Sleep, Think, Die (Book 2): The Undertaking

by Oldham, S. P.

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © S P Oldham 2017

  In at the Deep End

  Lavender stopped mid-step, her eyes stretched wide in a bid to see in the gloomy light of the sewer. Water trickled thickly over her boots, seeping into the gaps between the laces to find its cold, unwelcome way through to her skin. She shuddered, trying hard not to think of the other fluids and spoils the oily liquid was carrying.

  Carson was some way up ahead. She could hear the quiet swish of his boots through the water. The rest of the group were behind her; all four of them stretched out in a staggered line. The general consensus was that this strategy was sound. In theory, it meant that if any single one of them was attacked, the others could come running to their defence from all sides. It also made it less likely that they would all be taken down in one fell swoop.

  Lavender wasn’t so sure. She had argued that it simply rendered them more vulnerable to attack, more easily picked off as individuals. But she had been shouted down, as per the all-important democratic process.

  She rolled her eyes heavenward for the thousandth time. Democracy was all well and good under normal circumstances; this was anything but. Sometimes, you just needed a leader.

  She pushed the thought aside, trying to hone in on what had made her stop. It wouldn’t be long before the next in line, Magda, caught up with her. She needed to keep moving if the tactic was going to go according to plan.

  Except there was something.

  She used the long-handled scythe she was carrying like a shepherd’s crook, resting its blunt end in the soiled waters. The hooked and vicious blade curved above her head, its edge wickedly sharp.

  She stopped, straining to listen, filtering out the drips, plinks and gloops that were par for the course in an old sewer. She tried to hear past those sounds; beyond the increasingly subdued watery noises Carson was making as he moved further away. There was another sound, barely audible, that didn’t fit…

  A hiss of escaping air, like a voiceless growl, hit her face. It was more instinct than skill that caused Lavender to duck, simultaneously bringing the blade of the scythe down and around in one smooth, deadly motion. For a dreadful moment, she worried that she was mistaken and had decapitated one of her own. When the unmistakable odour of rotten flesh reached her, she knew she had done no such thing. Relieved, she stepped back just in time to avoid the zombie’s head as it fell. She looked down upon it, the dark water rushing to fill the overly-wide nostrils, the space where an eye had once been. She gagged, turning away, still unable to get over the nausea that always accompanied a killing; even of an undead.

  Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she stepped gingerly over the head, trying to avoid seeing it again. Her hands were trembling, her breath shaky as she tried to recall if she had cried out when the thing had taken her by surprise. She decided she couldn’t have; no one had come running to rescue her and better still, no other zombies had been hard on the heels of this one.

  Her foot caught on some part of the dismembered head, she didn’t want to know which, and she stumbled. Slamming the scythe down handle first in a bid to right herself, she instinctively threw her left hand forward. Expecting it to hit fresh air, expecting any moment to fall, she was surprised when her hand met what had once been a broad man’s chest. Realising that the zombie’s corpse had somehow stayed standing, Lavender could do nothing about it as forward momentum propelled her on. Her hand pushed right through the body of the zombie; once solid bones disintegrating like wet chalk as she barrelled helplessly through them. Spongy, maggot-laden organs exploding at her touch, repulsive and strange.

  Her hand travelled on, bursting right through paper-thin skin that covered the zombie’s back. When her hand hit the fabric of its tattered shirt, she finally came to a stop. She took an absurd moment to marvel that the material had not rotted as quickly as the flesh. Then she felt the corpse’s feet shift backward as it began to fall; as she began to fall with it.

  She screamed then, and to hell with strategies and lurking undead.

  *

  Magda was the first to reach her. Lavender lay face down, her head buried in the zombie’s caved-in chest. In her revulsion and panic she had dropped the scythe. It now lay lethally hidden beneath the murky water. She was scrabbling madly to her knees when two hands gripped her strongly from behind and hauled her to her feet. Magda was asking her if she was all right, urging her to calm down but Lavender shoved her away. Falling to her knees upstream of the ragged corpse, she no longer cared what might be in the water. She splashed it hurriedly over her face and neck, washing away the slimy innards of the zombie that clung to her. She was aware of other footsteps approaching, of urgent whispers behind her, but the blood rushing in her ears drowned out their actual words and her repulsion threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted nothing more than to get out of the sewer, strip off completely and scour every inch of her body raw.

  She was so absorbed in her own personal horror that it took some time to realise that the others had not only fallen silent, but still. Turning, Lavender recognised the resigned expressions on their faces. They were staring into the gloom at her back, their grave intent making her skin crawl. Magda caught her eye and shook her head very slowly in a silent ‘no.’ raising a finger to her lips the way a mother might to a young child. Don’t move, don’t make a sound.

  Lavender froze, even though she knew it was already too late. She had made enough noise to raise the dead, literally. She allowed herself a fraction of a second to close her eyes and wish she was somewhere else, to pray that there wasn’t a Thinker lurking behind her. A guttural moan reached her ear, making her jump. Her eyes flicked open; it was much closer than she had suspected. There came the sensation of lurching movement from behind her, then all hell broke loose.

  Stuck as she was in the middle, weapon-less and still shaken, Lavender once again ducked; a move that undoubtedly saved her life. The space she had just occupied was suddenly filled with a pair of swiping arms, blunt and jagged nails at the end of bony fingers. At a loss for what to do, Lavender tucked herself into a ball and deliberately rammed herself into the attacking zombie’s knees. As she had hoped, the thing unbalanced, pitching forwards head first. For the second time Lavender found herself in the intimate and stinking embrace of a zombie’s torso. No time for sensitivities she pushed upwards, grasping its bony legs and sending it head first into the water.

  There were three more of them. Her companions were busy fighting them off, a variety of blades and heavy weapons scraping, slicing and thudding. She heard one or two cries of alarm and one genuine shriek of pain, but there was nothing to be done for it. Even though they looked to be winning, Lavender felt helpless without her weapon. She sank to her knees a third time, feeling blindly for the fallen scythe. She did not allow her mind to dwell on the hidden things she touched and grabbed at beneath the surface, discarding them the instant she understood it was not her weapon. Reluctantly she had to admit defeat. She was about to stand again when there came the warning shout “Stay down!”

  She crouched low, covering her head with her arms. Something large fell alongside her, leaving her unbruised but covering her with a wave of filthy water.

  She stayed curled

  “All clear,” Hannan said, breathlessly. He was holding a hand to a wound in his right shoulder.

  He looked haggard and harassed. He forced a smile at her, “yo
u can get up now,” he said mockingly.

  “Fuck you, Hannan,” Lavender said, making a note to check his wound out when they got topside.

  Hannan grinned a response. Lavender scanned the group, all catching their breath, shock in their faces. She was all too ready to cross-examine Carson on his lateness to the fight, but there was no sign of him.

  “Where’s Carson?” She didn’t mean it to sound like an accusation; worry got the better of her.

  The others looked from one to the other until Magda at last shrugged, “Didn’t he go on up ahead?”

  *

  Carson paused, cursing under his breath. He had no idea where he was or worse, where the others were. He couldn’t hear the slow slosh of cautious footsteps behind him anymore; he couldn’t recall when he had last been aware of them. Not for the first time, his memory of the immediate past was vague at best. Lately, it was as if his mind just randomly switched to auto-pilot, allowing his body to carry on without any conscious thought. Previously it had just been mildly annoying. Now, it was troubling. He seemed to be shutting out reality and all its sensory properties more and more. It was leaving him vulnerable: he could have walked right into anything.

  He tried to take stock, peering into the murkiness for something to help gauge where he was. Pointless in such a featureless maze of tunnels.

  There was light up ahead, he realised. M manhole cover must have been cast aside, allowing the bright daylight above to penetrate the subterranean murk. Carson started towards it.

  He stepped into the warm and welcoming cone of light, shouldered his weapon and grasped the rails, beginning his ascent. He focused upwards, allowing his eyes time to adjust before cautiously raising his head above the hole and looking round. He had come up in what had once probably been a busy main street. Now, the ruined shop fronts and rusting vehicles were a familiar, if desolate, sight. As sure as he could be that the coast was clear, he pulled himself free of the manhole to stand on the ghostly street, dripping from his knees down and leaving a puddle at his feet.

  He retrieved his weapon, a v-shaped shovel that had been honed and sharpened to become deadly in the right hands. He felt it heavy in his grip, giving him courage.

  He didn’t recognise this street and he had no idea how far off course he was. It was just a case of picking a direction and walking for a while, until he found his bearings. This time, he would be damn sure to stay alert.

  Refusing to acknowledge the nagging sense of heightened vulnerability now that he was alone and exposed on the streets, he began to walk, the dust clinging to his wet trousers and making them stick to his skin, the sensation oddly repulsive. He wondered briefly if Lavender was okay, hoping that she had managed to stay with the group.

  Then he pushed all thoughts of her aside, to concentrate on getting through the streets without being killed, or worse.

  Too Close for Comfort

  “I don’t care what any of you think, we are not climbing out of this rat-infested shit-tunnel until we’ve found Carson,” Lavender hissed, “I know as well you do there are undead down here but just think for a minute; if there were any in hearing distance we’d know it by now. They’d have closed in for the kill just like these did,” she kicked one of the defeated zombies that was thankfully face down in the water.

  “And what if there are Thinkers down here?” Magda insisted, “What if there’s one just biding its time, waiting for us to go to it?”

  Lavender bit her lip, frustrated. Magda was right and she knew it, but there was no way she was leaving Carson down here alone. Not given the way he had been acting lately. He’d saved her bones more than once; the least she could do was look out for him now.

  “We’ve dealt with Thinkers before,” she said, “Hell, we are supposed to be all about hunting them down, remember?”

  “Of course I remember! But not like this. Who in their right mind chases down a Thinker in a dark, confined space?”

  Lavender stiffened, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  There was an awkward silence. Magda lowered her gaze, looking away, “Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything, okay? All I’m saying is, Carson must be way ahead of us. He would have come back to help otherwise. It just doesn’t make sense for the rest of us to keep wandering blindly on, that’s all,” she refrained from adding that anything could have happened to him. Lavender should have been grateful for that but somehow it just added to her exasperation.

  “Oh, suddenly the idea of walking in a staggered line doesn’t make sense?” Lavender was sarcastic.

  “It does make sense, ordinarily, just not in a place like this,” Petra, normally the quietest of the group, spoke up, “In somewhere as dark and closed in as a sewer, going single file is, well,” she shrugged, struggling to find the words, “not the best idea,” she finished lamely.

  Lavender nodded, “Pity none of you thought to speak up before Carson got lost,” She could have kicked herself, immediately regretting her choice of words. “Easy enough to do down here,” she went on, eager to cover her fluster, “leading the way like he was, must have been easy to lose us,”

  “That’s another thing,” Mayhew’s deep tones could be felt as much as heard; his words seemed to vibrate along the dripping walls on their way to Lavender, “If he went ahead, how come he didn’t come across those zombies first?”

  Lavender didn’t know the answer, but she knew she had to defend Carson in his absence. This sudden discussion about his whereabouts was beginning to feel like an attack upon him, “What do you mean, ‘if he went ahead?’ Of course he went ahead, you all saw him go! I ‘ve been listening to his size eleven’s splashing through the water for what feels like hours now,”

  “So how come he didn’t bump into this little meet and greet?” Mayhew gestured to the corpses.

  “More like meet and eat,” Hannan sniggered. Nobody laughed.

  “How the hell should I know? Have you got a map to this place? No? Me neither. They could have stepped out from any one of the tunnels that lead off from this one, way after Carson had passed by. He wouldn’t just leave them to come for us without warning. You ever known him to back down from a fight since you met him, any of you? You ever known him lead us into trouble and not look back?”

  The group fell quiet. Petra had the good grace to look abashed.

  “Didn’t think so,” Lavender said, “So we’re not abandoning him, right?”

  Mayhew heaved a sigh but said nothing. Magda spoke up, “So what do you suggest we do?”

  “We keep walking ‘til we find him, or some sign of him,” Lavender said, “that’s all we can do. Now, if you lot don’t mind getting your hands dirty, you could help me find my scythe. Mind where you put your fingers though won’t you; it’s a bit sharp.”

  They recovered the scythe eventually. With the toe of his boot, Mayhew turned one of the rapidly rotting corpses onto its side, holding it there so Petra could get down and feel about with her hands, when it bobbed to the surface like some strange, steely fish. Petra snatched at it quick and raised it triumphantly out of the water, warning everyone to stand well back. She handed it gingerly to Lavender, who immediately felt better with a blade in her grip.

  “Don’t know how you can use that thing,” Petra said as she passed it on, “it’s too big and cumbersome,” she patted the Bowie knife tucked into her back pocket.

  “I’ll use whatever I can get my hands on Petra, you know that. For now, this suits me just fine. Okay, enough talk. Let’s go,”

  *

  It was like waking up, but slowly. Readjusting to the fresh and air and the brightness of day, Carson began to appreciate how completely self-absorbed he had become down in the cellar. He was amazed he hadn’t walk right into a zombie, he’d been so distracted. He hadn’t been sleeping too well of late; maybe that accounted for the lapses in concentration. But then, who did sleep well these days?

  A noisy clattering from way down the street. Carson stopped, at once alert. He scanned ahead; nothing obvi
ous, but that didn’t mean a damn thing. He checked both left and right, wary of being blind-sided. There didn’t seem to be anyone around.

  Cautiously, his heart thumping, Carson edged forwards. There was the occasional creak of loose boarding, now and then the skittering of loose debris and rubbish caught by a breeze. Small creatures ran unhindered amongst the grass and weeds that had been allowed to take root and grow unfettered; Carson heard them scuttling away at his approach. Except for the rats, he guessed. There were rats everywhere these days. They didn’t flee in quite the same way as the other small creatures did; lightning fast and light footed. No, rats exited with a more measured pace. A slow hop with a backward glance, as if reluctant to go. If there were enough of them, they stayed. If there was more enough of them, you had a problem.

  Carson was tired and his head had begun to ache. He was in no mood to fend off a swathe of marauding, hungry rats. He groaned, dreading the prospect of beating off the voracious rodents, some of which could reach the size of small dogs. Praying he was wrong and it was nothing more than mice and birds, he took another step forward.

  The clattering resumed, this time underscored by an intense squealing. Carson’s heart sank; rats after all. But then the sound changed, the squealing more akin to yelping and whining. Not rats then, but dogs; dogs that had been born and raised without ever knowing the touch of a human hand.

  Wild dogs, and judging from the pitch of the yelps and whines, puppies too. Which meant adults with young to protect.

  “Shit!” Carson murmured, taking a backward step in the hope that he could leave the way he had come without alerting the animals to his presence. He had encountered them before; from a distance on many occasions, up close and personal only once. The odds had been a good deal better then. He had been part of a larger group, all of them armed. A few shots loosed and a lot of arm waving and shouting had been enough to convince the pack to move on without a fight.