The zombies thumped against the glass.
Andy laid Grant down on the floor and stepped backwards out of the dining room. The glass door smashed; one giant pane fell inward. A zombie, a young woman in sports gear with a gaping hole in her stomach, empty of innards and organs, burst through in glee and fell on top of Grant’s body on the floor.
Andy pulled the dining room door shut and locked it.
Chapter 12
The zombie wobbled as powerful waves flung the boat to the left and right. White water skimmed off the top of the rollers and sprayed on its face.
The zombie felt none of this.
It didn’t feel the cold, it didn’t feel the wet. It had no fear over its precarious position on the side of the boat, with only the low safety rail between it and the blue depths. It was vaguely aware others like it were nearby. It felt them.
It also felt something else in the boat. Different from itself, but somehow like it. Fixated on the moving figure beyond the glass it pushed and moaned towards it, but got no closer, an invisible barrier holding it back.
It didn’t hear the regular clank of metal as the anchor was raised. It didn’t hear the roar of the engine as it fired from the stern. It wasn’t aware of the push of the boat though the waves, towards the shore.
A flap of skin on the zombies head raised like a flag as the wind from the new speed of the boat blew around its head.
A sudden rise as the boat hit a wave hard. The zombie was in the water, sinking, all around it becoming dark, dank.
It came to rest on the sandy bottom. It got up again in the black, and began walking across the seabed, with no idea as to where.
The zombies banged on the door separating the dining room from the living area.
Andy pushed the boat to full throttle and held the wheel straight, aiming for the shore. A wave, three or four feet high, appeared at the bough. The boat hit it and the hull shook violently with a heavy bang. The wheel spun hard and fast and Andy pulled his hands back.
Several zombies fell from the deck as the boat lurched through the fierce topography of the sea.
Andy lowered the throttle to three quarters and turned the boat back towards the shore. He glanced behind him. Carl still lay motionless in the lounge. Andy didn’t know if he was dead or alive. The door to the dining room rattled under the weight of the undead behind, trying to get through.
The shore approached with frightening pace. Andy held the wheel steady.
The sky, grey with bulbous plumes of dark cloud, threatened rain. The wind splattered thick drops of sea water on the front screen of the powerboat. Andy fought with the wheel as the sea pulled the boat to the left, the right, and back to the left, time and time again.
The shore raced towards them. Andy braced.
The whole boat shuddered as the hull scraped onto the shore. A hollow bang filled the air. Andy was flung from the wheel, landing hard on his back. The engine roared, then clunked with a repeating whine, stuck in the sand.
He got to his feet. A huge crack in the dining room door writhed with the arms and faces of the undead, desperately trying to push through.
He ran to the lounge and grabbed Carl under the arms, dragging him down the small run of stairs to the bedrooms below. He rested Carl in one of the rooms. He ran back to the lounge, and grabbed the axe that Carl had been using.
The dining room door snapped and gave way. A zombie fell through, its hissing almost triumphant. Immediately another zombie followed, tripping over the first, and within seconds a writhing pile of grey arms and bloodied ripped bodies were pulling and crawling their way through from the dining room.
Andy sprinted back down the stairs, into the bedroom. He closed the door.
The bedroom had a single bed and an en-suite. One small porthole let in limited light, half of it taken up with lapping sea water as the waves rolled against the grounded boat.
Andy checked Carl’s pulse. It was weak, but he was alive. He rested Carl on the bed, then took the axe and smashed it into the wall above the porthole. It embedded into the fibreglass, the threads of material splitting under the weight of his blow. He struck again and again, each swing widening the gap in the wall.
Anger, fear, fury, despair fuelled each strike against the boat wall. Ten minutes, twenty minutes. His arms screamed in pain and his hands ripped red raw in blisters.
Water poured in the hole he had made. His feet were numb. He looked down to see he was standing in two feet of water. Another foot and the bed would be covered. Carl would drown.
The bedroom door rattled, groans and clicking from the other side. He didn’t have the strength to take them all on. Him and Carl were trapped in the bedroom. His arms ached with every movement. His hands could hardly grip.
He had fucked up.
He tried to pull at the gap with hands too cold to grip. The fibre glass side of the boat was solid; what did he think, he was going to peel it back like a sheet of wrapping paper? The water was up to his knees, the mattress was soaked, soon Carl would be covered. His legs ached with cold and he started to shiver.
Andy reached over and shook Carl. “Come on Carl, come on.” He slapped his face a few times, but nothing… Water pooled around Carl’s head.
Andy had to go for it.
He rested his hand against the bedroom door. Scratching from the other side belied the presence of the zombies, waiting for him, somehow knowing he was there.
He held the axe in his right hand. It hurt just to grip the handle.
He took a deep breath and unlocked the door, pulling it open.
The door wouldn’t open fully, the force of the water in the bedroom holding it back. A hand shot through the small gap.
Andy hacked at the arm, just a bloody appendage, white and rotten.Save your energy, he chastised himself.
He stood back and let the zombie do the work of opening the door. Water slushed out into the hallway. The first zombie pushed through. Impossible to tell what age or sex the zombie had been. Its face was simply a mash of red and pink flesh, torn and ripped in so many places to make it unrecognisable as having once been human. An eye hung from the socket. White bone jutted from beneath the jaw line and through the neck. A hole where the nose should have been.
It opened its mouth to make a noise of some sort, but it didn’t get the chance. Andy brought the axe down hard on its head. The skull crushed easily, sinking into the bone and soft tissue below.
Andy pulled the axe handle to retrieve his weapon, but his hand slipped. The zombie fell forward, dead, face first into the water by Andy’s feet, the axe embedded in its head . Andy reactively fell back himself, onto the bed, the only place for him to go in the cramped cabin. The cold wet mattress sank under his weight.
He pushed to get up, but it was like he was being held by a huge marshmallow, his efforts to gain traction foiled by the sinking of his arms into the mattress.
Two zombies squeezed for a moment in the doorway, before one popped through. It launched itself at Andy, its teeth clicking manically. Andy pushed at its shoulders as it fell on him.
Inches from his face; insane, lost eyes, rancid flesh, a lolling tongue, inches long with no muscle control. It lapped at Andy’s face. Its teeth began clicking, manically, cutting through its own tongue. Blood sprayed from the zombie’s mouth.
Andy’s strength wained. He sank further into the mattress. The next zombie would be on him in seconds, probably chew on his legs first. He would have to endure that pain, as he fought to keep another from his throat. How would it feel, to have the skin ripped from his bones, to have the tendons snapped from his muscles? To feel his blood squirt into the air. To be ripped apart by the blunt instruments of a dead human.
A heavy thump.
Blood squirted over Andy’s face. Pieces of flesh slapped onto the ceiling.
The weight in Andy’s arms went limp, and in a second the zombie was gone. Hands gripped Andy’s and pulled him up.
A woman stood at the foot of the bed. She wore
a leather jacket, splattered in blood. Her face was covered in a motorcycle helmet. In her hand was an axe.
“He alive?” said a muffled voice pointing to Carl.
Andy nodded, although not sure if he was.
The woman shouted out the doorway, “I’ve found them, two down here.” She turned back to Andy. “Can you walk?”
Andy nodded dumbly.
“I’m Ash,” she said. “You’re safe now.” She pulled off her motorcycle helmet. Light brown skin, small features.
Two more people arrived at the door, dressed similarly to Ash.
“Get that guy out, he’s alive, apparently,” said Ash, speaking to the two men who had arrived. “Come on,” she pushed Andy towards the door. “Let’s get you out of here.”
The path to the deck was lined with the bodies of zombies, their heads caved in. Blood decorated the walls and floor. Body parts quivered in time with thumping boots.
Ash brought Andy to the deck. Rain. Grey clouds. Cold sea. Biting wind.
Several people moved around the boat, all in protective gear, carrying weapons. Some were watching Andy and Ash. A ladder reached up from the water to the deck.
“What about Carl?” said Andy.
“He’s ok, we’ll get him back to the clinic,” said Ash as she guided Andy onto the ladder.
“Clinic?”
Ash pointed to the distant sand dunes. It looked like there was a barricade, a fence of some sort running along the bottom of the dunes. It stretched for as far as he could see, the heavy rain obscuring the far sides of the beach. “You’ll be safe here.”
A man on the beach shouted up to Ash, “We got them? Come on, we need to get the fence closed.” He was a thin man with longish hair and a beard. He didn’t have the protective gear of the others, but carried a bag bursting with heavy looking tools.
“Relax, Jack, we’re coming.”
Andy climbed down the steps into the water. It reached his knees. He took long sweeping steps through the water, Ash always guiding him forward. Jack had disappeared into the distance, jogging towards the fence. Behind him, Carl was being lowered to several waiting hands.
“What is this place?” said Andy.
“Tulloch Bay Holiday Park. At least, that’s what it used to be,” said Ash. “It’s home now.”
The sea was gone, the sand hard under Andy’s feet. He stumbled, his numb legs unable to cope with the rising whirls of the sand. Ash was there to catch him though, each time.
Home, thought Andy. She had said Home.
He began to cry.
THE END
You find out how Andy 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
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After the Fall (Book 7): The Undead Sea Page 5