The End of Everything | Book 9 | The End of Everything

by Artinian, Christopher

  “Hit the brakes!” Wren cried.

  “What?”

  “Hit the brakes!”

  Emmy jammed her foot down hard on the centre pedal. The tyres squealed, and the creature disappeared from the bonnet as if it was being pulled by a bungee cord. It was still flying as the van came to a screeching stop. Eventually, the beast landed on the tarmac and backward rolled before coming to a stop face down on the road.

  For a moment, Emmy remained frozen, her eyes fixed on the monster as it lay still. Then, as it slowly began to gather itself, she shoved her foot down hard on the clutch, engaged first gear, and the van began to move once more, gradually picking up speed as it went. The creature struggled to its feet, but one of its legs jutted out below the knee, and its head virtually rested on its shoulder. It could no longer run but staggered like an extra plucked out of a sixties zombie movie. It opened its mouth, but now it seemed more pathetic than fearsome as Emmy changed up another gear. The thud was nowhere near as loud as they collided with it this time, and as it spun onto the verge, she didn’t really care if it would get up. She saw its shadowy figure flail in the wing mirror, and she knew it would never bother them again.

  “Emmy five, zombies zero,” Wren said with a smile.

  Emmy glanced across at her. She could feel her heart still pounding wildly in her chest. She could feel the sweat pooling at the base of her back, but the terror had dissipated a little. Yes, these things were horrifying monsters that had virtually wiped out mankind, but they could be killed. Holy shit! I did it. She let out a little laugh. “I can’t believe I did it,” she said as they took the next bend.

  “I didn’t doubt it for a second,” Wren replied.

  Another two beasts came running towards the van, and Emmy dispatched them in a similar fashion. She slowed down again as they approached the school and took the corner carefully, fully expecting to see a pack of creatures running towards them as they entered the grounds, but there was nothing. She drove the van around to the side of the building and came to a stop at the back of its sister vehicle.

  “Okay, what now?” Emmy asked.

  “I’ll guard one side. Wren will take the other, and you get the stuff. Make sure you keep the engine running just in case.”

  “Yeah, and while we’re here, it probably makes sense to siphon whatever’s left. Somehow, I think every drop is going to count,” Wren added.

  Emmy pulled on the handbrake and took a deep breath before climbing out. The others exited the vehicle, and Wren, Wolf and Robyn stood guard while Emmy got to work. She had collected the oil, the diesel, and a length of green hosepipe and was about to begin siphoning the fuel from the other vehicle’s tank when an ominous growl rose from the back of Wolf’s throat.

  “Oh Crap!” Wren said.

  “What is it?” Robyn called across to her.

  “I don’t know. I can’t see anything, but obviously Wolf can.”

  Wren clicked her torch on. It was not that strong, but she could make out movement on the fringe of the beam. “Bobbi, I’ve got four at least,” she said, not even considering the Glock in her pack, instead withdrawing the two halves of the spear.

  “Okay,” Robyn said, running across to join her and placing her more powerful torch down on the ground, shining it in the direction of the advancing creatures. “Shit! This is no good. This is why we don’t come out at night.”

  “You got the soldiers at the camp,” Wren said.

  “Yeah. The soldiers at the camp were lit by a big fire. I can’t get a target here.”

  “Oh crap. What do we do?”

  Suddenly, they heard heavy footsteps behind them, and a second later, a stronger torch beam was pointing in the direction of the attacking pack. They quickly turned to see Emmy, holding a powerful flashlight in one hand and the crowbar in the other. Her hands were clearly shaking as the figures began to emerge out of the darkness, but she stood her ground as the sounds of the creatures, and Wolf’s growls, became louder and louder.

  The strong flashlight made all the difference and Robyn released her bowstring. The lead creature flew backwards, colliding with the second. Robyn quickly grabbed another arrow and fired again, then again.

  There were only two beasts remaining now, the one that the first had hindered by its collapse and the one looming towards the three of them like some giant shadow beast. Wolf launched, his sizable paws smashing into the chest of the nearest monster, causing its feet to go flying out in front of it. It landed heavily on its coccyx before its head smashed back on the ground, and Wolf went skidding away, not able to sink either teeth or claws into the creature’s ample frame. Wren darted forward, thrusting down the sharp end of the spearhead, missing the beast’s eye and gouging a chunk from its cheek, which even in the light cast by the torch she could see was eerily grey.

  The thing reached out for her leg as it tried to gather itself. It wrapped its banana-like fingers around her boot. “Crap!” she screamed as she brought her improvised truncheon up high before swinging it back down like a hammer. It crunched against the bridge of the creature’s nose, causing its head to jounce off the tarmac once more.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Robyn hesitated for a moment as she nocked another arrow. Her sister was in trouble, but if she didn’t take out the other charging beast, they could all be in trouble. Damn it! The missile launched, and she instantly grabbed another, placing it against the nocking point and bringing the sight window back up to her eye. Her sister had shifted position in her attempt to escape the grasp of the malevolent creature as it closed its second hand around her shin. The advancing monster collapsed to the ground skidding across the tarmac as Robyn tried to get Wren’s attacker in her sights. “I don’t have a shot!” she cried out as her sister continued her battle.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Wren could hear Wolf’s angry growls as he tore back towards them. The creature’s fingers tightened around her like a vice, and she knew there was only one way to finish this. “Aarrgghh!” She brought the sharp end of the spear up to her shoulder once more then plunged it down, using her full body weight. This time, the point disappeared through the beast’s right eye and the tightness of its grasp instantly eased. She remained there on her knees, her fist still clenched around the shaft of the weapon. Recognising the danger was now over, Wolf slowed before walking around to join her and sitting down. His tongue lolled out of his mouth as he panted, and she released her baton and placed a hand on his back.

  Robyn and Emmy walked up to join the two of them. “This is why we had that hard and fast rule never to be broken about heading out at night,” Robyn said.

  “Yeah, I remember now,” Wren replied, slowly climbing to her feet. She picked up the baton, placed it in her rucksack, then wiped off the sharp point of her spear before doing the same. The torch beam travelled in a full circle as Emmy checked to make sure there were no other beasts lurking in the blackness.

  “I genuinely thought I was going to have a heart attack,” Emmy said in a shaky voice.

  “If you hadn’t have done what you did, I wouldn’t like to guess how that would have ended,” Robyn said as she began to gather up the arrows.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t run, did you? You stayed and helped,” Wren said.

  “Don’t think there was a part of me that wasn’t thinking about it.”

  Wren laughed. “You wouldn’t have.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because I know good people when I meet them.”

  “I don’t know how you two lasted out there for so long.”

  “It was tough. We had a lot of close scrapes. But the more you do something the more you just come to accept it as normal life. When I was living on the outskirts of Inverness by myself, I didn’t go looking for trouble, but it found me often enough. You just learn to deal with it. You fight hard when you need to, and you run when you can. It’s that simple.”

  Em
my shook her head. “I don’t think I could ever be like that.”

  “I bet up until today you never thought you could kill all those infected you did on the way in by yourself either.”

  “I hardly took them out by myself. The van did all the work.”

  “The van was just a means to an end. It was you who made it happen.”

  “You have a very kind way about you, Wren, but I know what I am. I’m an unfit, middle-aged coward who only does something when she’s forced.”

  “Nobody forced you to come with us. Nobody forced you to hold that torch. I think maybe you just need to start believing in yourself a bit more.”

  Emmy reached out and placed a hand on Wren’s shoulder. “Like I said, you’re a sweet girl.”

  “Right then,” Robyn said, walking back up to them and placing the final arrow back in its quiver. “That’s that done.”

  “I was about to start siphoning the fuel when this happened.”

  “Right, well, we’ll keep guard while you get that done. Hopefully, we won’t have an action replay.”

  Robyn, Wren and Wolf kept watch as Emmy coughed and spluttered her way through the siphoning of the diesel. It was less than a minute before she placed the freshly filled jerrican into the back of their van. “There was less in the tank than I thought. God, I wish I had some mints.”

  Wren reached into her rucksack and pulled out a tin of Pepsi. “Not exactly mints, but it might get the taste out of your mouth.”

  “Thanks,” Emmy said, opening it and glugging back the contents. “I suppose we’d better head back.”

  “Yeah,” Wren replied.

  They all climbed into the van and set off once again. As Emmy turned the wheel, the lights shone over the corpses of the creatures Wren and Robyn had killed. Emmy manoeuvred the van back through the car park and onto the road. They had only travelled for a few seconds before she brought the vehicle to a stop once more.

  In the middle of the road up ahead was one of the creatures that had been consigned to the hedges. Its battered and broken body dragged behind it as it clawed its way across the tarmac towards the vehicle. Even in its decrepit and hopeless state, it lost none of its drive to seek out fresh human flesh. As the lights shone towards it, Emmy, Robyn and Wren could see the malevolent snarl as it bared its teeth. It opened its mouth wide, and its sickening dark grey tongue made a brief appearance before being sucked back into its head.

  “What are you waiting for?” Robyn said. “Just drive.”

  Emmy pulled on the handbrake. “No,” she replied, reaching under her seat for the crowbar. She opened the door and jumped down, slamming it shut behind her.

  “What the hell is she doing?” Robyn asked.

  “Give her a minute.”

  “What for? She’s obviously lost it.” Robyn started reaching for the door, but Wren stopped her.

  “Wait.”

  “It’s not like we’ve got a lot of time here, Sis.”

  “I know. Just a second.”

  They both watched as Emmy walked slowly towards the creature. She moved her wrist around, getting used to the weight of the object in her hand, and then halted a couple of feet short of the hideous ghoul.

  “What the hell is she doing?”

  “She’s proving something to herself.”

  “Oh God. I should have known you’d have done some kind of Sidmund Fraud stuff on her head. It’s always a mistake to leave you alone with anyone for five minutes.”

  “One, it’s Sigmund Freud. Two, you were the one who was quoting Henry Ford to her, and, three, she needs to do this.”

  “I wasn’t quoting Henry Ford. The only Ford I know is the one who makes cars.”

  “Oh God. That is Henry Ford.”

  “Well, tell me this, brainiac, how the hell can I quote someone if I’ve never heard them speak?”

  “Whether you can or you can’t, you’re right. That’s what you said to her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That was Henry Ford.”

  “You said that to me. I thought you’d made it up.”

  “I’ve warned you about thinking.”

  The pair of them refocussed their attention towards Emmy, who was now backing away from the advancing creature.

  “Well, looks like your talk did no end of good. She’s obviously a changed wom—”

  Emmy brought the crowbar down like a sledgehammer, making direct contact with the centre of the creature’s head. It collapsed face down, and there was a momentary pause before it began to gather itself. Its movements were even slower now as it brought its eyes up to look at her. She had never been in such close proximity to one of these beasts, not a moving one anyway. Its pupils were merely pinpricks in the glare of the full beam, and as it curled its lips once more, a shiver ran down her spine. It’s like it’s smiling at me. She brought her weapon down again, and again, and again. The beast fell still, and she could see something shiny and black in its once blonde hair.

  Its fingers twitched, and Emmy unleashed another vicious blow, then another. Each strike made her confidence grow a little more. She had feared that there was more to these things than just flesh and blood. She had wondered if there was something demonic about them, whether they had been sent by Satan himself. But as she stood over it and marvelled at how the blood looked so black in the van’s lights, she realised that they could be killed like anything else.

  She looked down at her hand to see it was still shaking. There were butterflies in her stomach and a thin sheen of sweat over her body, despite the chill of the night. But regardless of all of that, Emmy felt an air of exhilaration. She had done something that she didn’t think she could up until that moment. She wiped the crowbar off on the beast’s jeans then dropped it, causing it to ring loudly against the hard tarmac surface. She took hold of the creature’s feet and dragged its putrid, cold corpse to the side of the road then rolled it into a ditch before going back to collect her weapon.

  She slowly walked back to the vehicle and was about to climb in but, instead, rushed across to the verge and threw up. She stayed there a moment with stinging tears in her eyes and thin strands of saliva hanging from her lips. Eventually, she wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve and climbed back into the van.

  “Are you okay, Emmy?” Wren asked as she glimpsed the older woman’s trembling hands.

  Emmy placed her fingers around the steering wheel and held it tightly. “No, but I will be.” She sat there a moment longer before releasing the handbrake and driving away.

  CHAPTER 25

  The return journey seemed much shorter than the one to Invernasheen. No one spoke much as they contemplated what lay ahead. On their arrival back to camp, they were greeted warmly by the others, and Emmy gave Chuck and Larry a potted version of the events while everyone else gathered their final few belongings.

  “It’s three twenty-five,” Chuck said, looking at his watch.

  “That’s not going to leave us with much time to get in position,” Wren replied with a worried tone in her voice.

  “Right everyone,” Chuck called out. “This is it. We’re out of here in five. There are two vehicles, but I need everyone to put their kit in the back of our old Luton. Five minutes everybody.” The apprehension and fear circulating the camp edged up a notch as people checked their rucksacks and the rest of their belongings. Nervous chatter flittered, and even Wren, Robyn and Mila, who had been through so much, began to feel a little nervy.

  “Why are you insisting everyone uses the Luton van?” Wren asked

  Mila and Chuck looked towards each other before Mila answered. “We had an idea.”

  “Go on.”

  “Rather than banking on being able to immobilise the front vehicle, what if we blocked the road in advance?”

  “But if we do that, they’re going to know it’s a trap straight off the bat,” Wren said.

  “Ja, this is true. But they will not expect what we have in store. They will not know until the last moments, because o
f the way the road weaves, and once the first vehicle has come to a stop we can render it useless, along with the rear one, and it will give us more time to attack the ones in between, no?”

  Wren and Robyn looked down at the map. “It’s a big risk,” Wren said.

  “What happens if they ram it?” Robyn asked. “I mean what if they have lorries like the one you got trapped in at Inverness? They could barge through it.”

  It was Chuck who took over. “Yeah, well, chances are, they won’t have their slowest moving vehicles at the front, but we’re not just planning on parking the minibus crossways and leaving it.”

  “Okay, so what are you planning to do?”

  “Take the wheels off for a start. Load it with stones, rocks, whatever we can, so if they risk driving into it, it will be like hitting the Great Wall of China head-on. We’ll fill the gaps too. The road isn’t wide at this point and there are sheer cliffs on either side. Then we’re going to light it up.”

  Wren raised an eyebrow. “Actually, that’s a pretty good idea.”

  “I do have them occasionally,” Chuck said with a smile, “but the seed of it came from Mila, so I can’t take full credit. It’s going to be tight though. We don’t have long, and we’ll be doing most of the work in the dark.”

  “Looking on the bright side,” Robyn mumbled.

  “Right, let’s get this show on the road,” Chuck said. “Emmy, I want you to take the Luton and head to this car park,” he said, pointing to the map. “Then come down to join us on foot.”

  “Err … okay.”

  “You don’t sound too sure,” Wren said.

  “Well, it’s just there could be anything lurking in those woods.” She looked around the camp. A few of the men and women had rifles shouldered, as did Mila. “I know we’ve got weapons now, but if push came to shove how well would we deal with a horde?”

  “You seemed to handle yourself pretty well earlier on,” Wren said.

  “Yeah, with one creature that couldn’t even walk. What if there was a pack like the one that attacked us in the school grounds?”