Hale and Rob were probably out there discussing trenches and barricades, but my mind was drifting back towards Greenfield. How much easier would it have been to fortify Kelly’s apartment block? Throw an old sofa down the stairs and you’re good – zombies aren’t getting by that, but we could easily climb over it. Hell, the zombies would probably struggle enough with the stairs alone, unless the ghouls knew how to work the elevator and started to send them up in groups – eight at a time, they probably wouldn’t want to go over the safety limit.
Rob had said the phones didn’t work. I bet it was hard to get a good signal out here anyway, and a quick check of my phone screen confirmed I had none to speak of. I hadn’t thought to check earlier, not since we hit the road. Too much going on.
Gods, what did that say about me? Too busy to see if any of my loved ones are still alive? I needed to get back home, to see them, to apologise, to beg Laurel’s forgiveness and just let her say “I told you so, you stupid bitch.”
‘Still thinking about going home?’ Gavin asked, coming to lean next to me outside the barn.
‘Fuck off Gavin.’
‘That’s probably fair. But I wasn’t coming to have a go at you this time.’ He said, only just managing to keep the irritation out of his voice.
‘Sorry. What was it you wanted?’ I tried.
‘Just to say it’s alright to be homesick. Leaving things behind, it’s not easy. I know it hurts.’ He paused for a moment, like was going to share some of his pain with me, but he sighed, and changed his mind.
‘Still. You’re better off moving on. Greenfield…it’ll either make it, or it won’t. But if you set off back that way…’ he shook his head. ‘You certainly won’t.’
‘I’m committed now, Gavin. I’ll stay the course. That’s me. My mind’s all made up. Zero debate.’ I lied.
*
Grant Farm’s pantry must have been proportional to its kitchen. Its hospitality certainly was.
Lydia collected volunteers from our number, including a very eager Tony, for whom it was just like being back in the Territorials. Together they prepped and cooked one of the nicest meals I’ve ever tasted. Objectively, I don’t know if that’s because I’d been walking all day and was starving hungry, or if Lydia is some kind of culinary goddess.
It was a fusion of Islander and rural Voison cuisine, a mixture of mouth-watering spices and earthy vegetables, cooked together in the pot with a rich brown rice that soaked up all the flavours. It was the kind of cooking I wished I could do – but every time I tried a one-pot dish like that, I somehow ended up with clumps of soggy rice stuck to dry chicken. Gods know how that works, Kelly’s the better cook in our relationship and he’s been known to cook eggs in the microwave, so what does that say about us?
Lydia and her kitchen team served our gorgeous meal in hard-plastic campsite crockery, and I volunteered to be part of the clean-up team. I didn’t think I was going to sleep well tonight, despite the exertions of the day, so was looking to burn off some energy and find out what the chef’s secret was – but alas, she’d retired upstairs to be with her family. Understandable.
I managed to ask one of her assistants instead, and they told me that it was apparently Rob’s recipe they were following. The man shot up even further in my estimations. I love a man who knows his way around the kitchen, not just content to sit back and leave it to the womenfolk.
Hale sat cross legged on the barn floor, with Bailey, Lowe and Emile sat huddled in close around him, staring at a map and making the occasional annotation. Since he’d been asked to speak for GFPD in our pleasant chat with Rob – it felt wrong to call it a negotiation – Emile had started taking more of an interest in things. Either Hale had won him over, or he’d fully committed to the Sydow plan.
I was sat with Claire, but we were mainly listening in on what the others were saying, not quite at a stage to make small talk with each other without it feeling uncomfortable. She was still the ex, and as much as being thrown together was forcing us to patch things up, we weren’t exactly gal-pals again.
After they’d eaten, Hale made the final arrangements for his mission to Overbridge. They had three vehicles – Rob’s gigantic grey four-by-four, which was damn near the size and colour of the ones SySec had abandoned in the traffic, a dark green four-seater pickup that looked to be from one of his farmhands, and a family estate car in pristine condition, from one of the people who’d escaped Overbridge.
Four from SySec, four GFPD, and four of the militia would be going – their numbers including Captain Hale, Emile and Mrs Lowe, leading each of the three teams as they split up and searched for more vehicles, fuel, weapons and supplies. Being a rural little place, there were strong hiking and hunting communities around Overbridge, so Mrs Lowe figured it’d be a good place to try and find some travelling supplies and a few extra guns while they were there.
The sun was well on its way to setting by the time they were mounting up in their vehicles, Captain Hale stepping up into the passenger seat of Rob’s giant ATV. I bet commanding officers were allergic to driving themselves anywhere.
‘You’re in charge here, Sergeant. You know your orders.’ He said, over the slamming doors from the vehicles lined up behind him.
‘Yes sir. Count on me.’ Bailey nodded, firing off a crisp salute.
‘Didn’t think Emile would go with them.’ Claire said, her voice low, brow furrowed. ‘Thought we were sticking together?’
‘He probably just wants to play hero.’ I said, but I knew that wasn’t it. I hadn’t known him long, but Emile had never struck me as stupid. ‘Or…maybe he thinks this is our best shot at getting to Sydow alive.’
‘I wouldn’t mind taking Rob up on his offer to stay here,’ Claire shrugged, casting a look back at the stables. ‘He’s got horses, Katy. Have you seen them?’
I couldn’t help the smile, but I shook my head.
She carried on. ‘If he’s sincere about the offer, it’s worth thinking about. When we get the daylight back, Sydow are supposed to be making some defences out in the fields. Digging some ditches and what have you. We have enough people to patrol the perimeter and work the land, and Rob says there’s plenty of food to go around. We might be able to make a go of it here, wait it out until we’re rescued or the country gets back on its feet.’
‘You’d go mad.’ I told her, ‘Not enough patients to keep you busy, Claire. They’d have you tilling fields, or mucking out those horses.
‘Ah, well, that doesn’t seem so bad. I could learn to like it.’
‘Thought you were big into the Sydow idea?’
‘I am. Mostly. I can’t see any solar panels or wind turbines out here, so this place will lose power sooner or later. I don’t want to get plunged back into the dark ages. I was mainly feeling out what you thought about it. It’s not too far to Greenfield. Walk it in a day, or a few hours if they can lend you a bicycle to replace your lost “hog”.’ She said, with air-quotes. ‘Could go back once things have calmed down.’
‘I don’t think they’ll calm down Claire. Things are only going to get worse.’ I took a deep breath in through my nose, taking in the smell of the farm and trying to let out my fears. ‘Lot of people are going to die now the hospital’s gone. And if the infected don’t find them, if they can hide well enough, then it’s just a matter of time until their food runs out and they need to scavenge. Then they’ll die. Kelly and Morgan. Laurel and Dani. Everyone.’
Claire looked at the ground for a moment, thinking about the people she’d miss.
‘Maybe they’ll find enough food to survive.’ she tried, putting a hand on my shoulder. She cut me off before I could say anything else. ‘Don’t go saying they’re just prolonging the inevitable or some defeatist bullshit like that. I’m choosing to believe things will work out, so you have to as well. I’m not letting you drag me down, clear?’
‘I’m getting in a mood, aren’t I?’
Claire nodded.
‘Very much not your usual ch
eery self. Let’s go get some sleep. I know it’s early, but I for one, am flagging. Things will look better in the morning.’
‘Yeah, Emile will come back with more cars, and we can resume our near-suicidal journey on the nightmare highway to a city run beneath the iron fist of martial law.’
Impressively, she managed to give me side-eye from the front.
‘Alright, things might look better in the morning.’
I didn’t sleep through to morning though. None of us did.
Twenty Six
I woke with a start, my leg spasming in a single, violent hypnic jerk. Those were only supposed to happen when you’re drifting off to sleep, but I felt like I’d had my head down for a while. My leg had gotten a little sore from laying in the one position, even with the camping mat beneath me, so rolled over onto my other side. It was probably just a cramp.
Rain was beating down against the roof of the barn, and despite how loud it was, it soon became white noise as I tried to get back to sleep. My body had other ideas though, and a growing pressure in my bladder only got worse the longer I lay listening to the rain.
I sat up on the mat, quietly moving the blanket from around my legs. Claire stirred nearby. She’d fallen asleep facing me, but rolled away amidst a rustling of clothes and her sleeping bag.
The temperature had fallen sharply during the night, and without the blanket over me I was pretty damn cold. I’d been using my folded up jacket as a pillow, but slipped it back on, grabbing Emile’s flashlight from where I’d set it next to my mat, putting it back in my pocket.
A tiny grating noise caught my attention, head whipping towards the barn doors. The smaller, person-sized door had been left slightly ajar, so the lone watchman could get in and out without leaving the entire front of the barn open to the elements. Judging by the soft glow of his lighter, the policeman had decided it was better to smoke indoors, out of the rain.
Carefully, I made my way through the rough lanes of sleeping bag cocoons and blanketed forms, my half-awake brain taking me back to photographs I’d seen from a killer flu pandemic in Alsatia, where there were so many bodies to identify that they had to be laid out in refrigerated warehouses rather than morgues.
I shivered, pushing that thought aside.
‘What’s up?’ the cop whispered as I reached the door.
‘Need to pee.’ I told him.
‘Wait until the last one gets back. Shouldn’t be a minute.’
I nodded, and settled in for the wait, leaning on the wall, head turned to look through the crack in the door.
It was a dark night outside, with barely enough light coming through the rainclouds to see the outline of the farmhouse and stables. On a cloudy night in a city, you got so much light pollution reflecting off the clouds that it was actually brighter than a cloudless night with a full moon. I thought at least I’d be able to see the stars clearly on a country night, but the weather had other plans.
After a couple of minutes, the copper huffed his irritation.
‘Should’ve been back by now. I’m going to take a look.’
He pulled one of their heavy flashlights from his belt and flicked the beam on, aiming it at the ground before stepping out into the night, moving off to the left. I idly kept an ear on his footsteps, wondering if I’d get back to sleep tonight or if I’d been awake too long now.
A soft creaking of the wooden boards alerted me to someone approaching, another person in the barn awake. Claire emerged from the gloom, coming to stand where the policeman had just left.
‘What’s up?’ she whispered.
‘Need to pee.’ I told her.
Déjà vu.
‘Me too.’ She nodded. ‘So why aren’t we?’
‘Two people already out there, just waiting for them to get back.’
The sound of the cop’s footsteps had moved out of hearing range, lost to the rain. He’d only been gone a minute, maybe, but whoever he’d gone out to look for had been missing a while longer. I was starting to feel uneasy about the whole thing, anxiously shifting my weight from one foot to the other – though that could have just been the need to relieve myself.
Suddenly, softly, a noise echoed through the night, something being dropped. Metal or plastic. Heavy, like a flashlight.
I turned to Claire, meeting her eyes. She’d heard it too.
‘I’m going to take a look.’ I said, stepping in closer, so she’d hear me.
Her hair was in all directions, looking like she’d much rather be asleep. She closed her eyes for a second, and held up a finger to wait while she yawned.
‘Right behind you.’ She eventually said.
I paused at the door for a moment, turning back to look about the barn. In the dark, I couldn’t see where any of the soldiers or cops had laid themselves down, and I didn’t want to cause a panic over what might have been someone taking a weirdly leisurely shit in the rain. If I saw anything out there however, I was going to yell loud enough to wake the whole damn farm up.
Emile’s flashlight, not just a handy club, cut a pure white beam across the courtyard, seeing clear to the stables. I followed the cop’s example, aimed it closer to the ground, and found a couple of stamped out cigarette butts where he’d been standing earlier, before the rain started and he came inside.
‘He went around this way,’ I said to Claire, raising my voice just above a whisper.
The rain was louder out here, the heavy, freezing droplets striking the concrete courtyard, puddles already formed and spreading across the uneven surface.
My arms came up in goosebumps as we slowly, quietly made our way around the barn, counting on the whispering of raindrops striking the leafy hedges to mask our footsteps. Even my thick riding jacket wasn’t enough to stop my body breaking out into all-over shivers, and Claire’s white medical coat must have been faring worse, soaking up the water as we made our way quietly down the side of the barn.
I aimed my flashlight beam to the far end, only showing us a section of hedgerow, but revealing our presence to anything nasty that might be waiting for us down there.
I swallowed my pulse as we drew nearer. The rain was running from the barn roof, unhindered by drainpipes, forcing me to edge away from the side of the building to avoid the waterfall effect. Away from the wall, I felt more exposed. Vulnerable. Even with Claire beside me.
As we were halfway down, someone stepped out into the light.
The cop held his cigarette in one hand, sheltering it with the other. He looked at us for a moment, squinting.
‘Gods, turn that thing off will you?’
‘Sorry,’ I muttered, pointing the beam down. ‘Thought I heard something.’
‘Retinas, seared like tuna steaks…’ he grumbled, awkwardly bringing his smoke up to his lips. The little ember tip glowed brighter for a moment. ‘What’re you three doing out here?’
Three?
Oh shit.
I turned around so hard I probably gave myself fucking whiplash, expecting to see a zombie lurching right for us.
Instead, I blinded Sergeant Bailey.
She gave a wordless cry of surprise, and with reflexes likely honed for knife-fighting Sartogan banditos, quickly disarmed me of the flashlight, somehow ending up with the light in one hand and my wrist in the other.
‘I can see why they didn’t give you a gun.’ She snapped, releasing my wrist after perhaps half a second too long.
‘Sorry,’ I repeated, looking to Claire.
‘We heard a noise.’ Claire said, shrugging back at me.
It made us sound like two kids who’d walked into their parents’ bedroom because they’d had a nightmare.
‘And you thought you’d come to investigate without telling someone? Someone armed? With an actual weapon?’ She added, handing the light back to me.
‘Didn’t want to wake the whole barn unless I had to, people been through enough today.’
‘Smart not to cause a panic. Dumb not to call for more backup. But I was awake anyway. I
may as well have a look around. Hey, Carmichael, come back around the front, will you?’ she called out, just slightly louder to reach our man at the back of the barn.
He didn’t respond.
‘Officer Carmichael?’ she repeated after a moment.
She was met only by the hissing of falling rain.
I turned around, practicing flashlight discipline this time, by keeping it aimed at my feet.
Carmichael’s smouldering cigarette lay on the ground, abandoned, just barely visible for a moment before the rain snuffed it out.
Sergeant Bailey drew in a deep breath.
‘He better not be screwing with me.’
She took a pair of quick steps to get in front of us, tugged a sidearm from her belt and flicked on the under-barrel light, keeping it low to the ground.
Unlike our tentative approach, Bailey rushed ahead, taking long, smooth strides, almost forcing us to jog if we wanted to keep up. I rounded the corner just behind her, our flashlight beams falling on the prone figure of Officer Carmichael, whose eyes I had so recently blinded to the things that lurk in the dark.
As I watched, one last gurgle escaped his lips, his hand falling away from his throat, revealing the mess beneath. His neck had been torn open, jagged and wide – more animal than surgical. It looked to have been done by something with a sharp tip, brutal power – and clear intent. Something that didn’t hang around to eat the kill. I’d seen a wound like that before, on the neck of the soldier in the hospital basement.
My heart began to thump rapidly in my chest, and all I could hear was the rush of blood in my ears. Sergeant Bailey must have heard movement however – her light snapping up to shine down to the other side of the barn, where I caught a brief, fleeting glimpse of a calmly retreating figure, cast in profile.
I couldn’t be sure, but I think it was wearing camo.
‘Alarm! Sound the alarm!’ Bailey bellowed. ‘Enemy in the base! Man down! Alarm!’
Before she could finish the final “alarm”, someone in the barn pressed down on an air-horn, the ear splitting howl sure to wake everyone with a start.
The Suburban Dead (Book 2): Emergency Page 23