by RR Haywood
‘That is a fair and reasonable answer,’ she says after a brief pause, ‘ yes you are indeed stronger,’ she adds in a thoughtful tone with a glance at his backside which makes us all take notice and she notices us noticing and blushing furiously she leans down to examine the wheels and look occupied. I share a glance with Marcy who lifts her eyebrows questioningly.
‘Ready?’ Roy asks, ‘Paula, dear. Can you start now please?’
‘Not if you call me dear again I can’t.’
‘Fine. Paula, can you start now please….dear,’ he mutters under his breath.
‘I heard that!’
‘She did not,’ he says looking round.
‘No way,’ Clarence says shaking his head, ‘she’s guessing you said it.’
‘I am not guessing, Clarence.’
‘On your own, Roy,’ Clarence says planting his heels into the ground and bracing his shoulder against the edge of the Saxon.
The engine starts with a solid thrum that vibrates through the chassis and we all throw our bodies against the rear of the vehicle as she starts to apply gentle pressure to the accelerator.
‘PUSH,’ Clarence shouts straining with his face flushing an even deeper shade of red, ‘COME ON…’
We strain and push with feet sliding out from underneath as the wheels spin in the mud with the inevitable shower of shit flying back to marinade us all.
‘Almost,’ Charlie shouts, ‘little bit more…just a little bit more…’
We cry out from the energy sapping work as Marcy slips to land face first in the squelchy mud and I burst out laughing as she jerks back up wearing a facemask. The Saxon jolts, bites the doors and is off chugging away over the adhoc road we laid down as Paula takes advantage of the motion and pushes on.
‘STOP,’ Roy shouts knowing full well she’ll sink straight back into the mud once she leaves the last door laid down. Only she doesn't stop and the Saxon doesn't sink but fishtails, bucks and slews but it keeps going as she aims for the closest bodies and uses them as rubble to drive over.
‘Ooh,’ I wince as the first head pops like a melon and the sound of twigs snapping reaches us clear above the sound of the engine. Bodies being crushed, exploding, imploding, bursting apart as the Saxon bumps and jolts over them.
‘Argh,’ Clarence gives his own wince at another head popping apart with a spray of blood and brains flying out.
‘Nasty seeing it from this side,’ Blowers says.
‘Yeah right,’ I agree at the limbs and torsos being snapped and squashed as she rally drives over them.
‘Oh fuck,’ Cookey’s turn at the sight of the female undead getting her legs caught in the wheel and being dragged along going round and round with the motion of wheel, smashing into more bodies as she pulverises herself into a sloppy wet mash of bones and gore.
I turn away and shake my head then burst out laughing again at the two wide eyes staring at me from a face of mud.
‘What?’ she says, ‘have I got something on my face?’
‘Seen this?’ I call out as Marcy turns to proudly display her facemask.
‘Actually feels quite nice,’ she says stretching her jaw, ‘like a proper mask.’
‘Really?’ Charlie asks.
‘Try it,’ Marcy urges, ‘seriously, it’s really nice.’
Charlie stares with that same hesitation showing through as though she wants to do it but is holding herself back.
‘Fuck it,’ Cookey says and bends down to scoop a big handful up which he smears into his cheeks and forehead, ‘what does it do?’ He asks.
‘Same as a mask,’ Marcy says, ‘let it dry and wash it off to unclog the pores.’
‘Ah okay, I think my pores need unclogging,’ he says rubbing it in, ‘try it, Blowers.’
‘Are you fucking…’ Blowers goes to snap the reply off then instantly changes his mind, ‘yeah fuck it,’ but instead of copying Cookey he simply drops down and shoves his face into the muddy ground and slides his head side to side before standing back up, ‘has it done it?’ He asks looking round at the laughs from the sight of him, ‘try it, Charlie. Feels really nice…like cool and weirdly refreshing.’
‘Yeah that’s it,’ Cookey says, ‘it’s cooling.’
‘I will,’ Mo Mo says laughing, ‘Blinky?’
She’s already down and splodging it over her face as Charlie watches and tentatively drops down to one knee and scoops a handful up to sniff before making a decision and rubbing it gently into her cheeks.
‘Here,’ Marcy says waddling through the mud, ‘let me,’ she scoops a thick double handful up and starts working it into Charlie’s cheeks, ‘your complexion is gorgeous,’ she says, ‘you haven’t got a blemish on you.’
‘That has got to be the best thing I have ever seen,’ Cookey says as we all watch Marcy rubbing mud into Charlie’s face.
‘Perverts,’ Marcy tuts.
‘Clarence?’ Cookey asks.
‘No.’
‘Aw come on…’
‘No. I am hot. I am thirsty.’
‘Aw come on, want me to do it for you?’
‘Touch me with that mud, Cookey and…’ time freezes as Cookey reaches out and splodges a great big handful of wet mud on Clarence’s left cheek who freezes in disbelief, ‘you little shit,’ he explodes out as Cookey screams and tries to run but gets caught with a vice like grip and is dragged backwards. Clarence laughing at the temerity of Cookey to actually do it and he upends the joker to dunk his head up and down in the mud, ‘apologise…apologise…’
‘I’m sorry,’ Cookey gasps between laughs while he spits mud and grass, ‘sorry…I said sorry…’
‘Er…I made it,’ Paula says in our ears as we watch Clarence beating on Cookey instead of the progress of the Saxon, ‘what are you doing?’
‘Face masks,’ Marcy transmits the reply, ‘try it, feels lovely.’
‘Not up here thanks,’ Paula says at the edge of the green and the squished up dead bodies in front of her.
‘It is cool actually,’ Clarence says after dropping Cookey face first into the mud and rubbing the mud on his cheek.
‘Yeah?’ I ask and get my own handful to try. He’s right. The mud is refreshingly cool on my hot skin and instantly I feel a soothing sensation like a cold flannel is being draped on my face.
‘Load it on boys,’ Marcy says turning with a wolfish grin of teeth showing through the face of mud, ‘we’ve got another one to do yet,’ she looks past us to Roy’s van sat in the midst of the green with the rear wheels sunk over halfway down into the brown gloop.
So it begins. A Journey of mudmen and women sliding and crawling through the quagmire to reach Roy’s van.
‘DOORS!’ Clarence stops and thunders the word out and so we return to the place the Saxon was stuck to collect the doors and so re-commence the journey of mudmen and women sliding and crawling to Roy’s van. The doors are slid, prodded and levered into position and with Paula back with us and behind the wheel we try again, gathering at the back to heave and strain as we lift and push while getting caked in mud being flung up from the spinning wheels.
Every mouth grimaces and sweat pours through the mud on our faces. Muscles burning, legs shaking and bodies slipping from our feet giving out to send us splatting down but no laughter now and those that fall get a breath of air and lurch back up.
‘STOP,’ Charlie appears at the back shaking her head apologetically, ‘it’s not working.’
‘What’s not working?’ Clarence growls spitting a clug of mud from his mouth as we stagger round to stare down in dismay. The front wheels are on the rapidly sinking doors but the slickness of the mud on the sheer polished surface of the doors have created a virtual ice rink with nothing for the tyres to grip.
‘Ideas?’ I ask round, ‘the chains in the Saxon aren’t long enough.’
‘Ropes?’ Paula asks leaning out of the passenger door.
‘We don’t have any long enough.’
‘More doors?’ Cookey asks.
/> ‘Ditch the van and get another one?’ Paula asks and quickly winces from the dark look given by Roy, ‘or not,’ she adds quickly.
‘Bodies,’ Clarence says, ‘we’ll have to use them.’
‘Yeah, yeah might work…pretty fucking gross though.’
We stare over at the corpses littering the ground with limbs splayed out and the sickening grey flesh stark against the filthy blood flecked mud.
‘Come on,’ Clarence says bunching his shoulders and stepping out. We fall in behind him stooped and with heads bowed and the cooling mud packs soaking back through with the sweat dripping from our pores.
Into the carnage of the battlefield we stalk. Clarence grabbing two bodies by their ankles and setting off with the cadavers dragging behind him. I reach down, grab a thin wrist and start to tug the body of a middle aged woman over the mud. It feels awful and wrong. Her wrist is so thin in my grip and still warm too. The weight of her, the drag I can feel, the way her head lolls with the bumps and drags and her legs splaying out. The heat builds. The mud clings and I slip down losing my grip on her and the mud underfoot. Nick and Charlie working together heave a big male by the ankles. Cookey and Blowers grasping a wrist each. Mo Mo and Blinky, Charlie and Marcy, Paula and Roy and Dave, the smallest of the group yet he drags a big female behind him with ease but I notice even his face is starting to flush.
Clarence stays at the front of the van picking the corpses we leave and shoving them down into the mud before stomping and kicking them into position. Bones snap, ribs crack and gases escape from mouths and arses that spew shit from voided bowels. The air is rank, full of death, faeces, bad breath, stale odour, blood and the stench of innards.
I get back to the bodies and wait for Dave to come back so we can work a body between us. We don’t speak but then neither does anyone else. Not Clarence as he takes the bodies from the couples working or the couples as they walk back to get another one.
Bending over and I reach out to grab an ankle and stop dead. A butterfly tattoo wrapped round a slender ankle with rose vines and flowers leading down onto the foot. The colours are so vivid against the grey skin and I glance up to see matted once blond hair atop a face that would have broken hearts in life as she has tried to do in death. I look round at the corpses nearby and see more signs that speak of the people they once were. A golden bracelet on a wrist that glints in the sun and a plain wedding ring on a finger and as soon as I see that I can’t help but look round at the other hands and the wedding rings showing.
I squat down and rest for a second with the fight gone from my body. The woman with the butterfly tattoo has a small round hole in her forehead marking the entry point of a bullet that could only have come from Dave simply for the precision of the placement. No doubt the back of her head is gone but she’s on her back and I can’t see it, only the once blond hair fanning out and matted with blood, gore and mud. The rest of her body looks remarkably intact, filthy, emaciated but intact, apart from the flesh torn from her inner thigh from the infected mouth that sunk it’s teeth in to pass the deadly virus. Another festering wound to become a haven for flies and maggots, but then this wound looks quite clean. The skin has started to heal with a scab forming within the layers of epidermis. The skin near the bite is clean too with no obvious signs of infection.
‘Clean wound,’ Dave says standing over me.
‘I was just thinking that,’ I say quietly, ‘check that one,’ I nod at the closest male and watch as Dave toes the body over and drops down into a squat searching for the bite mark. He lifts the left arm and shows me the wound on the bicep, ‘clean,’ he says.
‘Scabbing?’
‘Yes.’
‘No maggots,’ I say looking down at my woman again.
‘Anyone see any maggots anywhere?’ I ask out loud.
‘Maggots?’ Marcy asks, ‘why you asking that?’
‘Normally see maggots in the wounds,’ I say, ‘but this one is clean…like, not infected…’
‘She wasn’t infected?’ Marcy snaps striding towards me.
‘No,’ I wave her to slow down, ‘I mean the wound isn’t infected…like all red and nasty…look,’ I motion down at the girl, ‘scabbing and clean.’
‘Yeah I see,’ she says, ‘what’s that one like?’ She asks Dave.
‘Same,’ he replies and drops the arm to roll the next body over, ‘face,’ he says, ‘no maggots, clean wound, scabbed.’
‘They still stink like dirty fucking wankers,’ Nick says darkly tugging at the ankles with Charlie, ‘here, let me…’
‘I can do it,’ she says pointedly.
‘Yeah but he’s got shit all over his legs…’
‘I’m fine,’ Charlie says firmly.
‘Evolution,’ Marcy says resting a filthy hand on my shoulder, ‘worrying,’ she adds with a muddied frown.
It takes time. Everything takes time and it takes energy too. More than we have and this heat saps it straight from our guts and bones. We could have drips fitted and still struggle with not getting enough fluids. Clarence works the hardest with his strength never ending as he bends, scoops the bodies and flings them down before using his feet and legs to drive them into position until there is a rolling log road of corpses in front of the van stretching from the green to the battlefield where more bodies lie ready to be used as traction.
‘Paula,’ Clarence waves tiredly at the front of van urging her to get in and drive as the rest of us get to the back.
‘Ready?’ I ask between teeth gritted in preparation of the pain to come.
‘NOW!’
We push. My god we push. Several tons of armoured metal on a solid chassis and with limbs straining we inch the bastard thing across the doors and into the first human form that will give traction except the human form is a few inches higher than the level of the door on which the front wheels rest so an even greater application of force is required. Grinding ourselves into the earth from whence we came and to which we shall return and we pit strength and sinew against something we could just ditch but fuck that, you don’t give in, you dig deeper and drive on until the blood drips from your nose and the elements of heat and pain become just another enemy to defeat. Willpower overcomes everything. Sheer stubborn minded fools pitting themselves against and for the same object.
A rhythm starts to form, an organic motion of movement done as the van rolls back from the lip of the body the front wheels are trying to crest. We push harder, shouting and driving it forward into the human remains but gravity overcomes us and the van sinks back. We push it forward, hit the bodies and hold it for the briefest of seconds before it rolls back. We do it again and again. Forward, hold and back, forward hold and back and as that motion becomes more apparent so we let the thing roll back instead of fighting to hold it in place. A sawing manner of back and forth and so the combined strength of inertia and force starts to show and as that happens we feel a hint of victory being within our reach so we dig deeper still and push harder. One action feeds the other until instead of shouting with pain we are roaring with determination and heaving the slick front wheels into the body that caves in with popping squelches noises. We get across the first body onto the second row then the third until the rear wheels hit the door and get onto the sheer wet surface, but a sheer wet surface is better than a gloopy one and we feel less resistance in the push until suddenly, as though no effort was ever required, the rear wheels hit the mashed up body and find traction within the shards of bone, muscles, sinew and matter. The van chugs, bites and Paula, sensing the grip is being given, applies pressure which turns the rear wheels faster which grip harder and away she goes, bouncing and jolting over a carpet of bodies as we stand back giving cheers to the gods of pushing vans that we finally bloody did it.
Fourteen
Mud monsters we are. Beastly apparitions from a child’s nightmare. We emerge from the gloopy field with mud soaked clothing chafing against our bodies and with feet becoming heavier with every step.
‘Ev
ery half an hour,’ I mutter to myself, ‘something happens every half an hour…we can’t even drive across a field without it turning into a bloody disaster. I mean…what the fuck happened?’
‘It was the rain…’
‘Rhetorical, Roy,’ I groan and try to wipe some of the mud from my face but just end up smearing more of it about.
‘We need to clean off,’ Clarence says shaking his head at the state of us all.
‘Really? You think?’ Marcy asks him. ‘Seriously though, is it like this every day with you lot?’
‘Yep,’ Blowers says leaning against the side of the Saxon, ‘this is an easy day so far.’
‘Easy?’ She asks nodding as though refusing to believe it, ‘this isn’t easy.’
‘It’s not even lunchtime yet,’ Nick says.
‘Lunchtime? Do we get lunch today?’ Cookey asks with what I think is a hopeful expression but you can’t really tell under the facemask.
‘Do we fuck. We never get lunch,’ Nick says.
‘Right,’ I say standing upright to stretch my back with a big groan as Paula jumps down from Roy’s van and strides over.
‘Everyone get cleaned up,’ she says as I blink at her.
‘Was just about to say that,’ I say.
‘I said it,’ she says with a shrug, ‘Dave, have these two houses been cleared?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes. We took the doors from them.’
‘Did we?’ She asks staring round, ‘completely lost my bearings then. Right, everyone inside and get washed, changed and take some fluids on. Come on,’ she claps her hands like a teacher ushering us all towards the doors, ‘girls on the right, boys on the left. Come along now. No dilly dallying you rascally rapscallions.’
‘What the fuck?’ Nick says.
‘Reginald,’ Paula calls out, ‘we’re going in to get cleaned up. You’re on watch.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ he blusters appearing at the back door of Roy’s van.
‘Keep watch,’ she says, ‘you know,’ she waves her arms around at the surrounding area, ‘look out…you’re on look-out.’