by Ryan Casey
“We should get off the road,” Newbie said.
Hayden took in a deep breath of the fresh air. He could smell burning all around. Somewhere above, he could hear helicopters. The constant sound of screaming rang on from the suburban estates of Smileston.
He turned around and nodded.
“Lily and Harold,” Sarah said. “They … they didn’t make it?”
Hayden thought back to the way the zombies had dragged Harold down from the ladder, torn his flesh from his body. And then he thought of the way Lily had fallen down with him. He didn’t know how long the pair of them had known each other, but it had to be years. Years of love. Years of togetherness. And in the end, Lily figured that a life without her husband was a life not worth living at all.
Hayden shook his head. Sarah sighed.
“Come on,” Hayden said. “We’ve got a long way to walk. And we won’t be as lucky the next time we bump into a troop.”
He stepped in front of Newbie and Sarah as the bullets continued to rattle from the troop’s gun.
Sarah and Newbie followed him off into the distance, off into a new unknown.
Twenty-Seven
Gareth Betchly sat in the pilot’s chair of the Hawker Hunter fighter jet and wondered how the hell things had got so bad so fast.
He watched the clouds whizz by as he flew from his Yorkshire RAF base at 550 mph. These things could really fly—way back in the fifties, one of these beasts had broken the world air speed record, powering along at 727 mph. Of course, since then, technology had stormed ahead. The USA’s Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was capable of speeding at over 2,000 mph. New York to London in under two hours. Shit. The British government could do with a few of those discontinued aircrafts right now if the reports coming in were true.
Gareth checked the instrumentation panel in front of him as the plane sped along. There was something he loved about being in the cockpit of a jet like this, just him and hundreds of circular dials, the controls around him and the overhead panel above him. Not least the ergonomically correct chair that kept his damned back from aching all the time. Of course, the Hawker was a one-seater fighter jet, which was a positive. Not that he didn’t like his work colleagues or anything like that. He just preferred the solitude of a solo flight. He preferred sitting back with the white noise of his headphones crackling in his ears and staring ahead, picturing the speed he was going at—it was hard to comprehend when you were tens of thousands of feet in the air. The buzz of a flight was electrifying. It was something he’d spent his whole life working towards.
But he never thought he’d see combat on his own soil.
He heard a buzz in his ear. “Base to Betchly, come in?”
Gareth adjusted his microphone. “Betchly in. Reading you Five. Send your traffic.”
More crackling on the line. “Roger, Betchly. What’s your position?”
Gareth checked his coordinates and gave them to command base.
“New commands, Betchly. New orders. Ready to copy? Over.”
“Roger that. Ready to Copy.”
The line crackled some more. Gareth found it strange that he was suddenly being issued new orders. The news of the infection and the riots didn’t sound great. But his duty was simple—monitor the situation from above. Give the illusion of military presence to restore order on the town that had lost control.
“You are to use the AGM-65s, copy?”
Gareth’s stomach tightened. “Wait, you … Say again.”
“You are to use the AGM-65s on the coordinates we wire through to you. Wait out for more information. But you are to use them all. All four. Copy?”
Gareth didn’t understand. The AGM-65s were missiles. Air-to-surface missiles, to be precise. These planes were armed with four of them. He’d fired a few back when he was doing his three-year military service in Iraq, and he’d seen the devastation they caused. “I … I don’t …”
“Do you copy, Betchly?”
“Negative. I …”
“We will send you coordinates. You will use all four of your AGM-65s on those coordinates. This is a mayday situation. Now, do you copy?”
A mayday situation. On British soil. He knew this infection and the ensuing riots were supposed to be bad, but this was something else. This was an act of war.
And he was just a pawn.
“Betchly, do you—”
“Affirmative,” Betchly said, although he wasn’t exactly sure what he was agreeing to. “Wilco. Over.”
“Roger that, Betchly. Wait out for the next transmission. Over.”
Gareth wanted to ask command why he was being ordered to bomb the coordinates that were being sent through to him soon. But he wasn’t in a position to do so, not really. It was his job. He was just a cog in the machine.
It was his duty to follow orders.
He looked at the deployment screen signalling the four AGM-65 missiles were loaded and ready to go.
And then he looked at his destination coordinates, and then at his watch.
At his current speed, he’d be at his destination in five minutes.
And in five minutes, he—and a whole squadron of fighter jets—would pull the trigger.
The sleepy little northern town of Smileston sat in the crosshairs.
Twenty-Eight
Hayden, Sarah and Newbie veered off Westleigh Road and travelled down some of the side streets on their way out of Smileston, but none of the routes were easy.
Blood dripped from Hayden’s knife. Sarah’s rusty metal crowbar was covered with pieces of flesh. Newbie had found a sharpened steel pipe in the debris of an abandoned-looking council house garden, and was using that to deal with any stray zombies. His air rifle had run out of ammo, and besides, it was way too noisy, impractical and ineffective.
They walked down Ballinger Street. It was a side road with very few houses, and therefore hopefully very little in the way of population. The sun had come out and was warming Hayden’s skin, which made for a pleasant change. He was used to being stuck inside on his games consoles, so seeing the sun wasn’t an everyday thing.
Maybe the zombie apocalypse had its perks after all.
“How far to go?” Sarah asked.
Hayden tutted. “Wow. Do you not know your own home town very well or something?”
“Alright, alright. No need to get bitchy. I haven’t lived here many years. Don’t know all the side roads and back routes and country lanes, like you seem to.”
“That’s surprising,” Newbie said.
“How is that surprising?”
“The fact that you haven’t lived here many years, I mean. What could possibly bring anyone to Smileston?”
Hayden couldn’t help but smile as they walked down the quiet, cool street. “Good point.”
“Work brought me here, mostly,” Sarah said. “Got offered a job at the Smileston Post and, well, I took it.”
“So you’re the woman who writes all the condescending, borderline Nazi articles full of right-wing, multicultural hating drivel?” Newbie asked.
Sarah’s cheeks flushed a little. She lowered her head. “No. That’s not me. That’s my colleagues. My all male colleagues. Who are all white and over the age of fifty.”
“Equality at its finest,” Hayden said.
“Something like that.”
“So why didn’t you just leave?” Hayden asked.
“Leave what? My job?”
“Smileston completely. I mean … I never really thought I disliked this place, but now we’re being forced to leave, in a way I don’t feel sad. Is that weird?”
“Definitely not weird,” Newbie said.
“Hold up. Up ahead.”
Sarah’s voice made Hayden search the road ahead like an instantaneous knee-jerk reaction. He’d killed—or at least, fought off—five of the zombies on the road since fleeing Westleigh Road. He didn’t like to admit it, but he felt like he was becoming quite adept at zombie fighting. Not that he could get used to it anytime soon. But it was
getting more manageable.
At least, on day one it was. He didn’t want to even picture a day two or a day three. They had to get out of Smileston. Get to safety. Get this over with so it was nothing more than talk.
He had to pray his mum, his dad and his sister were okay.
“Up on the right by the cottage.”
Hayden looked beyond the grey-bricked cottage and he saw them right away. Just two zombies. One of them, a man with bushy grey hair and a beard, was completely naked. He had bites all over his belly, which weeped with blood every step he took. There was a woman, too. She was in her purple bra and panties. The front of her throat had been torn open. Judging from the smudging of blood around the man’s mouth, he’d been the one to do it.
Hayden tightened his grip on the butcher’s knife as the dread welled up inside him. He just had to keep his cool. Get them dealt with. And then they could move on. They were so close to the countryside, now. They were practically on the border of Smileston and the surrounding rural areas.
Just one final push.
“Fuck,” Newbie said. “I was kind of hoping we wouldn’t have to deal with any more.”
“Not for much longer,” Hayden said, as he powered forward. Not for much …
He slowed down when he saw what was behind the two straggling zombies.
There were more of them. At least ten of them. All of them were blocking the road ahead—the road that led directly into the countryside.
All of them were now looking at Hayden, Sarah and Newbie.
Some of them were walking towards them.
“Shit,” Sarah said. “Remind me of the part where we thought this was gonna be easy.”
Hayden stepped away slowly. There were too many of them to try taking on. But the route to the countryside was straight ahead.
“Gonna just have to go back,” Newbie said. “Gonna have to go back and—”
“No,” Hayden said. He pointed at the seven-foot hedges at the side of them, leading into some farmer’s fields. “We … we have to try and get around them. Through the fields. We’re so close. We can’t just give up now.”
Sarah shook her head. “Hayden, if we can get through the hedge, then I’m fucking sure they’ll figure out a way.”
“So what are you suggesting we do? Just run away? Give up, right when we’re on the verge of getting out of Smileston?”
Sarah stared ahead with her wide blue eyes at the oncoming mass of zombies. Their footsteps echoed against the concrete as they picked up pace. The sour smell of their ghastly odour was getting stronger, even worse.
“Come on,” Hayden said. He ran towards the hedge. “We need to try. We don’t have any other choice.”
Sarah and Newbie shook their heads. “Shit. Shit,” Sarah said.
And then they ran to the hedge on the left side of the road and joined Hayden.
Hayden slashed at the overgrown branches. The hedge was thicker than he thought. And the zombies sounded like they were getting much closer, much quicker.
“Hayden, seriously,” Newbie said, as he pulled at the branches. “We’re going to have to run if we don’t—”
“We’re getting through here,” Hayden said. “We have to.”
He let the adrenaline that had been pumping through his body for the last couple of hours fuel him. He tried not to overthink. Tried not to remember what an indecisive pussy he’d been all his life. He tried not to hesitate, instead just acting, acting in spite of the oncoming gasps, the nearing footsteps …
And then the knife split in two.
Hayden stared at it. It’d literally just crumbled into two pieces. All that remained in his hand was a blunt stub of metal about two inches long.
“Hayden, fuck it!” Sarah said. “We have to go!”
“But … but the countryside—”
“Fuck the countryside,” Sarah said. She grabbed his arm. Dragged him away.
He wanted to hold his ground and then he saw just how close the zombies were.
They were about ten metres away. Ten metres and getting much closer. And they were jogging pretty fast. Stretching their gnawed arms out and clawing for the trio with all of their strength, all of their might. Men, women, children. Both genders, different races.
Hayden turned and he did the only thing he could do.
He ran.
Ran as fast as he could as the zombies nicked at his heels. He didn’t like running away, not anymore. Because running away was giving up. Running away was accepting somebody else was in control.
And he didn’t want that. He was fed up of that. He’d had that all his life, and he was tired of it.
“There was a car,” Hayden gasped. “About—about half a mile down here. We just need to get to it. Get inside it. We … we can still make it out.”
“We need to go back to Smileston, Hayden,” Sarah said, panting and swaying as she looked over her shoulder at the hungry, bloodthirsty mass. “We just need to go back.”
Hayden stared at the looming high-rise flats of Smileston. Going back there was death. Certain death. But staying out here on the road was certain death, too.
They just had to get to that car.
And then they had to get out of here.
They just had to—
He heard a screeching sound overhead.
Looked up and saw it was a black military plane of some sort.
And then he heard—and felt—the blast, and he tumbled headfirst onto the road while the zombies powered on…
Twenty-Nine
Hayden wasn’t sure what he was more rattled by—the explosion somewhere behind him that had knocked him to the ground, or the fact that a crowd of a dozen zombies were powering towards him.
He swung around. His neck and his arms stung with pain. He’d heard the screech. Seen the plane. And then …
When he looked behind, he understood.
The zombies weren’t behind him anymore. Well, they were, but they were in pieces. A mangled, burning, smelly mass of body parts.
A mass of body parts that Hayden, Newbie and Sarah would’ve been a part of if they’d timed their run away from the zombies a few seconds later.
The road was on fire. The hedges at the side of the road were burning too. Beyond the hedges, Hayden could see flames stretching across the fields. The very same fields Hayden had been so insistent on climbing into—and so close to climbing into.
Sarah stepped up beside him. She held a hand to her head, which had a cut on it, and looked at the burning mass of zombie body parts. Some of them were still wriggling, even though their skulls and brains had been turned to mush by the explosion. “So they’re coming for us after all,” she said. “The military. They’re helping us after all.”
Hayden swallowed a bloody lump in his throat. He thought about the way the plane had swooped over, and how the explosion had followed. His ears were ringing, but he swore he could hear more blasts in the distance—in Smileston. “I’m not sure that’s what they’re doing.”
Newbie shook his head. He wiped his hands against the torn material of his black coat. “I … I used to be in the military. I used to work with these people. They wouldn’t … they wouldn’t just target civilians en masse. It’s not how we operate.”
Hayden stumbled over the remains of zombie body parts. There were bones cracked and sticking out of the burning flesh of a teenage boy. His neck was twisted to one side at an impossible angle, and his teeth had been shattered, but he kept on staring up at Hayden and snapping his teeth together as he passed.
He crouched down beside him. There was a dark-haired woman next to him. Must’ve been in her forties. Her arms had been blown off completely by the explosion, but she still shook from side to side, tried to reach for Hayden with everything she had.
“It’s not right,” Newbie said. Hayden hadn’t even realised he was at the side of him. He was stuck in a trance. Trying to figure out how the world—his world—had gone so wrong so fast. But every time he tried to think of a rationa
l answer or hypothesis, a zombie groaned or gasped, gargling on blood in a position that should render it dead, and he felt nothing but pity.
Hayden went to shove the knife in the side of the zombie’s head—to put it to rest—when he realised it was nothing but a blunt piece of metal now.
“That isn’t our job,” Newbie said, holding the sharp metal pipe in his hands. He looked down at the mangled bodies with tears building at the corners of his eyes, “To put them down. That isn’t our job.”
Hayden stood. He took the pipe from Newbie’s hands, which released it gradually. “Then whose job is it?”
Newbie nodded when he said that. Breathed in and out shakily, nodded, then let him take the pipe.
Hayden turned to the boy first. The teenage boy with the contorted neck that had to be on the verge of death even as a zombie—if the neck-breaking theory proved correct. He had to be in immeasurable pain, too, if zombies felt pain.
And if they didn’t, well. They still didn’t deserve to suffer like this.
He lifted the pipe. Held his breath.
“Shit. Another plane.”
He was about to swing it at the mangled boy’s head when he heard exactly what Sarah was talking about. A low hum in the air getting louder and louder. It reminded him of his childhood, up at a caravan park in the Lake District. Training planes used to fly over there from their base in Warton. And every time Hayden heard that horrible, deafening screech, he was convinced that bombs were going to rain from the sky and his life was going to end.
The terrifying fact was that right now, that actually seemed likely.
Hayden turned and looked at it. The black plane was just in front of where the noise sounded from, the plane itself edging ahead of the speed of sound by a fragment of a second—or something like that. At least, that’s what it seemed like anyway.
“What’s it doing?” Sarah asked.
Hayden didn’t have to respond.
The plane shot over the town of Smileston.
A trail of smoke hissed out of the front of the plane.