Lunch time. Sarah sat in her small group sharing a tin of sweetcorn. Her stomach grumbled the more at feeding time, unable to stand being teased with each meagre offering. Would she ever get used to the hunger? Maybe the cold would eclipse her starvation pangs, she thought, once the full blast of winter turned the air crisp and the ground solid.
“What’s going on down there?” said Mark, his thin neck craning on his thin body. His eyes would have been pop-outs before the Fall, but given his malnutrition he looked like a thin pink frog.
Sarah followed his gaze. A number of figures were running down the terraces towards the tunnel. They were coming from different sides, a co-ordinated move that would have hidden their purpose until the last moment.
She looked to the corner were Alex’s gang normally where. It was empty.
Sarah stood up to get a better view, her hunger pangs gone.
The figures were carrying sticks, some of them on fire. Others were carrying small metal boxes - the jerry cans that the soldiers distributed petrol in.
“Come on,” said Sarah.
“Where are you going?” said Kathy, spitting out a mouthful of sweetcorn.
“They’re attacking they tunnel. We have to get down there.”
“What are you going to do?” said Mark, “Let’s just stay here, it’ll all blow over.”
“Abdul?”
Abdul got up, “I’ll come with you.”
“You’re both crazy,” said Mark.
“You don’t understand,” said Sarah. “If they get in there, then… well, it could be the end of all of us.”
“What do you mean?” said Max, staring intently at Sarah.
“She means,” said Kathy, “that it’ll spoil her ideas for getting out of here.”
Sarah stared at Kathy.
Kathy smiled. “I heard all about your little plan this morning. How you sneaked off with your boyfriend Crowe last night, how you’re going to get out of here in those trucks.”
“What did you do?” said Sarah.
“I got our family a little upgrade,” she said, smiling.
“Mum?” said Max.
“What did you do?” said Sarah.
“I had a little word, with the powers that be around here. Let them know what’s been happening.” She turned to Mark and Max. “We’re going to be with Alex from now on. We get the rugs, the extra food.”
“But Alex is a dick,” said Max.
Sarah shook her head. “You stupid… You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“Oh, I know fine well what I’ve done. Pissed on your chips is what I’ve done!” said Kathy, her face glowing with a triumphant leer.
A rattle of machine gun fire burst through the stadium. Screams from the terraces followed as fear quickly took hold. Children started to cry.
The tunnel barricade was on fire, a raging blast of red and yellow reaching for the sky. Rapid gunfire spat out from behind the flames for a few minutes, then stopped.
Sarah turned to Mark and Max. “If you stay here, you’re going to die.”
Mark laughed. “Think I’ll take my chances love.”
She turned to Max, but before she could open her mouth Kathy put her arms around him. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“Mum?” said Max.
There was an explosion. Flaming timbers and pieces of barbed wire and metal flew from the tunnel. Gunfire opened up again, accompanied by shouts and yells.
“Come on Max,” Sarah held out her hand.
Mark stood up. “He’s staying here.”
“Sarah…” said Abdul, eyeing the action by the tunnel.
Sarah smiled warmly at Max, a tear pooled in her eye. She turned and ran down the stairs, followed by Abdul.
She didn’t look back.
Chapter 6
A fire burnt at the entrance to the tunnel. People had come down from the terraces to stand and stare at the flames, cooing like it was November 5th.
“What are you thinking?” said Abdul.
“We have to get inside, somehow, we need to hook up with Crowe. If Alex kills the soldiers, or gets those doors open, then we’re finished.”
Gunfire rattled from the depths of the stadium.
Either side of the tunnel, the remains of the barricade burnt fiercely. The heavy machine gun could be seen, blackened and engulfed in flames. Charred pieces of wood and metal littered the pitch and concrete run-up. The central part of the barricade had been blown out, leaving a dark forbidding hole framed by licking tongues of yellow and red.
Although standing twenty feet away, the heat already prickled Sarah’s skin.
“You ready?” said Abdul.
“No,” said Sarah. “But let’s go.”
They ran to the tunnel. The audience watched on, motionless, silent.
The heat pushed back at her like a wall and Sarah had to force her feet to move towards the inferno. A sizzle and the smell of burning hair filled the air, and her eyes watered. She fixed her target, closed her eyes and ran. The air at the back of her throat burnt, so she took one last painful breath and held it.
Her skin danced and stung; she was convinced she was on fire. She kept running, held her breath although desperate to scream. Just when she thought she was going to succumb to the heat, it dissipated and she was through. A passing tourist to hell. She felt relief as the cool air from the tunnel enveloped her. She opened her eyes, Abdul was beside her. His hair was now short, parts of it still frazzling away. She imagined she must have looked the same. She checked herself for burns, but the heat on her skin was already fading.
“Ok?” she said.
“Yes,” said Abdul, breathing fast. He cocked his head and motioned down the corridor, “Listen…” Gunfire echoed and bounced from the dark tunnels beyond. Sarah realised the only light they had was from the fire. The powerful halogens now stood still, dark, and useless. Two dead soldiers lay at the corner of the corridor. Another body lay by the burning barricade, its crackling flesh sending up a vigorous stink.
None of the dead soldiers had any weapons.
“Alex’s men have guns,” said Sarah.
“Then let’s be very careful,” said Abdul.
They crept along the corridor. The gunfire was now sporadic lonely bangs in the distance. Sometimes answered, sometimes a volley, sometimes a single shot.
“I think it was this way,” Sarah took the left corridor and they stepped carefully through the dark, only seeing in shadows and the suggestions of their minds.
Sarah tripped over something. She stumbled and after regaining her balance leaned down to take a closer look at what lay on the floor.
It was a body.
“Come on,” said Abdul, turning away from the corpse.
“Wait,” said Sarah. She felt over the body. It was still warm. Her hand passed over something wet and sticky and she forced herself not to gag. Her hands found and entered a pocket, she rummaged and brought out a lighter, a zippo.
She clicked it into life and the corridor was illumined with a dank yellow light. It cast waving shadows on the walls in time with the flickering flame.
They passed more bodies. Sometimes clad in military green, sometimes in the dirty and ragged clothes of the invaders.
They turned another corridor and Sarah stopped dead, a gun pointing directly at her, only a few yards away. It was a soldier.
“Don’t shoot!” She held up her hands.
“Hold your fire!” another voice shouted, louder. It was Crowe. “Hold your fire Pressman. It’s Sarah.”
Sarah let out a deep breath. She jumped again at a sudden burst of gunfire from nearby, like firecrackers. Coarse, flat and blunt, punctuated with a shrill yell.
“This way,” said Crowe.
“What’s happening?” said Sarah.
Crowe didn’t answer but motioned for her to follow. Her and Abdul ran with the soldiers through a thin corridor clad in exposed brickwork and pipes.
Crowe opened a door in the side of the wall and held it
open. Pressman ducked in. Sarah and Abdul followed.
A windowless room, lit by the glow from a wall of TV screens. A large screen in the middle focused on the garage Sarah had been in the previous night.
“You have CCTV?” said Sarah.
Crowe pointed at the central monitor. A flurry of activity in the garage. “See, there, they’ve made it.”
Sarah stared at the silent images on the screen. It was easy to believe she was looking at a horror movie, not real life, except she knew what was behind the garage doors, and that it was all too real. She shot a terrified look at Crowe. “If they-”
“I fucked up,” said Crowe.
Pressman sat silently, staring at Sarah. “Well at least you did your part.”
Sarah looked from Pressman to Crowe, confused. “What do you mean?”
“We needed an excuse to take Alex out,” said Crowe. “We knew that he was stockpiling to attack, but we wanted to manage it a bit better. If we just killed him, then we risked losing everyone, a full on rebellion, if you like.”
“When you spread the word about the vehicles,” said Pressman, “he made his move. We thought he would - he couldn’t have risked us taking the transport and leaving him high and dry.” Pressman turned the safety on his machine gun on and off, a nervous tic. “He was just a bit more prepared then we anticipated.”
Sarah looked at Pressman, trying to comprehend his words. It took a few seconds for her addled mind to put it all together. “Wait… when I told… You mean you used me?” she turned to Crowe.
He shrugged. “In a sense. We needed to get the word out, force his hand, if you like.”
Sarah knew she should feel angry, but the benefit of anger seemed a luxury. Staying alive, that’s were the smart money was. She could be angry later.
“It was Kathy,” she said, aware her voice was taking on a frantic timbre. “I didn’t tell anyone, apart from Abdul. It was Kathy, she overheard.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Crowe. “Either way, we got what we wanted, sort of. It hasn’t really turned out the way we had hoped.” Crowe let out a small laugh. It seemed to Sarah that he genuinely found the situation funny.
On the TV screen, numerous figures climbed into the vehicles. The personnel trucks filled up. A handful of men stayed back, holding up guns pointed towards the metal shutter. Alex got in a jeep.
Crowe continued. “Only thing I can think is they have some military in their group. They built fire bombs, and had two guns. We didn’t know about the guns, took us by surprise, that did. Then a nice flanking move to take out the barricade guard straight away. Rolled in a few incendiaries. Everyone dead.”
Sarah shook her head. “Your maneuverings have just killed us all.”
Crowe shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Where are the rest of your men?”
“No idea, we got scattered. I’ve counted eight dead, that’s about half our number, thereabouts.”
Sarah stared at the screen. Exhaust belched from the backs of the vehicles. Some rocked back and forth, like racehorses raring to go. A lone figure walked to a panel by the side of the shutter. He pressed a button and the shutter began to roll up. Silent white bursts erupted from the gunmen facing the shutter.
The man at the shutter control frantically pressed at the panel, but the shutter didn’t stop. It kept going.
Like a wave of rotting human flesh, the zombies advanced.
The man at the shutter was consumed by the tide.
“I think we should go,” said Crowe.
Chapter 7
“This way,” said Crowe as the four of them piled out of the security room into the small dark corridor.
Sarah’s heart was racing, her whole body tingling. This was fear: the knowledge that hundreds of undead were piling into the building.
They followed Crowe down the corridor; Abdul and Sarah in between the two soldiers, and Pressman at the rear. A few shots sounded in the distance, and there was another sound, a background hum like the throb of power lines. It took Sarah a few moments to realise that it was the sound of the zombies moaning, as they began to thread themselves through the labyrinthine tunnels of the stadium.
A scream echoed in the darkness.
They ran for what seemed minutes, turning left and right, going up stairs and down. A few times Crowe held them at a junction, only to turn them back the way they had come. All was dark. The noises continued, sometimes distant, sometimes close; the moans, the screams, the shots.
Crowe opened a door and they were suddenly in a light wide corridor, daylight again. They were back in the public space with posters and walls of smooth dark marble tiles; once clean and polished but know covered in a layer of dust. Large windows lined the left hand side of the wall - where Sarah had been the previous night. They stopped as Crowe looked out the window to the car park below. A thick crowd of undead still surrounded the stadium, but now shuffling towards the building like a slow moving sludge of flood debris, driven on by the promise of warm, live flesh.
“Do you have a plan?” said Sarah.
“I think so,” said Crowe. He glanced at Pressman. “The gangplank, think we can get there?”
Pressman thought for a moment. “Should be able to, if we’re quick.”
“What’s the gangplank?” said Sarah.
“Our only chance,” said Crowe. “Come on, we’re wasting time.”
They set off again at a sprint and followed the path as it curved gently around the outside of the stadium. A series of doors lined the right of the corridor.
One lay open and Sarah stopped running. She stared through the doorway.
“Crowe,” she shouted, “wait.”
Everyone stopped running and looked at Sarah.
“We haven’t got time for this Sarah,” said Crowe.
She motioned to the room. “We need to see.”
“Why?”
Sarah didn’t answer but walked through the open doorway into a large plush room, white and clean with comfy couches and a well stocked bar. The whole of the far wall was taken up by one large pane of glass that looked out over the pitch.
These were the executive boxes.
Sarah walked forward slowly, her feet not really wanting to move. She had to lift them purposefully, like a toddler learning to walk. The others were shouting at her, but she didn’t hear the words. Another noise was building up, a terrible noise, seeping into her mind.
Screaming.
Sarah reached the window and looked across the pitch.
It was hard to tell the difference between the people and the undead. A confusion of bodies, moving, running, lying on the ground, climbing the terraces. In several places, scrums of undead would be huddled together. She realised with horror it was the dead having a feast. Her stomach turned. She watched as a lone figure ran up the opposite terrace, climbing over the chairs, each aisle full of the undead; they crowded in on the figure, a woman in rags with filthy blonde hair and nowhere to run.
The woman stopped and sat on a seat. She put her head in her hands. Within seconds, the crowd of zombies was upon her, and she disappeared under a mass of bodies, all fighting for their turn. One zombie pulled away, a thick rope of pink and red intestines in its mouth.
Her attention turned to a small group of people running across the middle of the pitch, dodging and weaving their way through the pandemonium around them. Three people. Two men and a woman. She recognised the lanky teenager at the front of the group. It was Max and his parents.
She stared at Max, his nimble frame jumping around dying humans and grasping zombies. He pushed past a zombie and stopped, shouting for his parents to keep up. Sarah’s heart raced.
“Come on,” she whispered, “you can do it.”
Max stopped. He turned. His dad had fallen over, and Kathy was helping him up. Max ran back to them.
“No,” said Sarah through clenched teeth. “Keep going.”
Max helped up his dad. Their path closed as a group of undead moved in and surroun
ded them.
Max and Mark tried to push a way through. Max became entwined with a figure in what looked like a police uniform, but with half its face missing. Its jaw clamped tightly around Max’s wrist.
Sarah let out a muted cry. “No…” she said. She clasped her hand to her mouth.
Kathy, screaming, broke free from the group and continued running across the pitch.
Sarah closed her eyes.
“It looks like hell,” said a voice from beside her. It was Abdul. Sarah shook her head and tears filled her eyes. Abdul put his arm around her and pulled her close. She turned towards him and hid her face in his shoulder. She didn’t want to see any more.
“We should go,” said Crowe, standing at the door.
Sarah snapped her head to look at him. “Don’t you want to see? What you’ve done?”
“We have to go, now,” he said, his face expressionless.
“We have to help them,” said Sarah through sobs, “we can’t just leave them.”
Crowe stood back from the door and held his arm out, “Be my guest.”
“Fuck you,” she spat.
“I thought not,” said Crowe. “Now, get your shit together, and run, before I leave you both here.”
Abdul guided Sarah back to the corridor.
Chapter 8
Sarah ran, fast. She felt lighter, as if she had left a part of herself back in the executive box.
The corridor thinned, the windows were replaced with solid wall, and the light disappeared. Crowe lit his torch and they took a door to the left.
Another corner, another corridor, into the bowels of the stadium. The moaning became louder and Sarah’s nerves got tighter. She was having to force her legs to run; her body repulsed by where she was taking it, as if sensing the mass of death ahead.
Crowe put his hands on a grey metal door. He turned to Sarah and Abdul. “Do exactly as I say, we only have one shot at this.”
Sarah and Abdul nodded.
Crowe and Pressman both checked their weapons.
“Full magazine,” said Pressman.
Crowe nodded at him. “Let’s do this.”
After the Fall (Book 5): Stadium of the Damned Page 3