I looked up to see Jane and Emma already at the top.
Going on all fours, aware that I had a knife in one pocket and the hammer in the other, I made the climb slowly. Once I reached the girls, I stood up straight and could feel my legs wobble and my head spin. I had a foot on either side of the spine and we all agreed that shuffling along the roof, keeping each foot on either side of the spine, was the safest way to reach the end of the terrace.
There were eight houses in each terrace. Mine was at the end, so, including my own, we had eight roofs to walk over. Then once we got to the end, it was time to slide down the drainpipe, where we would reach the ground.
We could see the view of the street from where we were standing. It looked like Emma’s plan could work. The left part of the street was awash with the dead. But eight houses down, from where we were, the street was empty.
“As soon as we slide down at the end,” Emma said softly, “we'll go onto the main road and make a run for it, if it's still empty.”
I looked around and found the view a beautiful sight to behold, despite knowing that the dead were below me, in their many numbers.
We began to shuffle our feet and the journey to the end of the terrace was a long one, but I loved the feeling of the wind that blew in my face every now and again. The small journey was a sweaty affair and any kind of breeze felt fantastic.
Jane was in front, Emma was in the middle, and I was behind the pair of them.
I think Emma wanted Jane in front of her in case Jane slipped. At least then it would give Emma a chance to grab her. We reached the end, finally, and got there with no problems. Jane had cried a little on the way there, but apart from that … we did okay.
I never once cried during my journey along the roof, despite seeing the remains of my family not long ago. I didn't know why. Maybe I was in shock. I certainly broke down many times after this escape I'm telling you about. I can tell you that for nothing.
“The rest of the street is empty.” Emma nodded to her left.
I had a look. She was right. It was clear.
She then told Jane to get behind her. She then looked down and could see a rose bush at the side of the house. She took her bag off and dangled it over the edge. She could see me looking and said to me, “Trust me.”
She dropped the bag into the bush, and then told me to do the same. Now we could make the slide down the drainpipe with no weight on our backs. This time Emma insisted on going down first. She began to climb down, and I peered over and could see that she was now on the ground. She looked up and said, “Jane next.”
“I can’t do it. I’m too scared,” cried Jane.
She turned around and looked at me with her frightened eyes and I could see how glassy they were. My heart went out to the fourteen-year-old, but my impatience was growing because of her hesitancy. I couldn't help myself.
I said to the girl, “You need to. Or we'll be stuck up here and we'll die.” I was blunt and losing patience. “If they don't kill us, then starvation and dehydration will.”
“Come with me,” she cried.
“No. One at a time. We don't know how secure the brackets are on the drainpipe and how it'll take our weight. I'm the heaviest out of the three, so if it does go, then at least you girls will be unscathed.”
“Come on, Jane,” Emma called from underneath. “Hurry up. What’s the hold up?”
I looked at Jane and imagined if that was Poppy, my little girl, that was frightened.
It wasn’t the best of timings, but my eyes began to fill up as the scenes of the inside of the Mazda, our once-family car, projected in my mind.
“Go,” I sobbed. “Hurry.”
Jane bravely got onto her belly and swung her legs over the side of the house. She slowly lowered herself and grabbed the drainpipe, with me holding onto her shoulders for support. I let go and it was time for her descent. She never fell, she never whimpered. In fact, she did quite well.
Once both girls were on the ground, I checked my pockets and could still feel the knife and hammer in each one.
I never hesitated at all and made my way down, the knife pricking me every time I moved my left leg.
Emma already had the bags out of the rose bush and passed me one. Now, with Emma and I with a rucksack on our backs, it was time to move.
“Where to?” I asked her.
“Any street that's quiet. We need out of here.”
We crept down the path and went by the house and onto the front garden. Then Emma and myself peered round the corner of the end terraced house and looked to the left where the dead were in their droves. Eight houses down was my own property. The amount of creatures on my drive and around the property of my house and neighbour's houses was ridiculous, and the numbers were growing.
To the right of my street was clear, for now, and that's the way we were going.
The only trouble was that once we reached the bottom of the street, we didn't know whether to turn left or right, and we also didn't know what was around each corner.
“Ready?” Emma took a hold of Jane’s hand and began to run out onto the street, with me following behind. Already my legs felt heavy with the weight of the rucksack on my back, but I was determined and was certain that this run of ours was going to be a short affair.
Before we reached the bottom of the street, I glanced over my shoulder and was relieved that our presence had hardly been noticed by the massive horde by my house. Only a few had decided to turn and head our way, to possibly the bottom of the street.
“Left or right?” I gasped as we now reached the end.
“It's your street,” Emma panted. “You decide.”
“Right.”
We turned and went down a thankfully barren street called Blackstone, and we continued with our jog, Emma still holding Jane's hand. We managed another twenty yards or so before my body decided that it was too knackered to continue.
“I can’t go on no more,” I puffed and stopped running.
Emma and Jane also stopped. Emma turned, out of breath herself, and asked if I had any friends I could look up. I didn't answer her.
Up ahead, six of the dead appeared from around the corner at the bottom of the street. Six was too many to take, and Emma also believed that because she looked at me and said, “Bollocks to that. Other way.”
We began to run again and passed the top of my street for a second time. We went down Sankey Close and it appeared to be another street that was barren, but this one had evidence of carnage. A crashed car, human remains and the old carcass of a dog could be seen. Death had visited this place. I don't know how long ago, but this street had experienced tragedy.
“Wait.” I was in front of the girls and held my hand up. There was a small group of the dead, nine in all, around a front window of one of the houses on the left. Maybe they had seen movement.
A person? A survivor?
“What do we do?” Jane asked. It was the first time I had heard her speak in a while.
“We can get by them,” I said, nodding with confidence.
“We're gonna have to.” Emma nodded behind her. I looked and could see six of them coming out of my street and coming our way.
So this was the scenario now...
We had nine in front of us and six behind. The trouble with the six that had exited from my street was that I wasn't sure if more were following them. If even half of the crowd that was in my street, and mainly around my house, appeared, it would be a horrific scene to behold.
Emma released Jane's hand, told the youngster to stay close and pulled out her knife. I left my knife in my pocket and grabbed my hammer. I held it with both hands and all three of us went to the other side of the pavement, as far away as possible from the dead, and crept along the pavement, hoping that they wouldn't pursue us. They were slow, so we knew that if they did follow us, we could outrun them, but it was the inconvenience of it all.
We went by them with ease. Our eyes were on them all the time as we passed, but in
hindsight this was a massive mistake.
From behind a privet hedge, on our side of the road, a ghoul appeared out of a drive, from behind the hedge, and grabbed Jane.
I heard a groan, which made me turn away from the dead group, and before I could release a yell of warning, the male creature had already grabbed young Jane. She screamed as it leaned and moved its mouth to the side of her neck and bit her.
It tore out a huge chunk. Jane screamed for a short while whilst the creature chewed on muscle and skin, blood running down its chin. Emma screamed the word no over and over again and seemed to be in shock. She didn’t move for a while.
I stepped forward and brought the hammer down on the skull of the creature, the head of the hammer going straight through the skull and damaging the diseased brain. It took a step forward and grabbed me, the hammer still sticking out of its skull, but it suddenly stopped moving.
I gazed at the creature, staring into its milky dead eyes, and watched it drop to the floor. I didn't retrieve the hammer, for reasons I can't understand now, and took out my knife. I looked to the side of me and saw Emma on her knees, cradling Jane. Her eyes were open, her neck was pouring out blood from her wound, and she wasn't moving or blinking at all.
I was sad for Jane, and felt sorry for Emma who had quickly bonded with the youngster, but I looked up and realised that we needed to go.
I touched Emma on the shoulder. “Come on. We have to go.”
“I can’t leave her like this,” Emma looked up at me with her blue rainy eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. “If we leave her, she'll turn.”
“I can't kill her.” I shook my head and could now see fifteen of the fuckers behind us; the nearest ghoul was only ten yards away. “I don't have it in me. She's fourteen.”
With her right hand, Emma placed the tip of her blade inside Jane's right ear. She was shaking and I was so sure that she was going to do it that I had to turn away. My eyes were scrunched and I heard a sound to suggest that Jane had been taken care of.
“Come on,” Emma said, getting to her feet and put her arm around my shoulder. “Let's try and find somewhere safe as soon as we outrun these DCs.”
With tears in both of our eyes, we tried to jog, despite the weight on our backs, and we were predictably getting further away from these dangerous, yet slow, beings.
We ran gingerly and looked to the side and stared at one another. Emma put her knife into her pocket and held her hand out. I took it, putting my own blade away, and we continued to jog whilst holding hands. Then we heard a sound coming from behind us that made us stop jogging.
We both turned around, to see that the dead were a good distance away, and watched in amazement as a Black Range Rover came roaring behind the dead, making some of them turn their heads.
Emma and I had a quick gape at one another, and then looked forward again to see the vehicle smashing through the dead. After it had gone through the fifteen, leaving six still standing, a shocked Emma and myself remained on the pavement to allow the vehicle to pass, but it began to slow down.
We had no idea who could be in the vehicle. We had no time to hide and nowhere to run, even if we wanted to. We released our hands and put them in our pockets, feeling for our knives as we didn’t know who they were, and whether they were friendly or not.
I gulped and shook with nerves as the jeep pulled up alongside us.
The window of the jeep went down and a man in his late forties poked his head out and gave the pair of us a smile. As soon as this happened, I felt immediately relieved.
“Yer guys look lost,” the man said, slightly slurring his words. His eyes were dark and had stubble on his chin. I looked in his vehicle; he kept the engine running and I could see that he had a passenger next to him. It was a female. She had dark hair and was an attractive thing.
“Where yer headed?” the driver asked.
“We don't know,” I sighed. “My street is full of those things, so we had to leave.”
“There's a girl at the side of the road,” the woman passenger spoke up. “She looks like she's ... fresh.”
“She was with us. She was attacked only minutes ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Do you have a place to stay?” I asked the burly man.
“Aye, we do.” He spoke with a smile and seemed like a nice fellow, obviously a tough one. Six months after the infection announcement, I was sure he had many stories to tell since the breakout in June.
The driver looked myself and Emma up and down and asked us, “Do yer 'ave families, or…?”
Emma lowered her head and I just shook mine, feeling the emotion building up inside me once more. My throat became tight and I didn't have the voice to explain to the driver and passenger that I had only just come across the remains of my entire family.
It hadn't sunk in yet. With everything that was going on, I hadn’t had a minute.
The driver and passenger then had a small discussion with each other, and then the male driver said, “We're just back from an early run, now heading back to our camp.” He then pointed behind him with his thumb. “Yer seem like good people. Not many o' them about. Why don't yer two get yerselves in the back and we can take the wee trip back. It's only a few miles from 'ere.”
Emma and myself could see the remaining dead still shambling towards us, not far away at all.
Emma was the first to open the back passenger door. She got in and I followed her. I shut the door and leaned my head back. I suddenly felt exhausted, closed my eyes and tried to fight back the tears. I opened them and could see the man and woman staring at me.
“Yer okay?” The driver looked at me, using his rear view mirror. I couldn't speak, so Emma spoke for me.
“Not really,” she said.
“Those cocksuckers are getting closer,” the female passenger said to the driver.
He nodded and pulled the vehicle away. He managed to get the jeep up to a steady thirty and said to Emma and I in the back. “Don't worry. Yer guys are safe now.”
“Are we?” Emma didn't seem convinced.
“We went from one place to the next, in the early weeks.” The driver glanced in the mirror and flashed Emma a friendly smile. “But we've been staying in this place for the last four months. It's solid. We have good people in there, and we’re doing quite well, considering the winter’s ‘ere.”
Emma said, “It's been quite mild so far ... for a winter.”
“Aye, but the cold will come. And that may kill more survivors. Yer better off with us, trust me.”
“We do.” I smiled at the man. He seemed genuine, kind.
The driver looked quite muscular, which was a rare thing these days, after six months, and I really felt that Emma and I were in good hands. The man and woman seemed nice, and they looked clean and well kept. No bad odour was coming from their bodies, and they looked to be reasonably healthy and not malnourished and skinny-looking.
I turned to Emma and asked her if she was okay; she turned and shook her head. I knew that she was devastated about Jane, even though we hardly knew the girl.
She asked, “And you?”
I hunched my shoulders, wiping my watery eyes. I knew there were going to be days when I would do nothing but sob my heart out, especially on the nights when I'd be alone with my thoughts, but I managed to keep composure.
Somebody once said to me, at my uncle's funeral, that grief is the price we pay for loving somebody.
“Another mile and we'll be there,” the driver said.
I nodded and thanked them both for what they were doing.
“No problem.” The driver reduced the speed of the vehicle as they approached the bend, and I noticed that he had a finger missing from his left hand. “We could do with a few more people at this camp o' ours, to be perfectly honest. We stayed here back in August, but then we left. We stayed at Stafford Hospital for a while, but ended up coming back here due to … well, I don’t wanna bore yer with the details.”
I asked the dri
ver, “And are you in charge?”
“I am indeed.”
I stared out of the window and could see nothing but fields to either side of me. The Range Rover slowed and reached a double roundabout. It turned left and we went by an abandoned pub. I tried to read what the place was called.
Wolseley Arms.
We went over the hill, passing a garden centre to my right and over the River Trent.
The woman passenger turned to the driver and asked him, “Did they fix that gate, at number twelve?”
“It’s fixed,” the driver replied. “I did it maself, yesterday evening. Cut ma finger fixin' the thing. It was a bit stiff, yer know what I mean?”
I had no idea what they were talking about and chose not to engage. It was nothing to do with me and sounded unimportant anyway.
“Nearly there,” the driver said with a gruff voice. “Another mile or so.”
I turned and smiled at Emma. She smiled back.
I took in a deep breath and leaned my head back. I was exhausted, but I was alive.
For now.
THE END
The Z Word
Abbie’s Song
The zombies are coming, and they’re surrounding your place.
They’ll eat your legs, they’ll eat your arms, they’ll even eat your face.
They’re breaking through the windows. They’re breaking down the door.
The zombies are everywhere, they’ll eat your brains and more.
Introduction
My name is John Pope, and I’m going to try and share with you my personal experiences of the nightmare that has been happening around me. I have no idea what the outcome will be for my country, or the rest of the world, but the only option for me now is to pray to a higher source that I still don’t really believe in.
Am I hypocrite? No. Just desperate.
The Z Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 14