by RR Haywood
Into the night they go. At times their noise is the only sound to be heard bringing false hope that they will be able to find somewhere to hide but then more come and the shotgun fires again that sends the signal flare to the others.
Paco is kept just as busy and with only the machete it means they get closer before he can intervene to kill them. Ones and twos are easy. Three do not pose a problem. He is fast, strong and vicious beyond compare. He is a dangerous monster given to snapping necks with one arm while slashing the machete with the other. Four can be handled but five become a problem. Two charge directly at him, demented at a level just below biting their own flesh. Three more just behind them aiming for the children.
‘ETHER,’ his strangled voice gives the shout, unable to say her name. She snaps the shotgun closed while turning and lifting to aim and shoots one down. A twitch of aim and she fires again killing another one. Three infected left. Two of them attacking Paco with a wild rage that makes them impervious to the wounds of the machete hacking them apart. The last one runs past to charge at the children. Time slows. Heather can see it coming and knows there isn’t time to reload. Paco has already taken one arm off and slashed so deep the innards of the other attacking him fall out but still they bite and rake into him.
‘PACO,’ she screams in warning while running with the shotgun held in two hands but gets slammed back by the power of the infected man who lunges to bite with wild snaps that make her dodge left and right while trying to brace the shotgun against him. She can’t run backwards fast enough and goes down hard, driven into the ground with a whump that drives the wind from her lungs. Stars in her eyes. Her senses overwhelmed. The head comes down to bite. A sensation of another impact. Rajesh lands on the man’s back, wrapping his small arms round the head to try and prise it back. She screams for him to get back but forming words in the midst of such a thing isn’t possible. An arm lashes out knocking Rajesh off to send him flying across the ground. Heather rallies, bucking and writhing to get the shotgun up. She gets the barrel into his mouth like a stick for him to bite. She heaves and pushes, forcing his head back as he bites on the metal so hard his teeth fall from his mouth. Her knees start cycling, slamming into his groin and arse then he’s gone. Ripped back one handed by a man who shows what pure rage is for the temerity to touch that which he loves the most. The man flies up high with a surge of strength pulsing through Paco. Down into the ground, bones breaking. Paco stamps hard. Snapping the neck. His hands comes down, grips Heather’s top and lifts her bodily up onto her feet. She rises stunned and frozen, her eyes wide at the look on his face. Another comes in from behind. Paco pivots from the waist, slamming his elbow into a throat that gets crushed and broken. The thing drops, trying to suck air that can no longer be drawn. He strides off to pick Rajesh up and back onto his feet.
‘Run,’ the broken voice comes but the word is clear.
They run. They go on shaky legs tight together. Subi handing the shells to Heather who fires into the night while Paco gets faster, stronger, angrier. He shreds them with ease. The weapon becomes an extension to his body. He swings that blade with power behind it that forces it through bone and sinew.
Heather covers the front while they blunder through lanes, roads and footpaths. At times the canopy of the trees blocks the moonlight plunging them into near on pitch darkness. They hold hands and keep going. Never staying still other than to fight out of a melee and then only long enough for the last body to fall. The case of shells in Subi’s hands grows lighter as the valuable rounds are expended time and again. Break the shotgun, load, snap closed, fire once, fire twice and on it goes, unceasing, unrelenting. Mouths become dry, throats parched, legs so heavy the children trip and fall continuously. Heather’s eyes become sore from straining to see in the darkness. She starts second guessing herself and fires at a signpost that ricochets the pellets with loud metallic pings.
That small group claw their way through a twisting nightmare of a night where everything is sent against them. Headaches bloom in the back of skulls from dehydration. Eyes become dry but still they go. Still the shotgun fires and still Paco lifts to slam bodies and break necks.
There is no concept of time or direction. There is no concept of anything other than absolute hell. Ollie goes down, simply unable to keep walking. His mind shuts off and he slumps unconscious. Heather grabs his arms and heaves him up onto her back.
‘Hold on,’ she hisses at him, trying to get his arms to wrap round her shoulder but he stays limp. She tries shouting but the effect of her voice was lost hours ago. She eases him down, turns and hefts him across one shoulder then rises to keep going. Within a few minutes pain blossoms in her side from having to walk leaning over. She grits her teeth, snarling through the agony that grows.
Paco’s voice. They come to a sudden stop. She drops to one knee to breathe and ease the pain while lifting the shotgun ready to aim and fire. Noises behind. Hissing breaths that come closer and closer as they charge faster and harder. The machete’s blade loses the edge and becomes a thing to bludgeon and break bones with instead of being used to cut and slice.
‘Run…’
Up she goes, growling with the effort of carrying Ollie. Movement ahead. She fires from the waist trying to brace and absorb the recoil in her own body to negate the boy being thrown from her shoulder.
She breaks the shotgun but can’t hold the boy and get the shells out at the same time. ‘Subi…’ the girl gets the cartridges out, puts new ones in and helps close the weapon. Tommy comes forward, reaching up to hold his brother on Heather’s shoulder while she fires.
‘Raj, help Tommy,’ Subi says, her voice lost in the boom of the shotgun. Raj and Christian cluster to Heathers side with small hands reaching to keep the boy in place.
‘Shells,’ Heather grunts the word, breaking the shotgun with Subi’s help to eject and reload.
‘Ether…’
A glance back. Several running in towards Paco already fending two off.
‘Done,’ Subi says, ducking as Heather swings the barrel over her head to aim down the lane. The two boys rotate round with her movement. Tommy holding his brothers legs, Raj holding his arms. Heather plucks the first trigger and watches as several are blasted back.
‘Front,’ Subi says.
Heather turns, the boys going with her. She fires the second barrel into the woman charging at them.
‘Run,’ Paco’s broken voice urging them on. They start going forward again, clustered together. Silence comes. This will never end. They will run out of shotgun cartridges. The machete will break. They’ll be engulfed from the front and back at the same time. Determination exerts stronger than the fear trying to rise in Heather’s gut.
The children cannot keep going. Days of being cooped up hiding in houses and then made to walk for miles in search of a place that gave hope for the security of living in safety. Constant fear, sustained peril. Families killed. Walking all day in heat that sucks the moisture from their bodies. It cannot be sustained but sustain they must. Heather refuses to give in. Her mind narrows to a pinprick of focus to do this one thing. To keep moving and keep the children alive. To keep going when every bone in your body is begging you to stop. To fortify against the exhaustion, to hold nerve and withstand the pain. Paco is vicious but Heather is ruthless. Emotion evaporates. This will be done. They will prevail. The inner core running through her soul refuses any other option. So she loads, fires and loads again. She carries Ollie over her shoulder and feels Amna’s hand clinging to the material of her trousers. She listens to Paco and turns when he needs help then keeps going to keep moving to claw their way out of this mess. The night cannot last. The sun will rise. Whether it will bring any refuge is another matter but it’s all she can hope for now. Hope for the sun to rise and hope for something to give that breaks this situation.
Rajesh goes next. Staggering almost drunk from fatigue. He tries to keep going but his body is small and the lack of nutrition from the long days in the supermarket hav
e made his body weak. Heather doesn’t falter. She doesn’t speak but drops to get him across her other shoulder and rises once again to plough on. The pain in her sides and back is indescribable. Muscles cramping from lack of water and the pressure of the two children bearing down. She fires from the waist, leaning ever so slightly forward to stop the children sliding down her back. Tommy and Christian doing what they can to help. Amna still clinging to her pocket. Subi breaking the gun to load and pass it back and all the time Paco walks behind them taking punishment from a never ending onslaught of infected charging at him.
He bleeds from his arms. He bleeds from his shoulders. His t shirt hangs in rags from being torn and raked by jagged finger nails. His face slashed with a myriad of cuts and bites. His thighs ooze blood but he clots fast. The mutated cells within his form still work to keep his body in the true state of being but his mind works freer with every passing hour. Memories, emotions, knowledge, fact, concepts, understanding all surge back in. Some ebb away leaving a trace of a thing that still cannot be fully grasped but others linger to fill the void that has become his mind. He remembers being on set filming. He remembers his trailer and the women that would come willingly to be used and forgotten. He remembers the constant physical training to keep his body honed and perfect. He never drank alcohol. He never smoked or used drugs. He ate healthy organic foods. He led a paradoxical life of debauched narcissism coupled with purity of living that would shame monks and he was trained to fight too. For the realism of it to be captured by the camera. The close quarters fight scenes that so many actors fudged with angles and tricks were done properly by Paco. He insisted on it.
He darts out to wrap an arm round the neck of a woman that bites into his forearm as he lifts her from her feet to dangle and kick at his legs. The machete drives down into a skull sending shards of bones down into the brain. A grunt, a tense of his arm and he snaps the woman’s neck to let her drop dead and broken and back he goes. Pacing with the children and Heather firing the shotgun from the front.
He remembers when the world fell. He was on set filming a zombie movie and thought it was a joke. It wasn’t a joke. It was real and for all his size, strength and ability to fight he became frozen with fear and ran to hide. He spent days cowering, using the courage of others to stay alive. A dog found him. The dog he saw in the square. She kept him alive. He stood by her when they came. He remembers it. He remembers the pain in his gut from being bitten by them then nothing else but a patchwork series of flashes that strobe through his mind. Those memories stay for longer and longer before ebbing away. Now he doesn’t know what he is. He isn’t what he was before but he isn’t one of them either.
Despite the mutated cells giving him greater energy and strength even he cannot sustain such an expenditure of energy without there being a pay-off and the first hints of fatigue start to show. He counters with increased focus and wills his body to work without knowing he is doing it but the speed slackens, the blows lose the overwhelming power he had before. He doesn’t falter but the slowdown begins.
The darkest hour is just before the dawn. When the night seems to cling to an ethereal blanket of shadow. When spirits are gone and the will to hold on crumbles away.
All conscious thought vanishes. It hurts to walk. It hurts to lift the shotgun. It hurts to carry the children but those things she does because to not do them is unthinkable. Without hope, without reprieve, without mercy and without there ever being an end she walks them on. Christian clings to her waistband, stumbling half asleep on his feet. Tommy reels side to side. Subi fights the urge to just stop and fall. Paco grunts louder to slay them as they come.
They are beaten. Down to four shells in the case now. There is nothing left to give. She has tried. She knows this. She has done what she can and has left the trail of broken bodies in their wake as proof of the effort to honour the vow.
She breaks the gun and even that costs energy that she no longer has. Trembling fingers claw the used shells out. Her voice whispers, not a woman, not a person but a growling sound of dryness and pain. ‘Subi…shells…’ the girl blinks awake from nearly falling unconscious while she walks. Her fingers scrabble at the empty slots in the case. She can’t focus or feel properly. Heather reaches out, guiding Subi to find them. Two more get slid into the barrel and with a flick of her arm the gun is snapped closed. Four shots left. Not even enough to kill themselves with. She tries to swallow but has nothing to swallow with. The image of Becky in the street holding the meat cleaver swims into her mind. She rallies with a tiny surge of energy that helps lift the gun to her waist and make ready for whatever comes next.
Shapes change in the view ahead. Mirages that come and go. Signposts become people again. Trees seem alive. The hedgerow moves in to suffocate them, the ground undulates as though writhing underfoot. Purple colours bloom from staring so hard. She stumbles, regains her feet and goes on. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. Two children on her shoulders. More clinging to her clothes. Subi veers into her, nearly asleep again. She turns as though in treacle to look back and see Paco torn and broken still holding the rear. In that glance she can see his strength is waning.
They come again. They come from the front and from behind as though sensing the night is almost gone and these hosts must be taken before the dawn comes. She hears the feet pounding the road and even before sight of them is gained she knows this is it. The last stand. The one that will get them. She tilts her head to discern the sounds coming from both directions. The hedges are too thick and high to get through. They are trapped to die here in this lane. She glances up seeing the edge of the sky starting to lift. Dawn is almost here. They almost made it to a new day. She would cry but there is nothing left to cry with. She’d scream at the unfairness of it. She’d beg for the children to go free and for them to take her and Paco but she doesn’t. She lowers down to one knee and rests the shotgun on the floor to reach up and gently lower first Oliver then Rajesh down into the base of the hedge. She stretches out, drawing Amna, Tommy, Christian and Subi in close, pulling them into a wordless embrace. When she lets go it’s as if they know and they sink down to rest exhausted and beaten. Only Subi stays on her feet. Subi with her large eyes and jet black hair plastered to her face. Heather cups the girl’s face and smiles. ‘It’s okay,’ her voice is low and hoarse. Subi nods. Tears prick her eyes. Heather leans in to kiss the girl’s forehead. ‘It’s okay,’ she says again. ‘It’ll be quick, I promise…stay with your brother and sister…’
‘Will,’ Subi chokes the word out.
‘…if you see a gap you take it….hear me? Good girl…’ She kisses her again then takes the last two shells from the case before rising to her feet with the shotgun grasped firm and ready. She moves out, lifts and aims down the lane to the coming horde that she can hear but can’t see. She fires once, fires twice and breaks the gun for the last time. The used shells are dropped to clatter on the road. The last two are loaded. She turns to face the other way, lifts, aims and fires once, fires twice and lowers the gun.
This is it. No more shells. No more time. No place to run and even if there was the children wouldn’t make it. A sensation at her side. She looks up into his face and feels the shotgun taken from her hands to be held by the end of the barrel in his bloodied grip. He offers the machete. She takes it without words. Feeling the warmth of the handle from his hand that’s sticky with blood. Blood everywhere. Blood on the floor. There will be more too. By God she will make this lane run with it before they get their filthy hands on those children. She’ll hurt them. She’ll punish them for what they’ve done. Now she sees it. Now she understands why that army truck goes on and always on and never stops to see what comes after the battle. It’s because of this feeling to fight back. To hurt them. To punish them and kill and slaughter for what they’ve done. Sense comes where there was none before. An understanding of the need to fight back, and she will, she broke one vow but not for lack of trying and if she stands before God in judgement she’ll spit in His eye
for what he’s done then walk willingly into the fires of hell.
The pulsing rage she felt watching them fight in the square comes back. Her body stiffens with raw energy flowing into her limbs. Her head lifts, eyes glaring and seeing the folly of the world and all the badness within it while knowing there is goodness too. Her life was lived in fear of people and being hurt but redemption has come from a man that can’t speak and suddenly she has to know. She has to know right now before they die. To know this and nothing else then meet that death with the knowledge gained of a thing that has healed them both.
She turns without hesitation, pushing into his body with a hand reaching up to grip his neck and pull him down so her lips can find his. She kisses him there in the early dawn of a lane that will run with blood from the hordes coming from both sides. She kisses him for staying with her, for never judging her, for giving her peace when she never felt it before. She pushes into his lips to feel what it’s like to kiss him and because this is all she has thought about for days. She does it because she has to know right now if his love is that of a puppy or a man.
At that second the greatest fear forms that he will not kiss her back. That he will be kissed and remain cold and emotionless. That fear grows and becomes a real thing as he remains inert and not a man. Her body freezes, her lips become still and she knows in that heartbeat she was wrong. He is not what she thought. He is a puppy that becomes a guard dog but nothing more. Her eyes close in rejection of belief and faith in goodness and dreams and a self-hatred of humiliation at being wrong. Her heart breaks to fall and shatter in a thousand pieces. She pulls away to take her lips from his, to withdraw and accept what comes. She pulls away to accept the consequences of her actions now knowing he is not what she hoped he was. Instant shame grows. The shame of rejection and of believing in something that was never what she believed it could be. No matter. The belief in the dream was worth it. It gave hope where there was none. It gave light in her darkest of days. For that she is thankful and smiles sadly with her lips pulling from his. She’ll take the coming death without regret simply for having been in a world with this man who covered her with his back and never judged her flaws. She withdraws to face the onslaught to kill what she can before they take her. She drops down and away to hold the machete one last time with a prayer of forgiveness to Becky for the failure of a broken vow.