After the Fall (Book 5): Stadium of the Damned

by Stephen Cross

  He opened the door, and immediately they were accosted by a smell so terrible that Sarah had to fight to stop her stomach rebelling. Her mouth immediately watered and she gagged. The stink was more than a smell, it was airborne death.

  Then the noise. Moaning, hissing, clicking, constant and impenetrable, a wall of sound.

  “Come on,” shouted Crowe.

  Inexplicably Sarah managed to force herself to run through the doorway, following Crowe onto a metal gangplank twenty feet or so above the garage. Its silver frame circled the entire garage.

  Below them, the dead moaned, shuffled and clicked through every inch of space. They flowed in through the open shutter and out through the doors at the back of the garage, infecting the stadium like a poison in its veins. No sign of Alex and his group remained; they had been assimilated, consumed by the dead.

  Crowe set off along the gangplank, his feet echoing with hollow clangs. This caught the attention of the hoard. They looked up, hissing, their hands grasping uselessly at the air. The gangplank shook as Crowe ran. Sarah didn’t move, but hung on to the sides, scared the gangplank would fall, ignoring the fact that if it did, clinging on would do nothing to save her from the hundreds of hungry jaws below.

  Pressman pushed at her and Abdul from behind, “Move!”

  She moved.

  Crowe waited for the others at the far side of the garage.

  “Ok, Pressman,” said Crowe once they arrived. “That Jeep, that’s what we’re going for.” Crowe pointed to a jeep directly below them. It was surrounded by zombies, Sarah could see no way of getting in it.

  Crowe took his machine gun and aimed at the roof of the jeep. He fired once, paused, then took a second shot, hitting the roof next to the first shot. The shots drove the zeds crazy. They pushed and crowded the jeep. Crowe took another carefully aimed shot, ignoring the riot below him.

  “We’re going in the roof?” said Sarah.

  Pressman raised his finger to his lips, “Shhh, he’s concentrating.”

  It took ten minutes for Crowe to shoot a passable circle of bullet holes in the roof.

  Crowe lowered his gun and nodded at his shooting, pleased. He turned to Pressman. “You ready?”

  Pressman nodded. He raised his gun and aimed for the far side of the garage.

  Crowe hung his gun off his back and then, with no warning, jumped over the barrier and off the gangplank. Sarah gasped as Crowe landed on the roof of the jeep. The zombies clawed at him, but he was just out of reach. Ignoring the undead’s attempts to grab him, he used the butt of his gun to smash around the rim of the shot-out circle in the roof.

  There was a large bang from beside Sarah. She jumped. Pressman was shooting at a row of barrels at the far side of the garage - the barrels containing the petrol.

  A metal clang. The far wall exploded in bright white and orange light. A moment’s silence and then a series of explosions as the four barrels ignited, one after another. A flash blinded Sarah for a second. She fell backwards under a blast of heat. She rushed to pull herself back up. A hand grabbed and helped.

  “You ok?” said Abdul.

  She nodded, unable to speak, staring at the flaming mass of charcoaled zeds on the garage floor.

  She looked below to the roof of the jeep. A dark empty circle was in the roof. But no Crowe.

  “Crowe!” shouted Sarah.

  His face appeared in the centre of the circle. “Come on!” shouted Crowe, safely in the back of the jeep.

  “Go!” shouted Pressman, pointing down.

  Sarah looked over the edge of the gangplank and froze.

  “Why now? Why not wait for them to burn out?” said Sarah.

  “Fuck’s sake,” said Pressman. He pointed to metal steps at the other side of the garage. They led up to the gangplank, and were already full of zombies. “You get it?”

  Sarah nodded. They didn’t have long.

  “I’ll go.” She grabbed the railing, and with no further thought hurled herself over the bannister. She landed on the roof with a thud and quickly scurried through the hole. The ragged sides cut her arm.

  “Get to the side,” shouted Crowe. She did so, just in time, as Abdul fell through the roof, followed by Pressman.

  She realised she was sweating, the heat of the burning pyre of undead outside razing the air in the jeep. She felt like she was in a cooker, being roasted slowly for the enjoyment of the hoard.

  The doors at the back of the jeep rattled and buckled, gangrenous hands clawing at the window, red and brown smears covering the glass. The jeep rocked like a ship in a storm.

  Crowe crawled through to the driver’s seat.

  The windows showed the surrounding dead, in flames, crackling and oblivious to their plight. Their skin melted and charred; it looked like the jeep was encircled by a gang of macabre burning skeletons.

  Sarah jumped as a zombie’s head popped in a mist of red and purple.

  “Here they go, their brains are cooking,” said Crowe.

  A series of dull pops was heard as one by one, the dead bodies succumbed to the heat, and their brains burst, the boiling sludge of what was left spitting from their fragile skulls. The window of the jeep became covered in a scattered pattern of dubious red, purple and black liquid.

  “We better go,” said Pressman. He wiped his brow, the sweat pouring from his head.

  The engine roared into life and she fell back as the vehicle trundled forward, bouncing up and down as it ploughed over and through the numerous burning bodies in front of them.

  The jeep made slow progress, having to wait for the fire to to thin out the zombies around them. They crawled out of the garage, and daylight burst in through the windows. Thuds rained upon the sides of the vehicle as the zombies hammered with flaming hands, desperate to get in. The pops of the dying zombies, their heads exploding, followed them as they made their slow procession through the forest of burning undead.

  A thick, black putrid soup of smoke surrounded the jeep. Crowe closed the air vents, but it still seeped in through the hole in the roof and the many tiny gaps in the old frame. They covered their mouths, but were soon coughing and spluttering.

  Sarah eased herself down, the hot metal of the floor burning her skin. Her eyes watered, her lungs burned, and every breath of the rancid fumes stung her chest. Her eyelids became heavy, and her thoughts started to blur.

  She turned to her left, and beside her was her daughter. She was crying, holding out her arms.

  “Mummy!” The little girl’s innocent eyes didn’t understand why mummy couldn’t help her.

  “I’m coming, Clarissa, I’m coming,” shouted Sarah through gasping breaths.

  “Mummy! Help me!”

  Sarah reached out her hands, but they were heavy, too heavy. She looked down to see they hadn’t moved, they are on the floor, red and blistering.

  “I can’t reach you,” she sobbed.

  A noise from somewhere. A full and roaring noise, increasing in pitch. The floor stopped rocking.

  Sarah didn’t open her eyes. Everything became like water, and deep in the sea, she was gone.

  Chapter 9

  Sarah awoke to quiet. She was lying on her back, staring through the hole in the jeep’s roof to the clear blue sky above. A bird flew across her field of vision, let out one lonely cry, before darting off beyond the small world of the hole in the roof.

  Her stomach rumbled with hunger pangs.

  Her trousers were wet, she had peed herself. She didn’t care.

  How long had she been out?

  She pushed herself up, her body creaking and aching, every muscle stiff. Her mind flooded with visions of the stadium, of death, of Max dying.

  Of her daughter.

  She had seen her daughter.

  She stared around the jeep frantically, before it slowly dawned on her that it had been her imagination, her brain firing painful illusions as she had succumbed to the fumes.

  Maybe she had been dying and that had been her heaven; to be abl
e to hold her daughter again, to look after her and let her know she would never leave her, never let her down again.

  She started to cry, unable to hold back the pain.

  Would this world ever stop? Was she to fight now for every minute of every day? At what price was peace, was life?

  Abdul appeared at the entrance to the jeep. He had heavy rings under his eyes. His skin was sallow, tired.

  She wiped her eyes.

  “You’re awake, I’m so glad” said Abdul, smiling. “How do you feel?”

  “Hungry. And thirsty.”

  “I’ll go and get you some water. We don’t have any food. Pressman is out trying to get some rabbits, or birds, or something.”

  “Abdul, wait,” she called after him. He turned and poked his head back into the jeep. “How long was I out for?”

  “It’s been two days. We wondered if you were going to make it. You must have breathed in a lot of smoke.”

  “Two days. That explains why I’m so thirsty.”

  “We tried to give you water, but you didn’t swallow much.”

  “I have a headache too.”

  “We all do. I’ll get you that water.”

  She was in a sleeping bag on the floor of the old army jeep, its dull and scratched metal cold and uncaring.

  She forced her body to move and she shuffled out of the jeep.

  They were parked in a clearing in the middle of tall woods, the leaves yellow, orange and red. There was a deep mud path to the left, the tracks of the jeep cut into it like valleys.

  Abdul sat on a log, pouring water into a cup. Crowe sat next to him, tending a fire.

  “How are you feeling?” said Crowe.

  “I’ve been better,” said Sarah.

  Crowe poked a stick at the centre of the fire. It crackled, a comforting sound. She stared at its small yellow red flames, finding it hard to believe this was the same element that had destroyed a stadium of zombies just two days ago.

  “Pressman is out hunting,” said Crowe. “Hopefully we’ll have some food soon.”

  Abdul brought her some water. She put the cup to her mouth and gulped quickly.

  “Slowly,” said Abdul. “You’ll throw it up otherwise.”

  She nodded and slowed her gulps to sips.

  “We’re pretty lucky,” said Crowe, more to the fire than her. “Just after you passed out, the zeds thinned right out and we were able to make a break for it. I was worried that any longer and we would have gone up in flames too. It’s a hell of a fire.” He motioned to the sky beyond the treeline. A thick column of smoke tumbled in the distance, rolling slowly into the sky.

  “Everyone else?” said Sarah.

  “Dead I think,” said Crowe. “I went back there yesterday. It looks like hell. Everything burnt to a crisp. Stadium still burning. Parts of it glowing red like a fucking lava flow or something.”

  “Admiring your handy work?” said Sarah.

  “Let it go,” said Crowe, his eyes focused on the fire, his voice steady. “We would have been dead within weeks if we hadn’t done something. Just be glad that you’re alive, and that’s thanks to me. There’s no space for compassion anymore, even you must be able to see that? You got to do what you have to.” He turned to look at her for the first time. His eyes were red, heavy and pained.

  “I guess we do,” said Sarah. She stared down to her cup. Abdul rested his arm on her shoulder, but she hardly felt it.

  Chapter 10

  The jeep bounced through an overgrown field, leaving two deep tracks in its wake.

  Three months since the Fall and here she was again; her and Abdul in the back of an army jeep being driven by Crowe and his private. Even in the apocalypse life found its strange cycles and routines.

  She was glad to be free from the Stadium. She hadn’t realised how oppressive it had been, how it had been sapping the life from her. Crowe was right; if he hadn’t done something, she would have stayed there, rotting from the insides, and by the time the zombies got to her she would already have been one of them in everything but name.

  That night they sat around a fire.

  Pressman turned a squirrel on a spit. It crackled with pleasant promise of tasty charred protein.

  “Are you not concerned about the smoke, the light?” said Sarah, cosy under her rug.

  “I’m more worried about the cold, and eating raw meat,” said Pressman.

  Silence returned. An owl hooted somewhere.

  “Thanks,” said Sarah, glancing at Crowe.

  Pressman and Abdul both looked at Sarah. Crowe continued to stare into the fire. “What for?” he said.”

  “For getting us out of there. I guess this was the way it was meant to happen.”

  Crowe started at her. A long, even gaze. His eyes dark, unfathomable.

  “Everything happens the way it’s meant to happen,” he said. “There is no other way.”

  The next day they packed up the jeep and set off again, heading south.

  “I reckon, no matter where we go,” said Crowe, “life is going to be shit for a while, so it might as well be shit somewhere a bit warmer.”

  “Cornwall?” said Abdul.

  “Yes,” said Crowe. “We’re going on holiday.” He turned round and gave Abdul and Sarah a faint smile. “I hope you packed your bucket and spade.”

  Sarah couldn’t help but smile back. “And then what?”

  “We try to find a base, somewhere we can secure, somewhere we can feel safe, or safe-ish. Then we start searching, for others. There will be communities, groups starting to form.”

  “Like at the stadium?” said Abdul.

  “I hope not,” said Pressman.

  “We search, carefully,” continued Crowe. “Make sure we only join those who have their shit together.”

  “How will we know that?” said Sarah.

  “We won’t. Let’s just hope we get lucky.”

  Sarah looked out the window. She watched hedges and trees pass them by. Pressman was a skilled driver and he took them off-road with ease. A rough ride, but they made good ground.

  Brown and yellow leaves scattered the ground, autumn was here. Soon the trees would be bare, the land barren and stark.

  Sarah wondered if there would ever be a spring.

  THE END

  You find out how Sarah survived the Fall, along with seven other zombie novelettes in…

  SURVIVING THE FALL

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KBPYRFM

  How England died. The story of the first few days of the zombie apocalypse, of those who lived, and those who died.

  Surviving the Fall collects eight non-stop terror tales in one action packed volume, which together tell of the panic filled dawn of a new, undead world.

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KBPYRFM

  Thank you for reading Stadium of the Damned – I hope you enjoyed it.

  There’s plenty more to come – if you want to find out what happens to the characters in this book, and all about new and upcoming works, then please head along to my blog and sign up for email updates. There’s a Follow button in the sidebar:

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  If you did enjoy this short story, then a kindle review would be much appreciated!

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