They had four corpses laid out alongside one another. They looked whole enough apart from the misshapen faces and the softness that lay just beneath the skin.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” Lavender said, kneeling alongside the corpse of a man, the first in the row.
“It was your idea,” Carson said.
“Not all my ideas are good ones, Carson,”
“But this one is,” Carson encouraged her, taking up his place on the other end of the row, “Don’t think about it, okay? Shut your eyes tight, keep your mouth closed and just don’t think about it,”
Lavender knew it was useless arguing. It really was the one chance they stood of getting out alive.
“Okay,” she said, stretching out at full length alongside the corpse, “on the count of three. One, two, three!”
What Goes Around…
They rolled together. The smell was overpowering. Lavender nearly got up and ran more than once. The bodies were horribly tender and sickeningly puffy. A wetness covered her mouth, making her want to scream. She collided with Carson coming the other way and they both began an outward roll, back to where they had started.
Lavender stood, legs trembling, stomach heaving. She kept her eyes screwed tight shut and wiped frantically at her mouth, scraping at her lips with her nails. She wiped her eyes too, and turned until she believed herself to be facing away from what must now be a mangled mess on the floor behind her before she allowed herself to see again.
Carson had circled the bodies and was back alongside her. She gagged at his appearance. Fat grubs writhed and wriggled their way over his body, exploring his living frame. She realised the same was true for herself. She felt something move in her hair and slapped at it, biting back a scream. It took all her will power not to give in to hysteria.
Carson stood before her, wild-eyed, a strange expression on his face.
“Carson, you ok?” Lavender asked him
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, I’m okay,” he said, but his voice sounded like it was coming from a long way off.
Lavender had to pause to wipe her hands so that they wouldn’t be too slick to hold the shotgun. Carson followed her example, roughly scraping his over one of the fabric bags that made up part of the discarded pile. He held the knife ready, though Lavender reckoned that if he was close enough to use it to any effect he was a dead man anyway.
The door began to open, letting in daylight and a busy exchange of flies, newly excited by the disturbed corpses. Lavender’s heart leapt into her mouth. Being cornered by a Thinker in here, or worse, by several of them, was not a good idea.
Noble stepped in. Still barefoot, his feet were filthy, caked in dirt and grime. His sleeves were soaked in jagged trails of blood, the fresh wounds he had dug into his palm earlier were still dripping from the end of his fingertips.
He left the door wide behind him, an open invitation to any passing zombies. He didn’t look at Lavender, his gaze fixed upon Carson.
“I trusted you,” he said.
“You shouldn’t have,” Carson said, “You should have killed me when you had the chance, because I don’t buy into your bullshit theory about Newcomers, Noble. You’re just another nut-job who thought all his birthdays had come at once the day the world turned to shit,”
“You think I’m crazy? Me? Wasn’t me wandering the streets, mumbling and dribbling like a weak-minded pensioner,”
“No, you’re the one who undresses corpses and stores dead bodies in neat piles,” Carson said, his tone menacing.
Lavender, keeping a close eye on Noble’s movements, glanced at the open door behind him,
“Noble, shut the door. We can talk about this if you just shut the door,”
Again he ignored her, “Have you looked around?” His eyes flashed, with pride, desire or both Lavender couldn’t tell.
“Looked,” Carson sneered in a low voice, “We rolled around,”
“Rolled? What do you mean, you rolled around?”
Lavender thought she heard a guttural sound outside. Unable to tell if it was a zombie or merely one of the wandering cattle, she said again, “Noble, shut the door!”
It was as if she had ceased to exist for him. He gave no indication of having heard her words at all. Instead, he seemed suddenly to take in Carson’s dishevelled and wormy appearance. His eyes grew round; an expression of denial and understanding.
“What have you done!” He shouted the last word, pushing Carson flying as he strode past him to step over the bags. Lavender leaned down one handed to help Carson back on his feet,
“We need to get out of here now, Carson. We need to run, now!”
Another sound from outside, this time an unmistakable groan followed by a slow shuffle of leaden feet.
“Shit! Carson, I mean it, move!”
Behind them, Noble had found the pulp of corpses they had left smeared along the aisle. The wail he let out was gut-wrenching. Lavender blanched; that wail, along with Noble’s freshly spilt blood, was enough to draw every zombie on the farm to them. And that damned door was still wide open.
“We’ve got a choice Carson and you better make it quick! We run now and face whatever is heading our way right this second, or we stay in here and deal with Carson. What’s it going to be?” She was panting, fighting for breath in a tide of rising panic. Carson looked at her helplessly, lifted his hands in a gesture of defeat. She grabbed his hand.
“We run,” she said, yanking him towards the door. Behind them, Noble’s wailing had changed in pitch and tone, becoming more a roar of anger unlike anything she had heard before.
“You have defiled them!” his bellowed words rang in her ears as she stepped outside, releasing Carson to hold the shotgun aloft.
Two zombies had drawn level with the mangled bikes they had earlier passed. Carson snatched the shotgun out of Lavender’s hands and fired. The first zombie dropped instantly, the second kept on coming.
Out of the corner of her eye, Carson saw Noble was making his way towards them. He was swinging something in his hands.
“Carson!” Lavender shouted. Carson didn’t turn, concentrating his aim on the second zombie. He let off another shot and this time it dropped.
“What?” Carson turned to her.
“Noble!” she said, stepping away from the open milking shed doors.
Noble stepped out with the look of a true madman on his face. He was slavering, foaming at the mouth in his rage. He held a length of chain in his hands; heavy looking, with links thicker than a man’s fingers. He swung it menacingly.
“You defiled them!” he drooled, “I told you their purpose! I told you their meaning, yet still you came in here and you violated them!” He swung the chain back in an experimental arc, not seeming to feel when it hit the back of his calf.
Carson was backing up, the shotgun now pointed at Noble; staring at him like he’d never seen him before. Lavender recognised the glassy look in Carson’s eyes.
“Oh dear God no, not now!” she moaned, “Carson, shoot him!”
From the direction of the house, where the pile of junk lay stacked against the wall, another figure loomed into view. This one was much taller and more intimidating than a zombie.
“A fucking Thinker!” Lavender half-sobbed, “Carson, you have to shoot him! Do it now! There’s a Thinker coming!”
She realised she had nothing to hand at all. When Carson had snatched away the shotgun he had kept the knife. There was no sign of it about him. She backed up, tugging Carson with her. He didn’t resist, keeping the gun trained on Noble, who had begun to advance with the chain.
The Thinker stopped, turned to look their way, paused in that odd fashion that Lavender had come to know and dread, the one that signalled they were weighing up options. Then it attacked.
It began to head for them with alarming speed. Noble had raised the chain high and slammed it down hard, narrowly missing the tip of the shotgun. Carson still hadn’t fired.
“Carson for God’s sake, fire! Run! Do so
mething!” Lavender urged, clutching him and pulling him backwards at an infuriatingly slow and stumbling pace, “He’s going to kill us. Shoot him!”
The Thinker was almost upon them. Noble paid it no heed, winding the chain around his wrist and stepping forward boldly. He flashed his hand out to send a length of chain spiralling outward. It fell heavily, landing on Carson’s toe. He let out a small yelp. Gratified that it had brought him back to his senses, Lavender tried again.
“Carson, shoot!”
But it was too late. Noble was close enough to make one of those heavy lashes hurt, the chain already recoiled around his fist again. The Thinker closed in, towering over the three of them. She closed her eyes, unwilling to see the killing blow, hearing a scream she realised was her own. There was a yell of shocked surprise and she saw Noble drop his fist. The Thinker had Noble in its powerful grip. Lavender watched for only a fraction of a second; long enough to see the creature dig its grotesque nails deep into Noble’s shoulders, tearing his arms from his body as easily as snapping a chicken bone.
She seized Carson by the collar of his shirt and yanked back with all her might, sending them both stumbling and almost falling. They ran, back the way they had earlier come around the side of the milking shed. It took every last fibre of nerve to stop at its end and make sure the coast was clear, when all Lavender wanted to do was run until her lungs collapsed.
She saw two more Thinkers detach themselves from the gory wheel and go to investigate the stench of fresh blood on the air. The awful experience of deliberately rolling in the decomposing mush of other people had proved worth it; they never even glanced at where Lavender and Carson hid.
The space ahead was empty. All they needed to do was run across the yard, around the other side of the house and out through the gate. They would deal with whatever they had to deal with once they were out there.
“Why didn’t you shoot?” Lavender took a second to ask.
Carson looked down at the shotgun in his hands in surprise, “I forgot how,” he said.
With a heavy heart, Lavender reached over to take the weapon from him, “You took it from me because you know I’m a lousy shot, remember?”
“Did I?” Carson said, blinking, “Are you?”
Lavender sighed, “You’ve still got the knife?”
Doubly surprised, Carson could only stare at her helplessly. She reached over to pat his pockets, finding them all empty.
“Never mind,” she said, feeling more and more like a mother talking to a child, “we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got,”
Carson smiled at her. Blinking back tears, Lavender took him by the hand, to lead him across the yard.
*
They made it to the other side safely. Wherever the loose cattle had gone, they were no longer milling around the farmhouse perimeter. They passed the hand cart as they went. Lavender thought of all the things they had salvaged from the coach and the student housing. Precious items, that they could throw into the hand cart and take with them. She was once again covered in filth, in dire need of a wash and fresh clothes. All of those things were in easy reach.
She thought of the other cargo that hand cart had carried; of the infuriating squeaky wheel. Of Mayhew, strapped to another wheel, by the very man whose hands had pushed that cart.
“Come on,” she said firmly, “Let’s go,”
She turned her back on the farmhouse, heading through the gate and into the lane beyond. Before them lay wide open country; grassier, greener, plusher than she could ever remember seeing it before, back when the world was right. The number of buildings were fewer, the spaces between them greater. That was okay by her. Maybe they could find a place by a river, where they could wash and draw water. With any luck, there were still plants growing on some other farm that could be harvested, even if they had gone a little to seed or begun to mould in the ground; she found she was a good deal less fussy than she used to be. They could eat berries and nuts, catch rabbits, hare, they could fish.
Maybe there were other people out there, but she found she no longer cared. All she wanted was somewhere she could keep Carson safe. Where she could help him have more good days than bad. Above all, where she could keep him from wandering.
They ran at first, until they were too breathless; until the farm had fallen into the distance behind them. The day was cooling, the sun beginning to go down. That was okay; they could spend a night or two huddled in a hedgerow, keeping one another warm.
They slowed to a walk, Lavender slipping a hand into Carson’s, unsure if she was offering him reassurance, or asking for it. They went on in silence. As they walked, Lavender allowed herself the beginning of a new hope. Only a miniscule one, barely more than a grain, but these days, you take what you can get.
Those Thinkers in the yard, the ones that had deteriorated, their flesh falling from them, their eyes loose in their sockets or missing completely. They were a new kind of Thinker to Lavender. Or a new version of them. They had begun to decompose.
That in itself was hope, of sorts. It was impossible to tell how many Thinkers were still out there, impossible to gauge how many living, breathing human beings were being turned into them with a bite. And that was another thing.
“It didn’t bite Noble. It just ripped him apart,” she said contemplatively.
Carson looked at her in surprise.
“Don’t worry,” she smiled, “just thinking out loud. Ironic, when you come to think about it. After all his efforts and his crazy theories,” she shrugged, “Maybe he was right; maybe he just wasn’t ‘Thinker material,’”
She laughed softly. They had left the path and were making their way across a grassy field. Lavender was relishing the feel of soft earth beneath her tired and aching feet. She longed suddenly to simply lie in it. To let it cool her; to feel it tickle her skin, to let tiny, harmless insects wander her body.
She did just that. Coming to a sudden halt, she kicked off her shoes and lay down in the grass, pulling Carson down beside her. He was unresisting, even when she lifted his arm to rest her head upon his chest.
The sunset was a soft yellow line on the horizon, the sun a mellow disc in the sky. They watched it go down together. Watched as the few scattered clouds gave way to dusk, the first peppering of stars appearing in the sky. Lavender felt safer than she had in the longest time, hidden from the overgrown lane by the long grass. Her eyes were growing heavy, her breathing becoming regular, when Carson suddenly sat up.
He looked down at her, a smile of pleased recognition on his face,
“I know you!” he said, self-satisfied and happy, “You’re Lavender Gin!”
She laughed and reached up to kiss him.
“I am indeed,” she smiled, “I am indeed,”
**
Also by S P Oldham on Kindle:
Sleep, Think, Die – The Zombie Apocalypse: When A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing
(Prequel to The Undertaking)
Wakeful Children: A Collection of Horror and Supernatural Tales.
Hag’s Breath: A Collection of Witchcraft and Wickedness.
S P Oldham is an independent author. As such, she is always supremely grateful to readers who go to the time and trouble to review her work. If you have found anything of merit in this, or any other, of her books then please leave an honest review on Amazon. She thanks you most sincerely in advance!
http://solostinwords.doodlekit.com/home/index So Lost in Words – Official Website of S P Oldham
https://www.facebook.com/solostinwords/ S P Oldham on Facebook
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Sleep, Think, Die (Book 2): The Undertaking Page 17