by RR Haywood
What we don’t see are the undead. Their absence is almost worrying but I guess this area has been drained to send against us in the seemingly never ending dead army. Never ending? Limitless? Infinite?
Everything has an end and mankind has spent the last two thousand years devising bigger and better ways of killing our own kind, so I just need to go cliché and think outside the box. Maybe gather them all in one place in a giant trap. My mind fills with images of a mammoth blender sitting in the middle of a city square with undead being tipped inside by huge hydraulic flatbed trucks. Their rotten faces pressing against the sides of the jug and clawed hands scratching to get out. Dave watching them devoid of expression as he presses the big red button and they turn into one big zombie soup.
Maybe a big pit filled with thousands of poisoned spikes, or better yet we could fill it with venomous spiders and snakes and then set it on fire once they’ve all fallen in. Vats of acid or those massive machines they use to dig tunnels with the nasty rotating blades at the front. Wasn’t there a South Park episode with Cartman using one of those machines to kill all the hippies? I loved South Park. Nights off from work were spent eating pizza and watching re-runs of old episodes.
Everything happens at once and I realise why the Navies of our world paint their ships in that precise shade of grey.
For a start I drive into something big and hard. The front end crumples. I yell out as the airbags go off and the windscreen shatters into thousands of glittering chunks. Dave braces with his lightning quick reactions while my face decides to test the worthiness of the airbag deployed from the steering wheel, and of course not wearing a seat-belt helped the forward momentum even more. However, the lack of speed we were travelling at means the damage is minimal until Clarence once again shunts me from behind which sets of his airbags and then Roy likewise.
Quite possibly the only three cars on the road in the entire county, maybe the entire country and we manage to have two accidents within the space of a couple of hours.
I can only see grey. I stand with my head back to stem the blood dripping from my nose and also to try work out what we just drove into.
It turns out to be a Royal Navy ship that some twat parked in the middle of the road pretty close to Portsmouth harbour. Seriously, the thing has ploughed through the road like hot butter and is now wedged upright blocking our path with its sheer massiveness.
Clarence joins me with his own bleeding nose. The others rub heads, faces and knees, grumbling and groaning from the low speed impact. Roy walks up holding a rag to his own bloody nose and the three of us stand there silently with our bleeding noses while we stare up at HMS fucking something or other.
‘How did it get there?’ Cookey asks while ten other people and one dog all stare at him.
‘It’s where they park them,’ Blowers replies seriously.
‘Really? How do they get it out?’
‘Reverse it,’ Nick says.
‘But,’ Cookey looks closer at the ground which is surprisingly undamaged considering a battleship of some description just went through it. The edges of the road are slightly churned up with a few cracks splintering off but other than that it does look like an over-shot parking space.
‘Well,’ Cookey folds his arms and shakes his head in disdain, ‘they fucked that up,’ he tells the rest of us, ‘look at the damage to the road.’
‘Yeah…’ Blowers stares at the rest of us in disbelief, ‘they er…’
‘Parking lessons,’ Clarence coughs, ‘must have been the parking lessons they do.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Blowers nods, ‘the er…the naval ship parking course.’
‘Yeah, that one,’ Clarence nods.
‘The what?’ Cookey snorts, ‘fucking hell, they have to have a parking course! Wankers! Shit I bet the bloke who parked this was embarrassed…ha! Probably a woman driver…’
Paula blinks hard then bursts out laughing, ‘they only brought the course in because of the female captains they were getting,’ she explains.
‘Oh my god,’ Cookey looks delighted, ‘no way? Seriously? Shit…world’s gone mad,’ he shakes his head, ‘political correctness gone crazy…’
‘You,’ Blowers starts slowly but bursts out laughing mid-way, which prompts Cookey to laugh along, ‘are the dumbest fucking idiot I have ever met…’
‘Huh?’
‘The storm you fucking fucktard…the fucking raging storm we had last night? The one with the big waves and the wind? Remember?’
‘Oh,’ Cookey laughs again then promptly stops laughing which sets everyone else off, ‘so…right, they didn’t park it here then?’
‘No mate,’ Blowers is bent over, hands to knees as the tears stream from his eyes, ‘no….no they didn’t…’
‘Classic,’ Nick gasps between laughs, ‘fucking classic Cookey.’
The lad shows his spirit and stars chuckling, happy to be getting laughs by being the butt of the joke. ‘Sorry,’ he offers sheepishly, ‘that was really bad.’
‘Bad?’ Blowers is off again, ‘fucking bad?’
‘Bet it’s got guns on it though…hey, is that the one we went on before?’ He staggers back trying to see the top, ‘do they have doors to get in?’
It takes another five minutes before the group settle down from pissing themselves while Cookey looks on puzzled but also happily chucking along.
I have to force myself to smile and laugh but in reality I just want to get on with things.
‘We’ll walk round it,’ I announce as soon I can without ruining the break in tension too much. Even so my words are said too loud, too fast, too harsh and the humour is gone instantly, the laughing ends abruptly and they’re back to being quiet and serious.
Weapons and bags gathered, we set off towards the left and soon realise the minimal damage we saw at our point is not like the rest. Wooden pilings, railings and all manner of torn and shredded wood lie is cast aside or jammed between the sides of the hull. The going gets harder from the terrain being so ripped apart. We clamber and climb over the debris, steadily climbing higher into the fog but still the sheer sides of the ship reach way out of sight above us. We come across a building that the ship had ploughed through. Tables, desks, chairs, computers, paperwork scattered all over the place. Some of the windows are still intact, others smashed with nasty looking spears of glass hanging down.
It looks like the whole of the building has been lifted up, carried along then snapped in half. An incredible sight that once more reminds of the power of the storm.
‘Any sight of the top?’ Paula puffs heavily at the exertion of climbing over so many obstacles.
‘Nothing,’ Roy stares up, ‘could be right there, hang on…’ He casts about the ground and eventually finds a small enough object to throw up high into the fog. A dull clang and the stone drops down.
‘Nice try,’ Paula smiles.
‘Thanks,’ he beams back at her.
‘You know something,’ she asks as resume our clambering, ‘you haven’t complained about…well, you know, you’ve not said about any er…’
‘Must have been the sex,’ he grins back but drops it quickly as a look of horror crosses her face.
‘Roy!’
‘What?’ He asks, slightly confused at her harsh tone.
‘I’m quite sure our group don’t need to know that.’
‘Oh…oh right…yes,’ he blusters, ‘quite right, er…we didn’t have sex,’ he announces to the rest of us.
‘You’s two married then?’ Jagger asks.
‘Married?’ Paula asks, ‘what, me and Roy?’
‘You’s look like you’re married or summit.’
‘Yes,’ Roy nods quickly, ‘ten years now, isn’t that right dear?’
‘No, it’s not right, we only just met a couple of days ago.’
‘Do what?’ Jagger stops climbing to stare at them, ‘and you done it already?’
‘What? No! I mean…look, can we change the subject please…’ Paula blushes furious
ly.
‘Fair play,’ Jagger nods respectfully at Roy.
‘Excuse me, I’m right here,’ Paula shouts.
‘She’s fit mate,’ Mo Mo calls over, ‘old like, but still well fit.’
‘Oi, I’m not bloody old and I’m not fit…well…I’m not old anyway and…look just keep walking please.’
‘Very fit,’ Roy smiles at Paula, ‘nice arse too.’
‘Roy! That’s enough,’ Paula hisses, ‘stop it.’
‘Well,’ he sighs, ‘sex is a natural thing and we’ve all done it.’
‘Fuck off, I’ve had loads.’
‘Yeah loads of wanks,’ Nick laughs.
‘He almost had it,’ Blowers sets him up.
‘Ah,’ Cookey groans, ‘April, the love of my life.’
‘Oh god no,’ Clarence mumbles.
‘But Dave cut her head off.’
‘Alex. I did not cut her head off.’
I keep my head down, feeling ashamed that I fell asleep last night and the obvious silence now forming between Lani and I.
Dave stops suddenly and holds his hand up with fist clenched. I grip my axe and freeze, the others snapping to attention as the order is relayed down the line.
‘What is it?’ I whisper and look round for Meredith who shows no reaction other than sniffing at the end of one shorn off post.
Dave stares up into the sky then round to the left and right and finally down at his own feet, ‘the fog.’
‘What about it?’ I stare round with the others.
‘It’s lifting,’ he replies dully.
It looks the same as it was. A thick bank of white gloomy cloud that is impenetrable to the eye. Shifting slowly, rolling and moving but constantly the same density. Then I notice it appears I can see a bit further to the side. Fixing my eyes on the very edge of the fog, I watch as it sort of becomes clearer to see, less fuzzy and more defined. Everything around me gradually seems to gain more colour, as though the light is becoming ever so gradually brighter.
The effect is so weird that I start to feel queasy. It’s so dense and solid yet it’s not. It’s not solid at all so we don’t see it magically disappear, but it just isn’t there so much.
One by one we drop to a crouch, waiting with rising tension as the view opens up. Inches, then feet and I’m so focussed on watching the spectacle I don’t notice that I’m squinting from the sunlight dazzling my eyes until one of the group remarks on it. There it is, where it has always been. The life giving sun, shining as hot and as bright as ever before. The temperature feels like it rises significantly and the air above us becomes crystal clear. A cry snaps my head round, eyes straining to gain the direction. A seagull flies over head, whooping and crying at the sight of the sunshine returning. More gulls take it up, giving flight as they break cover from whatever hidey hole they had found to soar into the thermals and cry with delight.
The sensation and sight is humbling, awe-inspiring and breath-taking beyond compare. Mother nature has shown us what she can do, flexing her muscles with a storm of extreme power. But this, seeing the world come back to life is a thing of beauty that cannot help but draw the eye to take in every single detail.
The blue sky seems so close and it’s a shade so deeper shade than I’ve ever seen before. The crap and filth around us is vibrant, bursting with colour. A red plastic ring from a harbour side life saver cupboard looks inanely bright. A dash of yellow from a rag buried in the debris, a flash of blue here, a green over there and the many shades of brown from the tangled mess that surrounds us.
But what does come into view staggers the mind into disbelief and takes time for the visual imagery absorbed by the eyes to be processed and understood by the brain.
We are but yards from the end of the navy ship for it has been snapped in half across the middle. The rear end is hidden from view by the front end of the cruise liner embedded into the side of the navy vessel. So big, so very big that it boggles the mind.
The pure white sides of the cruise liner. So majestic and regal with a high sweeping and seemingly sharp bow, that has been ram-raided into the side of the navy ship with such force that it has gone clean through.
Slits are raked down the side of the liner, big black open wounds in the pure white sides. Ragged gashes of metal that have spilled debris like the innards from an opened gut. Lifeboats lay tangled, nets, ropes, metal, glass and things I cannot even begin to understand. Naval equipment is everywhere, the barrel of an anti-aircraft gun all twisted and broken.
The back end of the cruise liner is still in the water but lower than it should be. It takes time but eventually I begin to understand what happened. So large is the thing that I have to keep looking up and far to both sides to understand. She came in at an angle, with the front riding on the tsunami that must have carried it like a heavy ended surfboard.
We’re at the edge of what was a harbour. It could be Portsmouth harbour but it’s so mangled, so destroyed that it is beyond any recognition. Smaller craft lie embedded in buildings much further inland and I can see the route the surge of water took as it demolished everything in its path, cutting a huge, long swathe through what was once a built up area. Every pane of glass that I can see is smashed. Every building is either torn to rubble or so ruined that it looks like something from the footage of bombed out cities from the Second World War. A train lies derailed with one half submerged in the new coastline of the sea. Tops of buildings, chimney stacks, roofs and rubble poke out from the top of the water. I’ve been here many times unfortunately, but I can’t see a thing that gives me any sense of where I am in space and time. Nothing is recognisable but what is clear is the whole harbour is now much wider from the extreme tidal surges that relentlessly battered the whole coastline.
The truly apocalyptic view conflicts so much with the serenity of the area. Silent and calm, the sun is shining down and birds of all manner and descriptions swoop down and already stake claims to the new perches jutting up from the water. To us this is awful, horrible, because we knew what was here before, but the rest of the planet doesn't give a shit. There was a storm. Stuff got wet. End of.
‘Oh god…that’s awful,’ Paula mutters under her breath. I look to her and follow the direction she faces. Towards the cruise liner and I sweep my eyes up to the chimney stacks, or where the chimney stacks would have been. One is ripped away completely, leaving a blackened jagged stump. The other is half gone. Everywhere I look there is something new, something so different that it has never been seen before.
Finally my brain catches up and I understand the pain in her voice. Bodies. Lots of bodies. The netting down the side of the cruise liner is full of bodies and from here they look tiny, like knots within the fabric of the material. Legs and arms caught up as the corpses lie dangling or snared like rabbits in a wire trap. Hundreds, maybe more.
They are strewn across the whole of the area in every direction. Lifeboats that were launched but that have fallen a great height to smash on the hard surface below have spewed the broken bodies out. High up in the main structure I can pick out dark smears of corpses within the broken frames of the windows.
‘They were alive,’ Lani whispers, ‘out at sea and safe…’ We can all see it. The undead don’t die from broken bones and being tangled in nets. The undead thrash about and squirm, they are like cockroaches that refuse to die. What we see are human bodies. Real people that must have been alive and surviving on the liner and just about heading back into port when the storm hit. They would have been thrown about inside for hours, tossed high on the enormous waves like a child playing with a toy boat in the bathtub until they came hammering into the land to smash front end into the navy ship. The ones on the nets speak of a desperate attempt to get off the boat and maybe one or two could have survived, or be just about living inside that mangled mess of metal.
‘Movement,’ Dave points to the side of the liner where a huge gash is raked down the side splitting the metal apart like a tin of tuna. A lone body moves slowly from
the gloom of the interior. Staggering, pausing, shuffling and the movements are unmistakable. It stops at the gash and turns towards us. Sensing the fresh prey. As it starts to wriggle out a soft whooshing sound goes past my ear as Roy looses an arrow that flies so straight and true, it takes the thing front centre mass and drops it out of sight.
‘Good shot, Roy,’ Blowers mutters.
‘Shot mate,’ Nick nods.
‘Very good,’ Dave doesn't glance back but the words from him mean more than anything.
‘Look at the sea,’ Lani remarks after a period of silence, ‘it’s so calm and flat.’
‘I don’t know about you,’ Paula whispers back in the same hushed tones as Lani, ‘but I don’t want to be here, can we go.’
‘Yeah,’ the word comes out under my breath. It’s too much, too big to take in. The destruction makes me feel entirely insignificant. That we survived simply through luck and nothing else. That we gave battle against such tiny things as other people while whole super-sized ships were being played with is offensive and what’s more, any survivors inside those ships that made it ashore, got picked off by the ravenous, foraging, scavenging predators of the undead, ‘time to go.’
We turn round and in silence we retreat.
Nineteen
The frustration inside me grows. I’m now in the second vehicle following Roy with Clarence behind me. Three new vehicles were sourced from driveways after a brief foray into the homes of the disappeared occupants to find keys. It took too long to find three undamaged vehicles. It took too long to journey on foot away from the seafront to find houses and streets that hadn’t suffered so much devastation from the storm and the tidal surges. We found inland signs of the carnage. Roofs ripped off, whole houses looking ready to fall apart. Power cables and poles everywhere. Telephone lines the same. Street lights broken, bent and leaning. The heat starts to grow again with the promise of it getting as hot as before the storm, but clearer somehow with a more burning and direct heat.