The Long Walk Home

by A. M. Keen

  “Where are you?” Bucky asked.

  “Same place as you, only on the front wheels.”

  “Lacey too?”

  “Yes, Lacey too. The gang’s all here.”

  “Great. This is just bloody great. What in God’s name are we going to do now that we’re tied up to a tractor? How did you three manage to get overpowered by one person?”

  “He took your sword, idiot,” Lacey replied. “You think any of us are going to argue with a psychopath holding a sword?”

  “Hold on a minute,” Aaron replied, grimacing with effort. “He may be a psychopath, but he’s been a bit lax with tying my hands. I’m almost through this rope, and when I am, I’m gonna go up there and give that asshole the beating of his miserable life.”

  “And just how do you plan on doing that?” Johnny asked. “He’s twice the size of you and has Bucky’s sword with him.”

  Bucky noted the absence of his holster.

  “First, I’m going to untie all of you, then I’m gonna go to that workshop over there, grab a hammer or something, run up that ladder and smash his head in. That’s how I’m going to do it.”

  “Not if we get killed first,” Lacey replied. Bucky listened as the barn doors heaved and creaked against the bike chain. Snarling sailed through the air from the other side. “The gap in the doors is wide enough for them to put their fingers through.”

  Aaron popped his hands from behind his back. “See, stage one complete,” he said, waggling his fingers in Bucky’s direction.

  “Hurry up and get the rest of us,” Bucky snapped. Aaron rushed over to the workshop. “Aaron! What the hell are you doing now?”

  Aaron stopped a moment, peering upwards before grabbing a junior hacksaw from its place on the wall. He ran back across the barn to Bucky and began slicing through the rope.

  “Sounds like he’s screwing her.”

  Bucky shook his head. “Asshole. I knew he was no good.”

  “Yeah. We have to stop him and be quick about it.” Bucky pulled the rope and snapped its threads. Aaron ran around the tractor to the others while Bucky untangled the knots around his wrist. He ran across to the workshop and grabbed a screwdriver. Aaron was right. Miss Greene was sobbing from the room above. He heard her flesh pound as Lawro struck her to an even beat. The others soon joined him, freed from their restraints by Aaron and his hacksaw. They each chose a tool to use as a weapon. Lacey grabbed a hammer while Johnny took a Stanley knife.

  “Listen,” Bucky began as the sounds of their teacher’s sobs passed down through the floor boards, “if he’s balls deep inside her, he’s not going to be thinking about anything else. He’ll be vulnerable. If the door isn’t locked we can rush in and take him out.”

  “But what if he isn’t?” Johnny asked.

  “I don’t know, I’m flying by the seat of my pants, here. Nothing like this ever happened in Dawn of the Dead. You have any better ideas?”

  Johnny shook his head. “No, but whatever we do we have to do it quick. The barn door isn’t going to hold much longer with those crazy gits out there pushing against it.”

  “We need to save Miss Greene first, then we can deal with the crazies outside. I need my sword to be able to do that, which is up there now in Lawro’s possession. We need to agree. This first then the outside? Yes?” His three friends nodded in agreement.

  “Wait, wait. I have a better idea,” Aaron began. “How about if we go up first and hide either side of the door, then let Lacey walk into the room? You know how hot headed Lawro can be. He’ll barge out here without thinking, looking to do Lacey some damage. He’ll pass us by, we then attack him from behind, and boom, job done.”

  Lacey screwed her face up. “So, what you’re saying is that you want to use me as bait?”

  “It’s safer than us all rushing into the room. None of us have been in there. Lawro said it was being used as a store room when he first explored it earlier on. We don’t know how much it’s holding or what is in there. It could be stacked full with nowhere to move, and if that is the case, we’d be screwed.”

  Lacey pondered a moment. Johnny kept a watch on the door. “Guys, we can’t talk about this for much longer, we have to do something now or we’re going to be fighting Lawro and the crazies at the same time. That bike chain on the door is not going to keep them out.”

  “Alright, I’ll do it,” Lacey whispered, “but you three had better be there for me.”

  Bucky nodded. “Let’s go.”

  They each ascended the ladder as silent as a ninja, their minimal noise covered by the sobbing from inside the storeroom. On their tiptoes they moved, Aaron and Johnny to the right side of the door, Bucky to the left. Lacey stood in the doorway.

  “Swing it open and make as much noise as you can,” Bucky whispered. They’d have to make noise to gain Lawro’s attention. Lacey nodded. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Bucky asked.

  The tone in her voice was firm. “Let’s do it.”

  Lacey smashed the door open. It clattered on its hinges and smacked against the wall Bucky leant against. She stood for a moment in the doorway, clutching her hammer.

  “What are you doing, you disgusting pervert!” she bellowed.

  “You witch!” screamed Lawro’s disembodied voice from within the room.

  “Don’t look at me, just back away,” Bucky whispered to Lacey. She took a pace backwards. The heavy thud of Lawro’s footfalls sprinted toward them. Bucky nodded to Johnny. He returned the gesture.

  Through the door Lawro burst, clutching the sword in both hands. Johnny tackled him from the side, knocking the blade from his grasp and out of reach. In a moment of madness, the kids descended onto the naked body of their older peer. In a frenzy of rage, Bucky hammered the screwdriver into Lawro’s chest. A hammer smashed down upon his temple. Blood spurted from his nose. Carnage engulfed the barn as all cognitive thinking diminished and a bloodthirsty frenzy emerged. Lawro screamed, but no one relented. The hammer crashed down upon him, again and again and again. The Stanley knife gouged and lacerated his skin. The screwdriver plunged into the flesh and deep inside his body. The floorboards became awash with blood.

  “Stop, stop, stop, stop, STOP!” Bucky yelled. He stood up from his knees and took a step back. The body on the floor lay unrecognisable from the one they’d seen just moments before. Lawro lay motionless on the floor boards, resembling a deformed creature. His skull had been smashed with the hammer, and so violent was the force inflicted that his left eyeball sat on top of his eye socket, pushed out by the ferocity of Lacey’s attack. His torso lay awash with blood, so much so that his entire trunk bathed in a crimson shine.

  “What have we done?” Bucky whispered, swept through with emotion. They’d killed someone, and not even a person that was infected or zombified. They’d killed an actual human being who had not succumbed to the virus in any way shape or form. “Look at him.”

  “We went over this before,” Aaron began. “We did it to survive.”

  “Yeah, but not to a human,” Bucky whispered. “We’ve destroyed him. Look, his skull has been smashed. His skin is shredded. How could we do it so bad?”

  “We did what we had to do, Bucky,” Aaron replied. “If we had done just half a job and Lawro recovered from the injuries, he’d be after us no question. We made sure the asshole stayed down.”

  “We need to check Miss Greene,” Lacey added, ignoring their conversation. She pushed past them both and into the storage room.

  “Come on, man, Miss Greene is going to need us,” Johnny said, placing a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “This ain’t the world it used to be. You have to get used to it or you’re gonna fall by the wayside.”

  Aaron stood by the ladder. “You guys go in, I’ll keep watch on that door. Make it quick, though, we don’t have much time.”

  Bucky wa
ndered into the dim room, lit only by torchlight. Johnny slapped a hard hand between his shoulder blades. Any remorse Bucky felt for the attack on Lawro quickly vanished. Johnny made a good point. This wasn’t the world he was used to anymore. It was a new one, a different one, and one where new rules would be established as time drew onward.

  Lacey stood above Miss Greene’s naked body.

  “Oh my God,” Johnny whispered. Their teacher had been placed on top of a thick rug or carpet. Both of her feet had been removed. The carpet she lay atop absorbed the blood that had been lost through the injuries. The paleness of her skin told Bucky that their teacher was gone.

  “She’s dead,” Lacey whispered.

  “What kind of sick idiot would do this?” Johnny asked. “He must have been seriously messed in the head.”

  Bucky closed his eyes. There was no one left to take care of them. The four students, kids at best, now needed to take care of themselves in a world far more unforgiving than the one they’d been raised in. Pressure bore down upon his shoulders. He was the guy that knew things about zombies, at least from pop culture. He’d be looked to as someone who could get them out of any situation they may find themselves in. Why the hell hadn’t Johnny just kept his mouth shut back at the hardware shop? Thanks to him, Bucky would now be looked upon as a leader, a title he did not want.

  “Guys! They’re in! Quick! I need help!” Bucky returned to his senses with Aaron’s warning. He scoured the area until finding the sword on top of some boxes.

  “What are we going to do?” Lacey asked.

  Bucky turned to her. Time to lead by example and hope the others picked it up fast. “The only thing we can do. Survive.”

  A group of infected pushed through the barn door. Wood splintered as the bike chain remained but the handle gave away. They ambled inside, one blood soaked person followed by another, groaning and snarling as they parted around the tractor.

  Johnny took up an attack stance as Bucky left the storage room. “There’s only one way to get up here. We should be safe. We can pick them off one at a time if they climb the ladder.”

  “Only if they climb the ladder,” Bucky replied. “If they don’t, and more decide to join them, we’ll be stuck. We will be safer down there on foot and away from tight spaces like this, not holed up in a barn that cannot keep the wind out. If we don’t get down now we’re stuck up here, and for a very long time.”

  “I count seven,” Aaron added. “We can take seven of them.”

  “Screw this.”

  The events that had unfolded in the past day took its toll on Bucky, and no longer fearing for his own safety, he descended the ladder and jumped to the floor. The first to notice was a bearded man clad in a rain stalker coat. His white eyes found Bucky, and with a shrill akin to that of an animal, bounded across to his position with bloodied arms outstretched. Bucky wielded the sword and sliced the blade into his head, dropping the man to his knees. Blood poured from the wound as Bucky withdrew the blade, but it stuck inside, the skull unwilling to let it leave. He pulled again. The blade remained embedded. The man’s body began to twitch, causing more difficulty to keep hold of the weapon. A woman with wide, open eyes bore down upon him. Her mouth opened to its full extent, revealing black liquid that oozed and dripped down across her chin. Darkened veins protruded her skin as she descended upon him, ready to take a bite that would infect, or, even worse, kill him.

  She jolted to the side as flesh and matter splattered his cheek. Lacey stood there, smashing her head with the hammer whilst her focus had been on Bucky. Aaron leapt to his side, plunging a screwdriver deep into the head of another woman, a farm hand by Bucky’s perception.

  “Come on,” Lacey said, rushing past Bucky. He screamed out and pulled the sword with herculean effort, removing the blade from his initial attacker. Blood with the consistency of slime took hold of the blade, still unwilling to give it back.

  Bucky rushed to the herd of infected ambling around the tractor. Lacey struggled with a top naked man who’d enjoyed far too many takeaways back in the old world. “Duck!” he screamed. Lacey dropped to the floor as the blade of his sword whistled over her head, slicing deep into the fat guy’s neck. The head tumbled from his shoulders, but hung against his back, still attached by skin and ligaments. The sword had not passed through the flesh with a clean strike. Black liquid trickled from the wound as the body swayed and tumbled in a drunken manner around the barn. Bucky ignored it and focused on the next, a skinny man wearing stained glasses. He swiped down before the outstretched hands could reach him, embedding the sword inside a skull for a second time. This time the blade withdrew on the first attempt. He span around, ready for the next attack, but it didn’t arrive.

  Bucky stood motionless for a moment as the rain rattled the ground and crops outside. Between them they’d neutralised the threat. The aimless, beheaded body still wandered around, clattering and smashing into its surroundings. Johnny moved across and plunged the screwdriver into its head, dropping the erratic walking body to a motionless lump laying on the floor.

  “Alright. What next?” Aaron asked. His cricket whites should have now been called cricket soils.

  “I don’t think we can stay here,” Bucky replied, speaking with honesty. “It’s too dangerous. The barn won’t keep any of them out.”

  “Ah, shit, man, I’m knackered,” Aaron stated.

  “I know, but we’re not safe here, not now. These doors won’t hold without a handle.”

  “Not even upstairs?” Johnny asked.

  “No. If we have a horde rushing into us again and we’re all upstairs, we have nowhere to go.”

  “Damn it,” Aaron sighed.

  “Where do we go, though?” Lacey asked.

  “Anywhere. It was like Miss Greene said earlier, just keep moving. I think that’s what we have to do. Just move. The further we walk the more likely we are to find somewhere safe.” Bucky felt bad about lying to them. He didn’t imagine there’d be anywhere safe to rest out in this area, not this rural anyway, but to be moving and travelling would be better than the alternative.

  With the amount of bodies in the barn, they decided to set it alight as they left. Now, across a field and in the rain, they turned back to see the fire rage in the distance. They’d decided to head back to the main road and follow signs to the safe zone established within the grounds of a football stadium, the plan they had agreed upon back in the shop with Mr Peterson. It seemed best, as not one of them knew where they were as they marched across the fields.

  They found the road as they wandered across the openness. The handful of infected they passed did so at a distance, keeping their threat level low and allowing them to make time on their journey. No one spoke, whether it being due to tiredness or fear Bucky didn’t know. They crossed the safety barrier and stood upon tarmac. The handful of cars on both sides stood silent and eerie. It really was the end of the world. Rain, distant thunder at times, Bucky sighed. Things could not get any worse.

  Four

  Through the darkness the road descended. Two hundred meters away, give or take, a bridge crossed the road that they walked upon, but did so at their level, meaning that the road they followed had to descend below ground level.

  They wandered between vehicles until reaching the bottom where the bridge sheltered them from the ongoing rainfall.

  “Okay, take five please,” Aaron asked, leaning against a Honda.

  “Yes, I need a pit stop,” Johnny began as he headed across to the stone wall. Lacey sighed, placing her hands on her hips. Bucky scouted the area. The stone walls ran on both sides, starting where the road descended. The way they headed meant an ascension another two hundred meters or so. The road above must have been a major travel way, but Bucky had no idea which one.

  After Johnny answered the call of nature they continued walking, enjoying the small journey before
being thrust in to the rain once more.

  “Hey.” Bucky turned to see Johnny peering into a four by four. Johnny clicked the handle. “It’s open.”

  Bucky wandered across to him with the others. A picnic hamper and blankets sat upon the vehicle’s rear seat.

  Bucky sighed. “I don’t think now is…”

  “Look!” Lacey pointed out a set of car headlights on the road they’d just walked from. “We’re saved.”

  Butterflies erupted inside Bucky’s stomach. “No. No, we’re not. We have to hide, now.”

  Lacey sighed. “Why?”

  “The clowns,” Bucky informed her.”They said this was their road.” Lacey’s expression fell. “We need to hide before they see us.”

  “Get in,” Johnny gasped.

  Lacey opened the passenger door and moved over to the driver’s seat. Aaron and Johnny took the back, whilst Bucky jumped in the passenger side and closed the door.

  “Everyone in?” he asked as the doors closed.

  “Yes,” Johnny replied. “Here.” He handed across some picnic blankets.

  “Do you have one?” Bucky asked, reaching to the dash and engaging the door locks.

  “We got a few. Looks like the people who owned this car were out for the day when this whole shit storm hit.”

  “Cover yourselves and lay down.”

  Lacey slumped down behind the steering wheel, drawing the blanket across herself as she rested her head next to the gear stick. Bucky slumped beside her, his hand maintaining a firm grasp of the sword, ready to lash out for an instant attack if needed.

  The distant headlights gleamed through their windows as it manoeuvred between the abandoned vehicles. The gentle purr of its engine became audible.

  “Sounds like they stopped,” Johnny whispered.

  “Can you see anything from back there?” Bucky asked.

  “I’ll look.”

  “For God’s sake don’t get spotted.”

  Bucky held his breath as Johnny shuffled from behind.