Wild Strawberry: Book 3 Ascent

by Trevor Donnelly

  A pile of unread newspapers, the last to be printed in Britain, told of disturbances in central London.

  Siobhan remembered how the internet had outlived newsprint by a few weeks and (amid its usual slew of wild rumour and conspiracy theories) had told the rest the story: the infection travelled, more or less at the speed of human traffic over the globe. The plague caught a budget airline flight to San Francisco, and the train through the Channel Tunnel to Paris. No one had time to trace the origin of the Outbreak in Sidney, Australia, and no one was left to investigate afterwards.

  Siobhan felt tears prick the corner of her eyes as she scanned the newspapers. She took one, folded it carefully and slid the end into the back pocket of her jeans.

  Suddenly the survivors jumped at the sound of footsteps upstairs.

  Siobhan was about to call out, offering shelter in the Bunker, but something about the staccato rhythm of the feet made her stop.

  “Hello?” Arlene had no such qualms. “Is there anyone there?”

  The footsteps gave way to a frantic beating: the unmistakable sound of the undead, driven wild by unnatural hunger.

  “Time to go, people!” Arlene grabbed a celebrity gossip magazine from the stand by the door on the way out.

  The engine of the car was ticking over in the road outside. Will was in the driver’s seat, looking around nervously.

  Suddenly he saw a face he recognised. He couldn’t quite remember the man’s name. They had met on a team-building course. Two companies had been sharing a centre for a week, doing ‘high ropes’ and canoeing. He remembered being terrified in the canoe. He was not a confident swimmer, and desperately tried to hide his fear from his workmates. He was so relieved when the instructor handed out life jackets that he almost cried.

  In the end he enjoyed the exercise: paddling down a scenic river in the Surrey countryside. His fear of water made it an exhilarating experience.

  Near the end of the canoeing afternoon Will had turned over his canoe, but in the shock of cold water and the panic of not being able to breathe, he had been unable to right himself.

  He had thought how ridiculous it would be to drown so close to land all his work colleagues.

  This familiar face had been nearby, spotted Will in trouble, and paddled over to help.

  Will had been glad that the water and shivering cold had hidden his sobs of relief.

  He realised that he must be losing his grip. While he had been remembering the World Before, the man who had once saved Will had nearly reached the car.

  He beeped the horn: the signal that it was time to move on.

  The two women were already running from the shop. The window above them shattered as two zombies came racing out: a man and women, both in their thirties, and both dressed as if for a night out. He wore a black suit with a red tie; she wore a green evening dress.

  Apart from the looks of demented hunger on their faces they could have been alive.

  They landed but the woman, wearing very high heels, landed awkwardly: her leg made an audible crack, as bone jutted through her lower leg.

  She appeared not to notice, and hobbled horribly onwards, arms outstretched.

  In an ungentlemanly fashion the male zombie in the suit ignored his companion’s injury, and literally hit the ground running.

  Will winced when his former rescuer’s face smashed into the driver’s side window of the car, smearing it with blood and creating a spider-web of cracks.

  “Oh Jesus!”

  He slammed the car into reverse, and his friends cried in dismay as he screeched backwards away from them. They had two glass-covered zombies in pursuit, and now they were face-to-bloody-face with another zombie.

  Will realised his mistake and slammed into forward gear, the gearbox howling in protest.

  Siobhan and Arlene hesitated, they didn’t know which way to turn. Their indecision cost them dearly: the creatures behind caught up, and the first caught Arlene’s hair in its hands, and hauled her backwards off balance.

  Before the others had time to react the zombie’s teeth zombie connected with the top of her head and filled its mouth with flesh and hair.

  Blood splashed on the creature, and started to flow down Arlene’s face. She screamed, and other creatures started to emerge from behind nearby houses of the village.

  Will ploughed the car into his ‘life-saver’ zombie, leaving it pinned to the bonnet of the car, its hands hammering against the metal, denting it alarmingly. Will could feel its feet underneath the car.

  He slammed the brakes again, and opened the passenger door to the others.

  “Come on ladies; your carriage awaits.”

  Only then did he take in Arlene’s blood-soaked visage. “Oh fuck!”

  But it was too late to do anything. The suited zombie had Arlene by the head, and was tearing her scalp way from her skull with a wet, ripping sound. Arlene’s screams had given way to soundless mouthed prayers.

  Siobhan hesitated; there was nothing she could do to help Arlene now, the only merciful thing would be aid her to a quick death.

  Siobhan couldn’t believe Arlene was dying in front of her eyes. They had been outside together so much in the last twenty-four hours that she had started to imagine it could be possible to survive in the world outside the Bunker.

  Will flung open the passenger side door and yelled, “Come on, it’s too late for her, we gotta fucking motor.”

  Siobhan threw herself into the passenger seat, and Will shot off down the road.

  Looking backwards Siobhan could see Arlene’s bloody hand, outstretched for help, her eyes pleading, but even if they could rescue her she was infected, death would soon follow, and then a fate worse than that.

  “I just didn’t know,” Siobhan spoke hesitantly, her voice small, like a child, “that it could all end so quickly.”

  “Yeah, right,” Will was concentrating on driving, having to weave through the running creatures who were emerging from behind the houses in the village.

  As they journeyed onward, painfully slowly, Siobhan started to cry.

  A crowd of ragged children was following the car. She wondered if they had been at school when the End came, or sheltering together. All their little bodies were mangled in one way or another: among the small figures she could see a sprinkling of missing eyes, ears, or even limbs; many throats had been ripped out, leaving brownish-black gaping wounds. And yet they still looked so like children. It was hard to believe that they were not just dressed up for Halloween. The eyes that should have been innocent and full of laughter, were wild and full of hunger; their screams sounded somewhere between the snarling of full-grown undead and the high-pitched screams of delight that had once echoed around the world’s playgrounds.

  Siobhan shuddered. Of all the horrors she had witnessed, this crowd of ‘children’ was the worst: the perfect illustration of the end of the human race.

  She crouched down in her car seat and began to sob quietly.

  Once the road was straight, and Will could afford to use his left hand, he placed it on Siobhan’s shoulder. He wanted it to feel reassuring, but he could not stop his own trembling.

  After they had driven for almost an hour in silence Siobhan spoke, “It’s getting dark, we can’t return to the Bunker in the dark.”

  “Aye,” agreed Will, “and let’s not forget that the headlights will attract every creature from miles around.”

  “Every creature that hasn’t already been attracted by the sound of the engine,” enlarged Siobhan.

  “Let’s get out into the countryside, find a nice spot in the middle of nowhere, roll the seats back and kip till dawn.”

  “OK, but you sleep first, I’m too wired,” Siobhan hugged herself tightly as she spoke, “I’ll be on lookout.”

  “If you’re on lookout you’ll be moving about in the car, that’ll just attract them.” said Will, “I honestly think we’d be better both getting down low, under the radar, so to speak, and then set off when we wake.”
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br />   “OK, but one of us should try and stay awake, to stop the other from snoring, or waking them if they make a noise, you know, like the nightmares.”

  They pulled into a field.

  “Wake me if it rains,” warned Will, looking at the dark clouds that were rolling in, “we don’t want to get stuck if the ground turns to mud.”

  * * *

  The car was rolling down the hill.

  It was rolling towards a playground.

  “I didn’t know,” Siobhan tried to speak, but her mouth didn’t seem to be working properly. For one horrible moment she wondered if she had died and become one of them. But then she remembered, ‘I think therefore I am,’ if she was wondering then the capacity for wonder probably meant she was still alive.

  Beside her in the car Will had gone. His seat was occupied by a packet of pasta.

  There were drums, constant drums, so frantic it was almost white noise.

  And there was mud: the car wasn’t rolling, it was sliding down a vast muddy hill. At the bottom of the hill was a large playground, full of happy children. They were swinging on swings, spinning on roundabouts and climbing on frames.

  Someone was taking photographs; the flashes stung Siobhan’s eyes.

  As they slid closer they began to gain speed. Siobhan started banging on the windscreen; she had to warn them – the car would crash through the fence and into the children.

  They slid closer still. One of the infants, at the top of the slide, turned to see the car. Siobhan’s heart leapt, they had seen her, they would run. But as she slid almost to the fence she finally saw the children’s faces.

  Their eyes were sunken and their teeth were yellow and stained with blood.

  They started to run towards the car.

  They were all holding tin-openers high in the air as they ran. Another flash went off, and the drumming grew still more persistent.

  When the children reached the car they started to poke at the metal with their tin-openers.

  There was an incredibly loud roar.

  Siobhan woke with a start. It was raining hard, flashing with lightning and thunder.

  Looking beside her, Siobhan saw that Will was sleeping soundly, snoring gently. She looked out of the window. It was dark: almost totally dark. When the lightning flashed everything was so bright that it was hard to take in what she was seeing. Was that a crowd of approaching zombies or the hedgerow at the far end of the field?

  With Arlene dead the situation felt hopeless. But if they did succeed in their plan this could be the last night she ever spent outdoors. This could be the last rain she would ever experience.

  Suddenly her heart was beating fast. She longed to be outside in it. She longed to feel the rain on her skin.

  She should wake Will, he had been worried about the car getting stuck in the wet earth, but surely a five-minute delay would do no harm?

  “Fuck it,” she whispered aloud.

  She could not resist.

  But what about Will?

  She couldn’t leave him.

  She wrote, ‘need to relieve myself – don’t panic,’ and opened the car door as quietly as she good. As the noise of the rain suddenly became louder she slipped out of the car as quickly and quietly as possible, leaving the note on her seat.

  She shivered, soaked to the skin in seconds.

  Then cold and exultant, Siobhan stepped through the rain.

  She could see no more than a few metres in front of her. If she met a zombie she would be defenseless.

  She held her hands high and looked up to the sky. Raindrops struck her, icy cold, and ran down her body.

  Her skin tingled; she felt so utterly alive; she could stumble on a monster and her life could be ended in a second. But right now she was living. It was so cold she was shaking: her legs trembling.

  She opened her mouth and let the rain roll along her tongue and down her throat.

  A flash of lightning.

  A face, ten metres away, its mouth wide open, a dark maw in an unnaturally pale visage.

  She ran back to the car, her eyes could only see the lightning flash and the pale face burned onto her retinas.

  As the image faded she threw herself inside and nudged Will awake.

  “We’ve got company, it’s time to go!”

  “What?” Will shook his head to clear it, as a flash of lighting illuminated them both. “What? Have you been outside?”

  “There’s at least one of them out there! Now drive!”

  Before Will could argue further there was a crash into the back of the car. He turned the key in the ignition and the the engine hummed into life. The zombie started beating on the roof of the car, denting the metal.

  The wheels spun, churning up the earth.

  “Oh fuck!” Will tried to remain calm despite his pounding heart. He stopped the spinning wheels and tried to start more slowly.

  A wave of guilt swept over Siobhan. Had her desire to feel the rain, her delay waking Will to get the car rolling, killed them both? She turned in her seat to try and see the creature through the darkness.

  Her face, glistening with rain-water was clearly visible by the dashboard light. She suddenly felt like fresh meat on display in a butcher’s shop window.

  “They can see us now,” she cried, “turn the headlights on so we can see them!”

  Will flicked them on, and although the rain made it hard to see clearly, the field was bathed in an eerie bluish light.

  They could see at least ten of the creatures running towards them through the rain.

  Siobhan grabbed hold of her club, “Get ready, I’m gonna give you a push!” And before Will could argue she opened her door leaping out once more into the rain.

  The rain that had made every inch of her skin exalt just a few moments ago, now beat down sharp and cold. She felt more awake than she had ever done in her life.

  The zombie near the car turned sharply towards her. It had a large portion of the side of its head missing, a part of its brain clearly visible. Time slowed down. Siobhan wondered if these injuries had caused its death, or if they had come afterwards from a fight with the living. She swung the club. She wasn’t in a position to hit the exposed brain, so her first blow was an uppercut to the creature’s jaw.

  Siobhan almost lost her balance, her feet sliding in the mud; but it was the zombie who fell to the ground. She ran a few steps forward till she was standing on the creature’s chest. She felt ribs crack under her weight, and brought her club into contact with the zombie’s open head wound.

  There would be more monsters here in a few seconds. Looking up she was relieved to see the front runner, a burly man in a nun’s habit, slide in the mud and fall face down.

  The sight was almost comical, but Siobhan could only think that the poor man had probably been at a party, and now he was denied any dignity in death. Her brain was working fast in the slowed down hyper-reality caused by adrenaline and cold water.

  She didn’t have time to check if the zombie under her feet was properly laid to rest, but leapt off and started to push the back of the car.

  “Drive, you stupid bastard!” she shouted over the din of the storm.

  The chilled metal of the car was even colder than the rain. She pressed her back against it and pushed.

  The wheels spun again, plastering Siobhan with mud.

  She pushed, her feet skidding, dug herself into the mud and pushed again. She laughed out loud, then shouted at the heavens, “Talk about a bloody farce!”

  She was soaking wet, covered in mud and zombies were slipping and sliding their way towards her.

  “God, you have one sick sense of humour!”

  As she shouted the car started to roll forward and she fell back in the mud.

  She paused a fraction of a second, and snapped back to reality with the noise of the car horn.

  Will was speeding across the field away from her, flashing the lights and beeping the horn.

  “What the fuck?” She looked at the car d
riving away, leaving her alone with unknown numbers of the dead.

  But the zombies started to follow the car, and Siobhan realised that Will wasn’t leaving her, but leading the monsters away.

  She stayed down low: in the dark and the rain she was almost invisible.

  The creatures followed the car, and Siobhan saw the man in the nun costume grab hold of the car’s wing mirror as it passed. He was pulled along for a few metres before the mirror slid out of his hand and creature was once more sprawled in the mud.

  When Siobhan’s part of the field was empty she got to her feet in a crouch.

  The car looped round and it was quickly obvious to Siobhan that while the zombies could not see her, neither could Will.

  She would have one shot at this, so she stood up tall and waved her arms. If Will missed her but the zombies didn’t she would not last long.

  Luckily, Will caught sight of her, but in the dark and rain he could not be sure it was her and not a wildly waving zombie until he was up close.

  To both their reliefs, Siobhan pulled open the passenger door and bundled back into the car as it bumped along the field.

  Will looked at his companion, she was covered in mud from head to toe; only her teeth and eyes glinted white. She was too tired and too relieved to be embarrassed.

  “What the fek were you doing?”

  Siobhan sighed, “That could be the last rain we ever feel on our skin Will, I just had to get out in it while I still could.”

  “Aye, well, it’ll be a night to remember, anyway.”

  They laughed. Not the hysterical laughter of crumbling sanity, but genuine, good-humoured, glad-to-be-alive laughter.

  “But you really should put some dry clothes on love.”

  “I need to get my breath back first.” However, Siobhan fell asleep, cold and muddy, within ten minutes of Will driving.

  When Will felt his eyelids droop he pulled over to the side of a deserted road and slept.

  * * *

  In the morning it was still raining. Siobhan opened the car window to wet a T-shirt with rainwater, and she used the cold damp material to clean the mud from her body before getting dressed awkwardly in the confines of the car.