by Craig Jones
“So tell me, how are they different?” he asked when I had done as I was told.
I told him about what I expected to have been the last few seconds of mine and Robbie’s lives.
It only had one shoe, the other foot clad in a blood-stained white sock. It had left a trail of blood behind it. Its jeans were clean. Whatever it had been wearing on top had once been a color other than red, but now it was a deep scarlet. It was matted and clung to the zombie’s body. This thing’s eyes were completely white. A massive tear ran across its neck, and blood trickled steadily from its left ear.
‘Nick?’ I asked, my heart stuttering so hard it was painful.
It was Nick; and this, right here, it was going to be the end for all of us. I was not going to be able to save Robbie, just like I had been unable to save his sisters, his father, or my little brother.
And I told him that, no, it wasn’t me that had saved Robbie. It was that Nick—or rather, zombie Nick—had recognized his son, had remembered me, and had stepped aside and let us pass. And that later, he seemed to be holding back the hungry horde with just his mere presence.
“And you are sure of this?” Rogers asked, matter-of-factly, as if he was making sure I had paid my electricity bill or taxed my car. “You didn’t black out or imagine it all?”
His tone was so even, so lacking in sarcasm, that it was easy not to get angry with him. He was simply ascertaining exactly what was going on out on the streets beyond the safe haven of the stadium. Also, getting angry would have been pointless. The guy was built like a pit bull. His eyes were narrow slits as he stared me, awaiting my reply.
“That’s precisely as it happened, sir,” I said, trying my best to show deference.
“Good. Then the intelligence we are receiving from our people has not been compromised.”
“You’re in contact with the outside world?”
His index finger played along the length of his scar. “I wouldn’t go that far. Mobile phones and the internet have finally failed. But we have basic old-fashioned radio links up and running with other units such as ourselves. Not many, but a few. It seems that, this time, the rest of Europe is leaving us to it.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“To escape? No. That would be foolish.” He gave me a withering stare. “My orders are to protect the civilian population first and foremost. Taking on those creatures is not an option. Unless we have to. Unless they force our hand.”
He paused, touched his scar once more. “That’s where you can help. You’ve seen these things up close. You’ve seen how they behave. We are going to run out of food at some point and I don’t want that to happen. So my troops are going to edge out, build a cordon, and scavenge what we can. I have a good sniper, but what I need for him is another set of eyes while my ground troops do their job. I’m short of men and I’m telling you that you’re going to be that help.”
I nodded my agreement. “I can do that,” I said, thinking of how it would allow me some respite from my guilt.
“You have to understand one thing,” Rogers continued. “If we see your friend? The boy’s father? We will shoot him. This is not going to be some personal crusade for you, trying to save him because you may or may not have seen some of the humanity still inside him. Are we clear?”
“One hundred per cent,” I said. If only he knew how deeply I had learned my lesson.
“There’s one more thing,” he began, and before I had chance to react, he grabbed me by the collar and swung me out over the pitch below. Only the back of my knees hooked over the railings stopped me from falling as he held onto me with one massively muscular arm. I could hear the fabric of my clothes straining to hold themselves together. I couldn’t breathe.
“You pull a stunt like you did when you left here…if you put anyone in this stadium at risk again, I will not hesitate to drop you. You know the old saying about keeping your enemies close?” He stared right into my terrorized face. “You’re not my enemy. Those things outside are my enemies…but you’re a risk. You’re a loose cannon. You do as I say and your risk gets lower. So you’ll stay close to me, where I can keep my eyes on you.
“You break my rules?” He spat over the edge.
“Clear?” he asked, pulling me back up onto the gantry.
I finally breathed.
“Clear.”
7
A week later, after some serious and intense training, General Rogers gave me my first active assignment. It had been five days since any of the zombies had hammered on the doors or climbed the roof of the stadium. Less and less were being spotted on the streets outside. Rogers felt the time was right to start venturing out in search of supplies.
“We also need to re-establish the cordon at the bottom of the main ramp,” he said, his look of disdain intended just for me. I’d broken the barricade when I had made my mad dash back to Usk to rescue Nick and his family. There was a Range Rover sized gap in the line-up of cars.
Before I reported for duty, I set aside a minute to talk to Robbie. “Are you sure you’ll be okay here by yourself?” I asked him.
He shrugged, his eyes red and tired. I knew he wasn’t sleeping very well, but at least he would eat with some encouragement. This would be the first time that I’d been away from him for any decent length of time.
“What—what if you see Dad?” His gaze didn’t rise from the floor to meet mine. “Will you…?”
I shook my head. I’d already thought this question through a million times. There was the truth, and then there was telling someone a lie so they didn’t get hurt.
“Robbie, your dad was my friend.” I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Unless he’s actually attacking someone, I won’t be pointing him out. And if he does get spotted by the sniper, well maybe I’ll have to nudge the rifle at the right time. How does that sound?”
I tried to smile, and he tried to return it with one of his own, but the tears that tracked down his face belied both of our sad attempts.
“If you need anything, ask Bill. He said he’d keep an eye on you.”
“I don’t need someone to look after me,” he said with a stiff lower lip. “I’m twelve, you know.”
“I know. It’s more for my peace of mind.”
I reported to the first floor window that looked out over the ramped approach to the stadium. General Rogers was waiting for me and he introduced me to the sniper, Chris Garlick. I later found out Chris had already served two tours in Afghanistan and had held aspirations to join the Special Forces.
“S.A.S?” I’d asked him naively.
“That would have been the plan,” he said with a resigned nod. “But now it’s all about the Special Zombie Squad. And babysitting you.”
For a moment, silence. I tried to defuse the tension.
“With a name like Garlick, it’s a shame it’s not vampires out there, right?”
He stared at me, a mask of aggression falling across his face.
“You think any of this is funny?”
“Relax, Soldier,” Rogers coerced as he handed me a pair of binoculars. He held a set of his own.
“The troops will advance from directly below us. You and I will scan the vicinity and relay what we see to Garlick,” he instructed. “Use simple terms. Like clear. Like left. Like right. I don’t want to hear bogies at twelve o’clock. Listen to Garlick, listen to me. Don’t mess up.”
He picked up a radio and gave the order for the soldiers to move forward. I heard the giant doors open and felt them slam shut beneath my feet, and then watched as ten troops ran down the ramp.
“Don’t look at them,” scolded Garlick. “Watch the space they’re moving into. Keep an eye on corners, windows, doors. Report any movement you see!”
The soldiers fell into position on either side of the hole that my vacant Range Rover had left in the roadblock. I scanned left and right and saw nothing.
“Clear,” I said firmly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rogers nod and he
relayed the order to the ground. One of the troops ran ahead of the pack as his colleagues covered him. He tried the door handles of a number of cars before finding one open. I averted my eyes as he pulled a mangled and bloody body from the driver seat and dumped it unceremoniously onto the ground. He stepped over the corpse and climbed into the car, starting the engine. I looked away again as he reversed the car over the body, but even from a distance, I was able to hear the skull pop as it cracked under the pressure of the tires.
Just as the soldier finished maneuvering the car into the empty space, General Rogers tapped Chris on the shoulder. “Movement, right!”
My stomach tightened, and for a second I thought I was going to puke. No matter how many times I saw those things, close up or from a distance, I never wanted to get used to it. They were terrifying killing machines. Forget Nick. Forget what I tried to do for Danny. They were still the undead, searching for food. Hunting us. And they scared me. They always would.
Chris swung the barrel of his rifle as Rogers radioed to his men. “We have contacts to your right. Three zombies.”
Chris cracked off a shot. I prepared myself for the volley, expecting it to be far louder in the confines of the balcony than it really was, but I jumped all the same. By the time I looked where he was aiming, only two zombies were still on their feet. He chambered another round, fired, and a second creature fell. The ground troops had now turned and were facing their remaining adversary. There was something different going on here, something not quite right. I couldn’t…
Rogers interrupted my chain of thought.
“Hawkins, keep scanning!”
I brought the binoculars back up to my eyes and looked off to the left. I gasped when a group of about ten zombies wandered into view.
“Movement! Left!” I blurted as Chris fired another shot. Then it struck me what was wrong, what was different.
“General, they’re slow-moving. They’re like the first epidemic!”
“Garlick! Hold fire!” Rogers commanded as he leaned over me to get a better view of the approaching mass. “Good God,” he muttered. “Ground unit, take them down!”
In unison, the troops below us opened fire as the zombies staggered towards them. One by one, the living dead fell, but I continued to scan the surrounding area even as the rattle of gunfire made my muscles tense and my bowels loosen. If I hadn’t experienced so many crazy things, then this would have been exhilarating. I directed Chris towards lone zombies as they emerged from shop doorways, from the shadowy alleyways between buildings, and he dismissed them with precise headshots.
Within minutes, the street was clear. When the shooting stopped, I was struck by the silence. The general ordered his men to search the closest stores quickly and then return to the stadium. As they ran up the ramp carrying an array of articles and supplies, Rogers turned to me.
“Not bad at all,” he said. “Good spot on their behavior. What do you make of it?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea, and I don’t want to just guess. Sir.”
I saw a brief reaction in his eyes as I added his title to the end of my sentence.
“Good…good. Well, you’ve shown you’ve got some nerve. Maybe you are more brave than stupid after all.”
As he turned and left, I decided to take that as a compliment.
HOPE
8
My first mission quickly seemed like a lifetime ago. I soon progressed to backing up the ground unit outside the stadium once the cordon had been advanced too far for Chris’s rifle to be effective from the first floor balcony window. Instead, we waited until the soldiers had cleared a building and then took a place at a high storey vantage point. It was as if the streets were canyons, and we were making sure our men weren’t walking into a trap or getting blindsided. Except for the zombies, it could have been the Wild West.
Three weeks since then, we had only seen one Remake. It had leapt at the soldiers through a restaurant window, taking three of them to the floor before Chris had hit it with two successive strikes. The first had blown out its knee, so it crumpled to a heap on the tarmac. The second ripped off the back of its head, spraying the ground with fragments of bone and bits of brain. That had also been the day of our last fatality.
One of the soldiers stayed down, hurt and bleeding, as the other two struggled to their feet. Chris and I couldn’t hear what he was saying from our position above them, but we later learned he was telling his comrades to stay back, to keep away from him. Then he rammed the muzzle of his automatic weapon into the roof of his mouth, and despite the screams of protest from his friends, he pulled the trigger. The brief rattle of gunfire ended his life with a shower of blood. Later, one of his colleagues discovered the bite on his left thigh. Nothing more than a deep scratch really, but he’d known what it meant. It made us all more aware of the risks of being outside the stadium—all the more aware of how fragile our lives had become.
When the situation had calmed down and Chris and I had joined the rest of the squad down on the street, I checked the Remake, hoping that I wouldn’t have to tell Robbie that his father had attacked us and as a result, he had been killed. It was a strange sort of relief when I didn’t recognize the zombie. Robbie had been through enough, and I didn’t want to have to be the one who told him that any hope of his father being saved, of his father being cured, was gone forever.
I was worried that Robbie was becoming too insular, that he was shutting himself off from the rest of us. He occasionally spoke to Bill, and I had hoped that he would have bonded with Bill’s daughter Emma, but he avoided her. When I asked him about his behavior towards her, he said that she was just a kid. I knew she was only a year or so younger than him and gently challenged him about that.
“I don’t mean her age,” he’d explained to me. “She doesn’t get what’s going on. She’s not lost anyone close to her. She’s still got two parents.”
I had no words of comfort for him. He was right, of course. But I was desperate to see some signs of fight in him. He was becoming a shell—alive on the outside but as dead as a zombie within. After all he’d seen, all he’d witnessed, I couldn’t blame him.
Before I had a chance to snap the lock down, both of the back doors of the Range Rover were wrenched open. Hands, decaying, wretched hands stretched in toward the girls. Sally yelled, and Jayne was struck dumb. The rancid fingers wrapped themselves around their wrists and through their hair. After a brief moment of hope, when their legs snagged in their seatbelts, they were gone.
‘N!’
I hoped that in time he would begin to open up again, that he would have the chance to live a life as the child that he was. I would do anything in my power to make that happen for him. I’d never give up trying to find a normal life for Robbie.
I shoved the trolley ahead of me, knowing that my back was covered by Bateman and those of his men not transporting supplies. The vision of the soldier killing himself haunted me. He had done what Danny had never been able to. He’d ended his own suffering. Danny had finally found a way to ask me to do it.
‘You okay there, Danny?’
‘Duh… Ed’. He made a motion with his head that made it seem like he was looking himself up and down.
‘Duh… Ed’ he repeated.
With lifeless, soulless eyes he stared into my face, made the head gesture again.
‘Duh… Ed’. The voice, more pleading this time and the tears that fell from my eyes were born of understanding.
‘Duh…Ed’
He was not saying Ed. He was not trying to say Danny. He was trying to tell me something else, and had been for a long time.
My brother was telling me that he wanted to be dead.
At each roadblock, we lifted the trolleys up and over the barriers rather than risk moving any of the cars. If we were suddenly engulfed by a group of Romeroes, there was no way we wanted them to be able to get any closer to the stadium, so it was worth the extra exertion. Finally, we reached the ramp up to the entrance and t
he door was swung open. We pushed on inside to be greeted by the general. He inspected each trolley as we passed by him.
“Plenty of water. Good,” he said. “Get this up to the sanitation tanks and top them off. If there’s one thing we can’t risk, it’s the toilets being out of order. Not with this many people using the facilities. Go!”
Three soldiers hurried away with liters and liters of bottled water destined to be flushed away.
“Canned goods… good. Rice… pasta… well done.” Rogers continued to check off the inventory. Suddenly there was a smash as he hurled a bottle to the floor. “Can somebody please tell me when alcohol has been on our list of priorities? Bateman! What the hell are your men playing?”
Bateman rushed over to the general and inspected the contents of the rogue trolley.
“Sir, I had no idea, I--”
Rogers shoved the trolley over, spilling the content across the floor and more bottles shattered. “You had no idea? You either make sure you know what your men are bringing back or I can relieve you of your duties!”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“If the Remakes attack, what use is a drunk or a hung over soldier going to be to any of us?”
Bateman had no argument. He turned to the soldier who was in charge of the trolley. “You’re on night watch for a week, Soldier,” he told him.
“We won’t be here in a week,” Rogers calmly informed him.
“Sir?” Bateman asked as a look of confusion across his face.
“We have new orders,” Rogers said. “High command has been on the radio. We’re moving out in three days. Ready your men. And, for God’s sake, keep a better eye on them!”
9
General Rogers called a meeting with all of his troops and any civilians to whom he assigned a role within his command. I was surprised to see there were as many civilians present as there were soldiers, but I guessed he’d had to commandeer all the resource as he could muster. He certainly had a way about him that made his requests hard to refuse. I pondered on how many he’d held over the parapet at the top of the stadium.
