Soldiers and cops began climbing onto the bridge, and being in no hurry, Captain Hale took a moment to look back and survey the carnage left behind them – the bodies of dead infected clogging the paths between vehicles and strewn across the tarmac where they led their retreat.
Bailey joined him at the edge of the bridge, and I tilted my head to Claire, meaning for us to go listen in on them, but Emile and Dave appeared, grinning from ear to ear.
‘We’re alive!’ Dave smirked. ‘Sure, we’ve no vehicles, not a lot of food, even less ammo and a long walk ahead…’
‘But at least we are alive.’ Emile agreed, slapping Dave on the shoulder.
‘This what happens after a firefight?’ I asked.
Dave shut his eyes and took a deep, satisfying breath. ‘You walk away with zero casualties, sure.’
‘We’re not out of the woods yet…’ I reminded him.
‘Technically, we aren’t even in the woods yet.’ Claire said, pointing at the trees.
Twenty Two
From below, we could hear the groaning and wailing of the undead horde, infected mouths crying out for flesh. Our little singsong had worked to take our minds off it earlier, but these people were wearier now, and had narrowly avoided getting stuck in some truly killer traffic. Emile and Dave might have looked on survival as a blessing, but for every silver lining, there’s a cloud.
‘Where do we go from here then?’ a man asked, approaching Hale at the edge. ‘We can’t just follow the road to the next town, those people will follow us too!’
‘He’s right! We’re stuck here…’ another frustrated voice joined him, as a murmur of discontent spread throughout the group.
‘Everyone, listen.’ Captain Hale said, not raising his voice, but raising his hand, palm forwards, a subtle gesture to stop. It worked.
‘Firstly. They are not people. Call them infected, or the undead. Groaners, shamblers, runners. Whatever they are, they are not people. I cannot stress this enough. They are mindless eaters who have no desire but to eat you alive. But you are safe from them. For now.
‘Secondly. We are not stuck. We have escaped a most dangerous situation – almost certain death. For some of you, that is the second time today. For others, this will be a new experience. In any case, you’re likely feeling tired, a little shaky, and probably hungry. What I’m going to do is get where I can no longer hear these damn things and stop for a bit of a rest. You’re all welcome to join me. If you decide otherwise, then note that this bridge spans to either side of the motorway, and you’re welcome to take another path, if you wish to go it alone.’
He didn’t wait for a group consensus, just began making his way through the crowd and into the woodland off the right side of the road. The militiamen who’d been watching that side of the bridge got a wave from Mrs Lowe and followed him. With little hesitation, so did the rest of them.
Through the crowd, our little group assembled itself as we walked. We made our way down the grassy embankment and into the shade of the trees, the longer grass petering out into tufts here and there, leaving bare earth or being replaced by patches of hardy wildflowers, the last of the season.
Tucker and Gavin were a few paces behind us, walking in tense silence. Dave was just ahead, answering Reg’s questions on modern law enforcement. Tony was asking Emile if he thought more singing was a good idea.
‘Probably not the time…’ the Rojasin replied.
That left me with Claire, watching our feet as much as the ground ahead, as we made our way further from the road. The woodland was rough, old, and while there’d be a lot of walking and cycling trails cutting through these woods, they tended to be in slightly more scenic, or at least more accessible areas. We seemed a ways off those particular beaten tracks.
Close to the trees, tangles of roots threatened to trip or turn an ankle, while in open ground the earth was uneven, the sudden rises and rabbit holes being hidden by the long grass and weeds. Maybe it’d be a pleasantly challenging walk under the right circumstances, but today was not that day.
‘I used to like hiking.’ I complained to Claire after a few minutes.
‘I remember…but the weather was nicer then.’ She added.
‘And the going was easier. Hale could have picked a better route.’
‘Ah, it had been a while since you moaned about him.’ She chuckled. ‘I thought you must have grown fond.’
I made non-committal grunt.
‘So, do you really think the ghoul was calling for reinforcements?’ Claire asked.
‘I can’t think what else it was doing, making all that noise. Primal scream therapy?’
‘Hah. Yes, maybe it has some unresolved issues surrounding its death – like a vengeful spirit. I wasn’t much for religion before this either, but we know the science behind this new plague. They’re dead and walking. It does make you question things.’
‘What sort of things?’ I asked. Talking religion was fine. I love a good theological discussion, but doing it without a few drinks in me felt weird.
‘Well, like,’ she floundered, waving her arms – partially for balance as we went over the rough ground, no doubt. ‘What if there’s no more room in the various hells, and the evil dead have been sent to walk Terra once more?’
‘Get a decent screenplay together, maybe one named actor, and you might go straight to DVD…’ I smirked.
‘Well not that exactly, obviously. But something about this plague has the power to change the meaning of life and death, at least as far as we understand the whole concept.’
‘Then our understanding is flawed, clearly,’ I shrugged, ‘we don’t have all the facts, nobody had time to make an in-depth scientific analysis and if anyone has, they haven’t been able to communicate it.’
‘That’s my point, or near it,’ she said, pausing for breath as we began a short climb up a rather steep slope. ‘We’re looking at something we don’t understand. Something incredibly advanced.’
‘Are you about to say aliens?’ I asked, my turn to give a little laugh, ‘You wouldn’t even make it to DVD with that one – miniseries on the Wireless.’
She waved me off. ‘No, not aliens. There’s a quote. Advanced technology, being indistinguishable from magic.’
I waited for her at the top of the slope, breathing hard but not as breathless as she was, though I guess Claire was doing most of the talking.
‘So…you’re saying that it’s actually magic?’ I asked, giving her a look that let her know exactly what I thought about that.
‘I’m saying that what we know as magic, as supernatural, or fairy tales and mythology, there might be a grain of truth to it. A solid fact or two, hiding behind all the animated classics.’
‘You and Emile need to have a chat, he’d love to hear all this. You should hear his conspiracy theories…’
‘Come on now,’ Claire asked, putting a hand on my arm, so I’d turn to face her. ‘Are you saying you believe this is all just entirely random? After everything we’ve seen? A sickness we can’t treat, can’t cure, don’t even understand? People being force-fed blood and turned into monsters – that doesn’t sound like some other force at work? Is that just random?’
I thought about it for a moment. The moment stretched out into a minute or two, as we climbed up another embankment, going from tree to tree.
‘No.’ I eventually said, glancing down. I shouldn’t have made fun of her. ‘It’s not random. It can’t be. But if we start to think it’s some global conspiracy, or ancient monsters back to life, then we’ll get thrown into whatever’s left of Sydow’s psych wards on arrival…
‘I don’t think you’re wrong.’ I said. ‘I just don’t know what’s right. We’ve got to deal with the problems in front of us right now. If we start getting worked up about everything, we’ll end up like Emile’s crazy grandfather who thinks he’s been to the moon.’
‘Alright,’ Claire sighed, still getting her breath back after the climb. ‘No crazy person talk. Immediate
survival first.’
We pressed on a little further. Hale did what he said he’d do – led us out of earshot of the road, and also a ways out of sight too. We’d be able to find our way back to it without any problem, and probably follow it on to the next town without any of the undead back there seeing us – unless the ghoul expected us to do that, and would just lead them there anyway.
We came to a stop where the ground was a little flatter, still a gentle incline rolling back towards the road, but the gaps between the trees were wider, and there was more grass than there were rocks. Hale sat down on a fallen tree, set his gun across his lap, and waited for the stragglers to arrive. A lot of the civilians were carrying suitcases, and there would be no wheeling them along over this rough terrain.
I shrugged off my pack, and sat on the log next to the captain. He leaned back enough to give me a querying look.
‘Sorry, is this log taken?’ I eyebrow-raised him. ‘Come on, I don’t want to sit in the dirt.’ I said, digging into the medic bag, and making a peace offering. ‘Protein bar?’
‘I’ve got one, thank you.’
Claire sat next to me, and if you’d have asked me this morning what my most uncomfortable seating arrangement in the world would be, I’d probably have said this was it. Right now though, it was fine. Mortal peril puts things in perspective, but only now that I was away from said peril was I starting to feel it.
I suppressed the shaking in my hands, the twisting in my guts, and told myself that there’d be plenty of time to be grateful for being alive later. Right now, I just had to face other people a little while longer.
Claire and I had been putting our shit in order and Captain Hale wasn’t quite the dick I’d had him pegged for earlier. He listened to advice, made quick decisions, and so far, had been keeping people alive. The Voison Health Commission could learn something from him.
I ate the high-energy snack, hoping it’d quieten down my uncomfortable stomach, and washed the weird aftertaste down with some water. Those bars are loaded with nutrients and protein, like you’d expect, but that doesn’t leave a lot of room for sugar, sweeteners or real chocolate. Hale must have seen me swishing my mouth out.
‘They’re not as bad as some of the MREs you used to get in the Territorials.’ He said, taking a bite out of his.
‘MRE?’ Claire asked.
Hale swallowed. ‘Meal, ready to eat. Imagine a TV dinner you heat up with a chemical pocket-warmer.’
‘Sounds lovely.’
‘You soon learned the less appealing they tried to make it, the better they’d be,’ he mused, smiling, ‘had to steer clear of all those Spicy Tandoori Chickens and Beef en Croutes. Stick to the ones just called Pork Steak or Turkey Dinner. At least then you could imagine the flavours you were missing, instead of having to endure the poor substitute.’
‘Hah!’ Mrs Lowe laughed, a sound that was quite similar to the crack of her rifle. She appeared on Hale’s other side, taking a seat. ‘Back in my day we didn’t even have the MREs. We had to make do with MCIs…’
‘Meal, can’t ingest.’ Hale smirked.
‘Canned, individual,’ Mrs Lowe corrected him, ‘and we didn’t get a bloody heating element. You had to make a field stove out of an old tin, or hang it over the campfire. I knew one guy who got creative, jammed a tin of pork up the exhaust of a truck, running supplies from one end of the base to the other. When it came back, said it was the nicest ball of grease he’d ever tasted.’
‘What happened to the truck?’ Hale asked.
‘Nothing we couldn’t fix. You know that’s why TA exhaust pipes have those little holes in them, even now?’
‘You’re shitting me.’ Hale cursed. I didn’t think he had it in him.
‘No word of a lie.’ Lowe said, though I found myself not buying it either.
‘Wonder how they’re warming their rations up these days.’ Hale chuckled.
‘So you were in the Territorials then?’ I asked him.
‘I did my service, like everyone else. Thought about sticking around, was offered it, actually. Would have gotten to spend more time at home, less danger, longer life expectancy…’
‘What happened?’
‘The usual what happens to people who go private sector,’ Lowe answered for him, ‘sucked in by the money, the promise of adventure. See foreign lands, drink foreign beer, shag foreign birds!’
Captain Hale might actually have been blushing.
‘It wasn’t all like that,’ he shrugged, ‘but yeah. That all played a part in it, I’m sure. I was a younger man. Not sure I’d make the same choice again.’
‘Don’t be embarrassed about it,’ Mrs Lowe told him, wagging a verbal finger, ‘Private sector’s got their place, same as TA. You guys travel. We watch the homeland. Wish we had half the money you guys do, maybe something like this wouldn’t have happened, or at least, not been as bad. But it’s no use crying over spilled blood.’
She took a deep breath, then leaned a little bit further over, so she could see me down the line.
‘Now then, Nurse Cox was it? Think you promised me an explanation. What the hell’s a ghoul?’
‘I only know what I’ve seen,’ I said, feeling a little on the spot. ‘In the basement under County General, I was wheeling a gurney with a muzzled infected on, strapped down. Came across a dead soldier in the hallway. I went to fetch help. When I came back, the body and the infected were both gone. The straps on the gurney had been undone. Not ripped off or chewed through. They’d been unbuckled.’
‘Smart enough to play dead, and smart enough to work a belt. Sounds at least as clever as a raw recruit.’ Mrs Lowe nodded. ‘But here’s what my brain’s stuck on. You saw it, dead in that hallway. You were alone? Unarmed?’
‘Yeah…’
‘Why the hell didn’t it try to kill you then and there?’ Mrs Lowe asked. ‘That’s more than just some thinking-eater. Survival instinct would mean it doesn’t go after what it can’t kill, but you were a prime target. So it’s got more than the basics going on in those little grey cells.’
We were silent for a moment, staring off into the trees.
‘There was a plan. Must have been.’ I said, just voicing my thoughts aloud. ‘The lights went off not long after I found the body. The ghoul ripped its way through the SySec team in the power room, but that must have been before I saw it. The damn thing must have been on some kind of mission…I think my being in the basement made it step up the timetable.’
I expected Hale to say something about this, but the colour was draining from his face.
Mrs Lowe stood up and ejected her rifle magazine, quickly swapping it with a fresh one from her belt. ‘A smartarse groaner, who was in that hospital on a mission. You interrupted. It cut the power. What happened next?’
‘There was a panic, but we got it under control. Emile, Dr Grey and I, we got the power back on.’
‘If you hadn’t have got the power back when you did, things would have gotten much worse, much quicker.’ Hale said, his voice hollow. ‘Perhaps they had been waiting to shut down power at the most opportune moment? It caused enough damage as it was. But if they’d have had time to spread the infection more, or take out more of the security staff before they were discovered, then the hospital would have fallen much sooner. I think I owe you for that, Nurse Cox.’
‘Don’t mention it.’ I said, smiling faintly.
‘So these ghouls...’ Mrs Lowe muttered. ‘They can make a plan. That speaks to me of a leadership. The groaners at the bottom, slow ones or fast ones, they’re just mouths on legs, nothing between their ears but hunger and rot. Then the ghouls are above them. Question is…are they making the plans themselves, or are they just following orders?’
Twenty Three
We stopped for a little over half an hour. Easily enough time for a bite to eat and a bit of rehydration. The civilians – and frankly, most of the medics – had to rest up. We’re used to being on our feet all day, but that’s walking down smooth linol
eum corridors. Heading off-road and into hilly woodland was a bit of a change.
It also gave the armed members of the group a bit of time to reload their weapons and magazines, and co-ordinate a marching order before we got ready to move out again. I’d been close enough to hear Hale and Mrs Lowe discussing the particulars, but hadn’t paid all that much attention, lost in my own thoughts.
If there was something out there cleverer than a ghoul, what could it be? A person? That was the obvious thought. But a person, a living human, couldn’t work with the infected. The ghoul might be able to suppress its appetite, but the typical infected can’t. How could you control an army that wanted to eat you?
Maybe the ghouls made their own plans. Independently, or together. The hospital had definitely been a group – create panic by shutting the lights off, get some feeding in while everyone’s distracted, infect a few patients and leave them to incubate, like biological landmines.
Ugh, that wasn’t exactly a perfect theory either. Aaron had been force-fed, and that didn’t seem a ghoulish move. Smart as they might be, I just couldn’t see it. If we’d have realised what was happening to him sooner, maybe we’d have been able to find out more. I doubt we’d have been able to do much for him, but perhaps some scrap of new data would help us next time.
This ghoul on the road though. That might have been a loner, save for its now thinned horde. Where was it going with that anyway? Marching south to occupy Danecaster, like an invading army? Or just on the hunt for more recruits?
‘Why’d you lead us up here, anyway?’ I heard Mrs Lowe asking Hale.
‘Following a few markers. I thought they’d been left by whoever survived the checkpoint and got onto the bridge. But I lost them about fifty meters back. They might have lost hope of anyone following them, decided to stop leaving signs. Or…perhaps something happened to them.’
‘Or it could be you’re a shit tracker and can’t spy their bootprints. Mind, I’m no better.’ She added.
The Suburban Dead (Book 2): Emergency Page 20