no saving them. He had people who counted on him. While the business was unpleasant, their continued survival was all that mattered to him, and he was the only one in any position to do something about it anyway.
The apartment air was stale and smelled thickly of smoke, faintly punctuated by spoiled food and the musk of wet plaster as it disintegrated off the lathe underneath, falling from the walls in clumps.
This would have been a swanky apartment once, a period home from the early twentieth century. Its vaulted ceilings and beautiful crown moulding were cracked and blistered throughout from the onslaught of the elements, heaves of frost and rapid expansion from the heat of flame.
A bowl of rotten fruit sat rancid on the countertop and there were signs of rodent feces throughout the bottom row of cabinetry. Jacob shifted boxes of tainted cereals about and caught sight of a few mice as they scurried back through the holes they had chewed in the mildewed walls. The drawers had cutlery but the knives were flimsy; maybe useful for cooking, but worthless for defending yourself.
Discouraged, he frowned slightly and turned to the fridge.
The scent of putridity assaulted his senses, and Jacob partially recoiled to acclimatize. Several plates of leftovers were loosely covered in saran wrapping, now blackened and spoiled. A pizza box, a carton of eggs and some milk weren’t worth examining. But there were a few cans of soda; the calories wouldn’t hurt, though he knew it would ultimately only compound their thirst.
As he removed his pack and collected the soda, he revealed a couple familiar blue-and-silver cans.
It almost didn’t register.
Turning the can to face him, he couldn’t believe his luck.
Beer, and shit… even his brand.
Locally produced, union made, and part of a long lasting legacy of the ruined city.
Jacob had spent so much time focused on salvaging survival supplies that he seldom allowed his head to turn to the comforts of the world pre-outbreak. He stared at the can for a long moment, turning it over in his hands and realized he had started to salivate amongst thoughts of barbeques, bonfires and better days.
Finding little else of immediate use, he produced a pen and notebook and took stock of some other non-critical goods that might be useful at some point. He flipped to the page that pertained to the address he was currently probing and jotted down a few notes. To keep the weight down while scouting, Jacob would only take critical items – food, water, weapons, medical supplies.
He had to account dearly for every ounce he carried.
Leisure and comfort would come later.
If they were lucky.
The muffled sounds of distant gunfire continued outside.
***
The group pushed on.
Cox and Sullivan headed the column while the rest struggled to keep pace. Isaac was keeping up, but his breathing came more and more labored with each passing block. He continued on without complaint, but knew if they were beset again, he wouldn’t be useful at all in close quarters.
The car alarm was a distant memory now, and the team had made good time in gaining some distance. They were now filtering through the abandoned streets and were within a few kilometers of the compound. Thankfully they had met only sporadic resistance; one or two ghouls at a time, easily dispatched. With the loss of the medical supplies, the realities of a lack of discipline and taking undue risks now weighed more appropriately on the band.
Something in the air was catching their attention, though. Sounds in the distance, but not the car alarm; these were sudden bursts, punctuating the breeze.
Gunfire, and lots of it.
Coming from the harbour.
‘Jesus, is that us?’ one of the porters blurted.
Cox motioned everyone against the side of a building adjacent to a square, near the crest of a hill.
Isaac slumped against the brick building and tried to prop himself up to retain some modicum of respect. One of the porters gave him a shoulder to lean on.
Sully and the rest looked to Cox for direction.
Cox peered out from around the corner. She could see the entrance to the city market; it connected through a series of pedways and underground corridors to the mall almost next to the Coast Guard site. The compound had largely picked the shopping centre clean of useful provisions and had abandoned it as the costs to maintain the sprawl vastly outweighed the benefits of keeping it. It was an option, but they’d need to contend with the deep darkness of the mall, an unknown number of infected and barricaded exits at the far end.
Alternatively she could run the group hard and fast, right down the hill on the home stretch. Presumably anything hostile in the area would be moving towards the report.
Coming in behind them should give us the advantage, she reasoned. And it saves us another crawl in the dark.
‘Alright,’ Cox began. She slung her rifle over her shoulder, paused to tighten her ponytail and turned towards her group.
‘Here’s how this goes down…’
***
Quinn emerged from the command module with two men in tow and made immediately for the fences. The shooters in the platform were snapping off rounds indiscriminately. The fences were lining up with survivors with an array of improvised weaponry; he couldn’t see what was coming around the crowd but his combat senses told him it was going to be a hell of a fight.
They had done a decent job of keeping the snow from piling up against the fences, but it could have been better. Hell, everything could have been better, but Quinn had limited resources and limited time.
A part of Quinn lamented the fact he hadn’t worked them harder.
Perhaps he had been too soft; too accommodating.
He may have doomed them all.
The three rushed across the yard.
As those gathered saw Quinn arrive personally, it was evident their confidence swelled. They parted as if a troubled sea to allow him to survey the situation.
Quinn stopped in his tracks, but never lost his composure.
A throng of infected advanced down the hill; there had to be at least forty more.
‘We’re getting low!’ the platform called down.
Quinn had about twelve survivors at the wall, including himself and his retinue from the module, and probably two up on the shooting platform. The only firearms among them were on the platform and in his company, and obviously only what ammunition they carried with them.
Quinn grabbed a civilian by the shoulder – a woman, mid-thirties, clad in a faded red coat and ineptly brandishing a heavy wrench – and spun her to face him.
‘Find out what rounds the platform needs and get them.’
Terrified, she responded on instinct and ran to the base of the platform.
The dead advanced steadily, almost in unison.
One of his men ran up to the fence and opened fire into the wretched crowd. At this distance, his aim was unreliable. Some of the lead ghouls showed sign of impact to the torso or limbs, but few went down.
They scarcely slowed.
‘Cease fire!’ Quinn barked, ‘Let them get closer. Do not fire at a target more than ten meters out; you’re pissing away rounds we don’t have.’
Quinn paced the makeshift line.
He knew immediately they had no hope of stopping the advance before it made their walls. They wouldn’t have a shooter in the central nest before the wave hit, nor would the platform have
their resupply; best he could hope for was the platform could make their last few shots count.
Under the combined weight of the mass of necrotic flesh, he needed to trust the wall would hold. If they could keep the wall from collapsing long enough to get some firing options, they could alleviate a substantial amount of pressure quickly. As the wave of dead hit the chain link they would pick as many more as possible with what weapons they had.
Their entire campaign would hinge on how long they could keep the wall standing.
Since the night the line broke, the fences had been tested against smaller packs – a half dozen or so at a time – but never against a group this size.
Quinn cursed the spotter in the civilian nest. His inattention meant Quinn needed to redeploy his assets, meant they needed to respond with guns to the threat he had allowed to congregate under his nose and on their doorstep.
As he watched the tireless army advance toward his gates, an unreasonable fury began to well up in Quinn; his blood began to boil.
He will pay.
Chapter 12
The dead were upon them.
The wave of ghouls was mere steps away from their walls. They were so close now that as Quinn scanned their disfigured faces he would pick out features in each that seemed vaguely familiar. They scraped onwards in a dysfunctional gait, clumsy gray limbs outstretched beneath tatters of ragged fabric.
Fevered.
Covetous.
The seconds began to drag.
The clap of rifle fire split the air from somewhere to Quinn’s left; he scarcely noticed.
Quinn considered the faces of the nearest infected.
He wanted to feel contempt for them.
Instead, he felt nothing.
Their determined, unfeeling stares were met by his in equal measure.
The pieces around him rearranged, but Quinn stood only vaguely aware of their movements.
Pistol fire erupted from somewhere nearby.
Splashes of flesh and gore, sinew and bone burst throughout Quinn’s sights, though he heard not a sound to accompany the display. Bits of death flared all around him, each precipitated by peripheral flashes.
Only a dull drone filled his ears.
He stood so enthralled by the morbid fireworks, Quinn didn’t process the integrity of the fence was compromised.
The frostbitten dead piled against the chain link, jaws agape with supernatural tension. Their black hands heaved against the wall, frozen fingers twisted between the links. Several of the survivors resigned to throw their bodies against the fence as it bowed in surrender.
It was half comical.
As the fence yielded and its moorings began to buckle, the lifeless eyes flared. The mouths gnashed the fence itself as their sleepless patience gave way to lust.
The fence dipped and bowed, bent inwards and came down like the opening of a great and sinister drawbridge. Quinn stretched an empty hand to where the fence collapsed before him, as if to offer it in caress as it inched and lowered to greet him personally.
Quinn stared in unblinking admiration.
Their determination was impressive.
Like a mad tide, furious and erosive.
Those first in line were pressed against the fence as those behind clambered and trampled those in front, a tangled mass of limb intent to rend and devour.
Suddenly Quinn could see nothing else.
His world melted away, oblivious to all but the fence splayed out before him.
Instinctively, Quinn raised his M&P and steadied his aim with his already extended hand.
His thoughts focused unnaturally fast, so fast Quinn grew frustrated as his hands couldn’t respond to his mental targeting adjustments. Each casing expelled from the breech hesitated midair as the muzzle flared in slow motion. Though Quinn could feel the recoil as the 9mm kicked into his hands, its customary staccato jolt was usurped by the crawl of delayed sensation.
As quickly as the dead could climb, he would cut them down.
Like pestilent weeds, the dead kept coming.
The depressed trigger answered with the mocking click click click of the hammer unable to find a mate. As Quinn exhausted the first clip, the world caught up to him in paroxysms of urgency.
Quinn dropped his spent mag to the snow and slammed his second one in.
The dead had only the section of downed fence as an entry point, and this limited their numbers to some extent. As his faculties returned to him, Quinn could once again make out the movements of the survivors around him. The more recently succumbed to infection were more nimble, more vigorous than their longer-dead counterparts; their movements were that much more agile and deliberate. The dead trapped behind their trampled cohort began to climb and spill over the sides of the downed fence, finding cruel solution to the bottleneck.
All were forced into an inglorious melee. The dead lunged at the exhausted survivors as each flailed with their ramshackle implements. They wrestled with the decayed throughout the yard and struggled to stem the tide of carrion.
Several of the defenders had fallen, savaged under the gluttonous mass, swallowed whole by the crowd of advancing dead. Splashes of bright crimson mixed with the detritus of the shattered corpses. The two shooters stationed on the platform jumped down to reinforce Quinn’s line, each using their empty rifles to bludgeon whatever was in range.
The world sped up around him, but it did not diminish his aim. Quinn never moved from where he stood. He chose his targets with care. They fought in close quarters now; Quinn needed to cycle between those mired in the fence and those that grappled with his band. Frequently Quinn would drop a ghoul in the instant before its teeth found their mark only to refocus his fire at the fence a second later.
Gone were conscious thought and strategy.
He existed in an automated state.
Mechanical.
Quinn knew they were outmatched.
The dead spewed from the torn fence and spilled over the top. Though he and his defenders had inflicted terrible damage to the crowd, their sheer number would crush their resistance.
Quinn didn’t bother to look back for support.
His runners had failed.
He dropped another ghoul as it was about to drag down one of his uniformed retinue. The shot drilled through its temple and drove it sideways.
Satisfied, Quinn turned his attention back to the torn gates.
Click, the M&P laughed.
Quinn turned the weapon over slightly in his hand and considered the profile of his sidearm.
Shouts and cries, crunched bones and wet thuds pounded around him and assaulted his senses. Quinn could hear the roar of the battle, but saw only red.
Resigned to the rage that boiled within, Quinn strode forward, wading headlong into the chaos.
***
Cox and her team advanced hard down the hill.
From this distance they could tell a section of fence had collapsed, but they had little indication of how many of the dead were inside their walls. The realization that their compound could be moments away from subjugation hastened their pace. She didn’t need to urge anyone on; each fully understood the implications of what unfolded before them.
So fiendishly intent on the prey inside the walls, the ravenous horde of dead remained oblivious to their approach. Though unable to fire into the crowd for fear of a stray bullet, Cox and her column hacked and stabbed the back of the siege.
The rank had thinned fast, the element of surprise well utilized for full advantage. They made good progress against the dead outside the walls as those inside the courtyard continued to battle the ghouls within. The bottleneck and the incessant pressure from the back of the crowd to move forward limited their mobility, already significantly hindered in undeath.
Isaac stuck to the fringes and worked his knife into the base
of skulls turned away from him, probed and severed the brain stem. Cox and Sullivan worked in unison; they alternated hauling corpses down and butt ending the brains as they lay on the snow.
As the crowd thinned out, it became evident that multiple survivors inside the courtyard had fallen in the attack. Several ghouls huddled around snow splashed in red, ignoring all but their ghastly meals. Only a handful of the faceless crowd hadn’t yet been cut down, and one amongst them meandered towards Quinn.
It had been a woman. She would have been attractive at a time. Her blonde hair still retained some semblance of curl as it framed her slender face. The previously delicate features were severe now; high cheek bones threatened to tear the skin pulled impossibly tight about them. Her lips were cracked and parched, the corners of her mouth split. She wore simple clothes, an off white tank top that would have been well-fitting hung, limp and torn, sadly draped over protruded ribs and the evidence of her infection. She remained shapely, more curve than angle, though it was waning fast.
Quinn’s vision had returned to him. In his periphery he took note of the fallen, half consumed survivors in the courtyard. Their limbs twitched as the dead gnawed the flesh from their bones.
Quinn glanced over her exposed shoulders to regard the fence, bent asunder, and the mound of corpses piled at their doorstep.
Their compound; their bloodstained home.
He visibly seethed as he approached the dead thing.
Her hands remained at her side and she stumbled forward.
Pitilessly, Quinn stomped on her knee. The force of the strike shattered her tibia with the snap of long dried wood and the bone poked out from the bloodless wound. With only vestigial motor control, she crumpled sideways to the ground.
He smashed the creature’s head repeatedly with the handle of his M&P.
It was clearly terminated after the first strike, but Quinn continued to pound the skull with a fury so visceral that only a mangled pulp remained; each retracted strike dripped a viscous trail of gore in the snow. The weight of the savagery turned her body flat on its back.
The silence of those gathered was deafening; only the wet, slapping thuds were audible as Quinn continued to maul the woman. Each strike battered through the remnants of her face, only stopping as it came out the other side to meet the snow and ice beneath.
The Decline Page 10