by RR Haywood
‘Give me five minutes,’ I say and walk step out from the line with my axe resting across my shoulders. Easy. Casual. Calm. Eyes watching. Always watching. Tension mounting. I roll my shoulders and move my head side to side to stretch my neck. I spit to the side.
In the van they stare at the image in the screen captured from the camera in the left side rear light cluster. Reginald seated with the other three standing behind him and the tension so thick you could spoon it out. Clutching the radio Reginald watches Howie then flicks his eyes up to the horde. A player on a board and Howie is his best piece. The trap. The lure. Howie must play it perfectly. Reginald is in the game now and as absorbed as any other. Slowly he lifts the radio to his mouth and presses the button before speaking softly.
‘That’s it, Mr Howie. That’s it.’
I keep walking knowing Roy will be stood proud on the top of Saxon with the arrow nocked and ready and inside Roy’s van they will be clutching rifles ready to come out and behind me on the line will be a small man resting his right hand on the butt of his pistol.
‘Confidence. Arrogance. You defy them, Mr Howie. You offend them. You and your team.’
Reginald lets go of the radio switch and watches Howie ambling in perfect control towards the horde knowing everything must be done with perfect timing and he notices his words make Howie stand more erect as though generating an arrogant swagger.
Halfway now and each step brings me closer to three hundred or more infected owned and occupied by one entity that wishes to do us harm. Sunken faces drawn tight across skulls with hair hanging limp and greasy. Hands clawed sharp as daggers and not human anymore. The humanity has gone from what these once were. Fetid decaying death that smells abhorrent with rancid breath and eyes blazing red. So many eyes. All red and bloodshot and the saliva drools from their mouths dripping thick on chins and chests. Naked some of them. Naked and evil for they feel no shame and have no emotion. Some are clothed and greater the offence is given for those clothes worn. Clothes are for the living. For those that need shelter and nurture.
I come to a stop fifty or so metres from them and listen to the low moans emitting from their throats. I tilt my head showing no fear and look from face to face seeing what they once were and what they now are as I lower my axe from my shoulder so the head rests on the ground and the shaft upright in my right hand while my left hangs loose at my side. Easy. Calm. Controlled. Contained. Ready. Waiting. Watching.
‘Oh perfect, yes Mr Howie,’ Reginald mutters staring unblinking at the monitor. Holding still like this is an act of pure arrogance by making them come to him as though they want him more than he wants them.
‘You watch him,’ Paula whispers to Charlie, ‘keep your eyes on Howie and watch.’
My head lowers an inch, an inch more and in so doing I widen my peripheral vision feeling that first proper pulse of rage starting to tug at my insides.
‘Come on,’ I mouth, ‘come on…COME ON….’
The rage shows. Pure and beautiful and that spark from me ignites them and they come. Oh they come. They come fast and charging with mouths snapping open and limbs working smoothly in synchronicity with their bodies. They flow and surge faster and faster building pace and speed with intent showing clear in their faces.
‘FASTER,’ I vent my incessant desire to kill them into the charged air. Fury burns my hand that holds the axe but still I do not move. I let them come and hold my position.
‘Not yet, not yet,’ Reginald mutters with his thumb brushing the switch ready to press down. Let them come. Let them run and show no fear.
‘Shit,’ Charlie balks at the sight. Hundreds of infected charging towards one man standing with his axe head resting on the ground and not a flicker of movement in him.
‘Just watch,’ Paula mutters feeling the thrill of knowing what she’s about to see.
‘One more second,’ Reginald says to the monitor and gets ready to press down.
‘Now fight. Fight them….’
The voice whispers soft but I can feel the hunger within it as Reginald starts his journey towards this need for violence the rest of us have.
The right hand is violence.
I am violence.
I charge. Unable to contain myself from the need to inflict harm and on legs that stride fast with the axe rising to be gripped in two hands and it goes high above my head as the first one closes me down with a full on sprint and we lock eyes and roar our venomous hatred of each other.
I win. I cleave the fucker in two from skull to groin with a downward slice of sharp metal going through bone and sinew and muscle. It splits in half with innards and bowels falling to the ground but I’m gone and spinning round in a circle as another one is taken in half through the stomach.
‘Oh yes, yes yes yes indeed,’ Reginald shouts as Howie breaks to sprint and thereby showing the other player he is full of pride and rage and therefore fallible. ‘Indeed,’ Reginald says again turning round to look at Charlie staring open mouthed at the screen.
It was the speed of it. The way Howie went from standing to moving and suddenly a fully grown man was split in half from top to bottom. A second later and another is cut in half and Charlie feels the hand squeezing her arm as Marcy reaches out without knowing she’s doing it.
Then I’m in amongst them feeling more alive than I have ever felt. More real. More…fuck I don’t know what it is but I’m here doing this. A head cut from the body and I spin launching the blade through a leg. Stop dead. Reverse thrust and up into the groin opening an artery. Half a turn and I ram the blunt end of the shaft into a stomach making the body fold in two as I step back and slice down. Around I go in a tight circle with the shaft sliding through my grip that tightens on the last few inches so I can make use of the length of the weapon. Cleaving and killing. Slicing and killing. Death rains on the ground with blood pouring and bones snapping with crunches. I don’t hear it. I don’t see it but only what I can do and what I am.
I get faster. They get slower. I gain speed until through them I go with my lips pulled back and my heart drumming a beat that my body thrives to keep pace with.
Faster. Legs detached. Arms cut. Heads removed. Innards spilling. They die and I live but still it’s not enough and that furious demand grows building pressure in my head.
I dominate them. I control this place but still I cannot satisfy and feed what is desired. I am addicted but like an addict there is no shut off. The hunger gnaws and despite the blood taken so I cannot spill enough.
I need more. I have to have more. Give it to me. Give me what I need. I start to growl deep in my throat. I want more. I am angry. Give me more. The growl increases in volume to a snarling intensity that takes me one step further away from being human and like Meredith I see only the target and the target that must be killed.
I scream into the air and stand still with my head turned up feeling that energy pulsing like nothing I can ever feel again. Why can’t I satisfy it? Why can’t I feed my hunger this time?
Charlie edges closer. Enraptured by the sheer sight of one man ripping through hundreds of others and every step he takes there seems to be a spray of blood or a limb falling or a body crumpling to the ground.
‘What is that?’ She asks quietly trying to keep track of the movements and slowly realising a pattern is forming as the infected charge at him then at the last second they seem to wilt as though trying to get away.
‘They’re scared of him,’ Marcy says, ‘of being able to do this.’
‘This isn’t real,’ Charlie says blinking hard then staring again, ‘this isn’t real.’
‘Ha, look at Meredith,’ Paula says as the dog breaks from Nick’s gasp, or maybe Nick let her go. Either way she streaks over that ground in a flurry of legs and tail.
A blur of black shoots past me with a set of teeth clamping onto a skull as the body is taken down under the weight of Meredith and the sight spurs me on. Two of us now. Two of us fighting side by side and she whips about using her size to
smash them from their feet. With a snarl her jaws close on the throat and she’s off, away and leaping high to rip another one to shreds. I follow in her wake watching her work feeling the energy between us and her heart beating in her chest. I feel the strength flow into her muscles that bunch and explode and taste the blood on her tongue and runs free from her mouth. She cannot be defeated. She is skilled in this and together we fight as I drop the axe and desire what she has. That contact from her to them. I want that. I want that now. I use my hands gauging skin from necks and letting my teeth rip arteries open until the blood sprays high. I grasp arms snapping them at the elbow and driving my feet into the sides of legs breaking the joints. I grip heads and twist to feel the spine snap and by my side she snarls with a fury that builds with every passing second.
‘See?’ Marcy says watching catching glimpses between the bodies of Howie now fighting with his bare hands and the sight of him clamping his hands on a face and sinking his teeth into the neck that gets torn away with a ragged clump of flesh spat to the side.
Charlie squeezes her eyes closed at the sight and turns away. The dark eyed man that was so polite and friendly now biting into infected flesh with a dementia that is too sickening to watch. She knew he could fight, she saw it first-hand yesterday and saw his power but this? This is something else. Sickening but her eyes are drawn back to the screen almost against her will and there is another feeling, like a pull.
Another blur and two more join our fray as Dave flits past me into a solid pocket of undead charging towards me. I stand up with blood pouring down my chin feeling that hunger finally being satisfied. One charges from my side and I turn almost lazy in execution of the movement as an arrow takes him through the ear. Another from the other side and he too is killed with a barbed arrow through his neck.
‘Mr Howie,’ Dave says nodding in greeting with the blood dripping from his blades and he looks alive now. He is animated with eyes that seem to shine. He stands stock still unmoving as an arrow embeds into a head lunging at him. Without looking he reaches out and grips the shaft of the arrow pulling it free as the body drops. He turns, casual and easy and stabs short and powerful driving the arrow into the neck of another one. A grunt. A nod and he goes back to work with the blades of his knives turned up against his forearms.
Mo Mo fights with an intensity that rivals how Lani fought and the rage shows clear on his face. One knife in his right hand and he uses those cuts taught to him by Dave to deadly effect. Stab and slice. Slice and stab. Move quick and plan ahead. He cuts a throat but already his eyes are on the next target as he drops and spins to sink the point through the throat and uses his left fist to punch the body away freeing his blade. He drops and back steps with a sweeping kick that trips one running past him sending it into the jaws of Meredith waiting for the kill.
They know how to move with each other.
He comes up standing fully with an arrow flying not an inch from his nose but he doesn’t falter and not a flinch shows as he tracks and works his next kill.
‘Better get the rifles and bags ready,’ Paula says moving to the back of the van where she stops and rolls her eyes at the other three glued to the screen.
‘Mo’s fast,’ Marcy says in commentary, ‘wild but fast.’
‘Blinky,’ Charlie gasps at the sight of her friend charging into the fray.
‘CUNTS…’ Blinky charges in screaming hell for leather running low with the axe held like a stick. The girl is demented and consumed with a thirst to hurt and cause pain but she’s on our side and so the pain she gives is righteous. She slams out wild and rushed but the delivery is spot on. The axe cleaving through a shoulder so deep she has to boot the thing in the stomach to free the blade. She doesn’t fight so much as hack and bludgeon but she’s got strength and strong legs that pivot and drive forward.
‘Fuckingcuntsfuckingcuntsfuckingcunts…’ She mutters snarling and beastly with hair slick across her soaking forehead. She chops down but finds one coming in at her right with a lunge for the bite. She twists round letting go of the axe to slam her fists into the face breaking nose and jaw as the thing sags under the blows and as it sinks she stamps down into the skull before twisting back to snatch her weapon back up.
Motion on the other side and Nick ploughing forward with the double headed axe chopping left and right with that wry smile etched on his blood flecked face. The lad is strong and fit and it shows in his movements and manner and that confidence at knowing the blood can’t hurt him shows now as he goes harder, faster, pulsing with the energy flowing through all of us.
Blinky fits in perfectly. Charlie sees it now why Dave said she could go. That pure furious desire for violence and to unleash hell on anyone in her way. She was always being sent off on the pitch but here she is perfectly designed to the work and now, watching Nick move into the circle she understands what they meant by they know how to move with each other.
Cookey and Blowers stomp through raging together side by side, always side by side. Always together with axes working deadly and strong. They are incredible. A team of intrinsic thought as they flow around one another. Flanks protected, rear guarded and always in sight of each other.
Oh it grows. That energy and the need to do harm. It feeds the addiction as we few slaughter them down using their greater numbers against them for they can only ever present a front line against us and with so many pressing behind they have no place else to go. So they fall and die and the ground runs with thick blood red and metallic in the air that stifles us all.
Arrows fly through us. Seemingly round us. I raise my arms to chop down and feel an arrow whizz under my wrists taking one through the eye.
Around Howie they fight. He is the core that holds them and that pull grows stronger. That desire to be with them and in that circle killing. Marcy feels it and stares with hard eyes locked always on Howie. Charlie flits her gaze from one to the other wishing to watch all of them and not wanting to miss a thing. Dave is beautiful and she recognises the grace with which he moves. Like water flowing round them, so poised and always being where he needs to be. Reginald watches too and for something so gruesome he doesn't see the blood or gore but watches for the actions and reactions. How the other player uses the pieces and the arrangement of the board and outside Paula arranges the rifles and bags while glancing up to see Roy firing his bow.
In the midst of this carnage a new noise comes to the fore, permeating my head for the novelty of the sound. A hissing with solid pops and bones being snapped. I look round locking eyes with Nick as we both seek to find the source.
‘DOWN DOWN DOWN,’ Clarence booms the order and we obey with instant obedience dropping to lie within the corpses as the man strides from the edge on legs like tree trunks. His right hand above his head circling clockwise. His left also above his head but anti-clockwise and in each the chain spins long and thick. Hissing through the air as he stomps a path to our centre.
The effect is incredible. Death is given but faster and bloodier than anything yet. Chains striking heads with such force it snaps them over breaking necks. Skin ripped from bones that break and splinter. Round and round they go striking anything stupid enough to be in the way and with the rest of us down the infected charge at him. One after the other bang bang bang and they go down or flying off as his muscles warm up to the movement. He gets faster spinning harder. Whirling chains that render the forms lifeless and the blood rains down on us as we lie staring up watching. Still the arrows fly and still Meredith works. Tens are killed within seconds, or mangled so badly they crawl and writhe on the ground to be stabbed or chopped by us.
They charge in with a message clearly sent through all of them. The chains whip but snag and wrap round bodies. Clarence loses grip of the right chain and instead works the one in his left hand but that too snags from the bodies pushing at him and it’s over, done. Clarence loses his chains so reverts to what he knows best, which is breaking things. We rise up axes and knives going back to what we know.
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nbsp; ‘Do you see now?’ Marcy asks in a hushed whisper. ‘That’s why we couldn’t go with them…we can’t do that.’
‘I might,’ Charlie says just as hushed.
‘Howie knows what he is doing,’ Paula says from the back doors leaning in, ‘if he wants you here with us then that’s what you do. I know I’d be more of a burden in there…anyway, get ready they’ll be falling back in a minute. Roy, you’d better get on the GPMG…’
‘How does she know?’ Charlie asks watching as Paula moves away towards the Saxon.
‘It’s Paula,’ Marcy says, ‘she knows everything.’
‘FALL BACK,’ I shout feeling my limbs starting to drain from the exertion in this heat. ‘Dave…repeat…’
‘FALL BACK…’
There is no denying his voice and together we fight a retreat into a solid line that starts back stepping as they rush on sensing we’re giving ground.
I push my hand into my chest pressing the radio switch, ‘Roy…’ I gasp the word out, ‘ready?’
‘Ready,’ his voice is clear and calm as ever. I glance back to see him now inside the hole of the Saxon as Paula, Marcy and Charlie stand aiming at the back of Roy’s van.
‘SIDES NOW,’ I shout, ‘SIDES NOW…’
We peel away to the verges on the left and right while still running back down the road towards our vehicles. An instant later the GPMG thuds to life firing into ranks now exposed from our sudden retreat. Assault rifles join the noise a fraction later slaughtering them down with rounds slamming through bodies and flesh.
We sprint hard clinging to the edges with Nick gripping Meredith’s neck forcing her to stay with him. Back we go running past a hail of bullets whizzing into the undead behind us.