by Craig Jones
My breath stuck in my chest. It felt like I was buried in sand. I couldn’t breathe. Chris was going to suggest that the convoy divert across the bridge to my house. I didn’t want them finding what was buried at the bottom of my garden.
“The roads are too narrow,” Rogers said, looking down at the map. “The buses won’t be able to turn back around.”
“We could just take the Jeep, sir.” Chris had clearly been thinking this through. “Matt, myself, two others. Go, get the bikes and then come back.”
The general turned to face me.
“The bikes are accessible?”
Finally, I found the air to answer.
“In the garage at the front of the house. We could be in and out in seconds.”
And if we were in and out in seconds, there’d be no time for snooping around.
“Then go,” Rogers ordered. “We’ll load up on supplies.”
He checked his watch.
“We leave in thirty minutes. If you are not back, I will consider you all dead. So if you come to any major obstacles, abandon the mission.”
I’d be looking for any obstacle I could find in order to keep them away from my house.
24
Robbie agreed to sit on the bus with two of the older civilian women. He was happier to do that than to stay anywhere near General Rogers.
“I don’t want to be here,” he told me.
“You can’t come with me. It could be too dangerous. You have to stay here.”
“Not here. Not in the parking lot. I mean in Usk.”
I understood his sentiments. There were too many memories. Everywhere the boy looked, he’d see Nick. His father had walked with him to the shop to buy him sweets after school. They’d have passed through the parking lot to take a stroll down to the river or to go and play tennis. I was already expecting to see Danny everywhere I went through the town. To get to my house, we had to go right past the hairdresser’s shop where he had died. The road we’d travel on was the one we’d ridden our bikes on to try to rescue those people.
“Matt! Come on,” Chris called. Robbie gave me a narrow smile. I hoped it was his way of telling me he would do his best to be strong.
I hopped up into the Jeep. Davis was sitting in the driving seat. With his sniper rifle by his side, Chris sat in the passenger seat. I was surprised to see Captain Bateman waiting for me in the transport.
“I love motorbikes,” he told me, patting me on the shoulder as I took my place. “I volunteered for this.”
I nodded, glad he was there. Davis started the engine and reversed the Jeep out of the parking lot. He drove carefully back around the town square and headed for the bridge that would take us out towards the countryside and my family home.
“There was an accident on the bridge,” I advised. “I’m guessing it will still be blocked.”
It was. The red sports car and the family sedan that had smashed head on were still there. Blood was splashed across the windshields, the tires, and the ground around the two vehicles. Littering the road were the most decayed bodies we had seen. Some looked like they’d been sucked dry of the flesh that had once been on their bones. It was the faces I found most unnerving. The eyes had been pecked out by birds, and the corpses stared blindly up at the cloudy sky. The mouths remained open, and I knew that many of these people had died screaming. I had been there. I had seen the prisoners cross the bridge and decimate the town. And I had been lucky to escape with my life.
Davis stayed in the Jeep while Bateman and Chris leapt out. Chris pushed at the front of the sports car while Bateman disengaged the handbrake. The red car rolled backwards and out of our path.
“That’ll do,” Davis confirmed.
Bateman clambered back into the Jeep.
“You okay?” he asked.
I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to look to the left, towards the building that had housed the hairdressers. I felt tears roll down my face, and I sucked my breath in through my nose.
“Bad memories?” Bateman asked.
“The worst,” I answered, biting back a sob.
“Come on, kid,” Bateman encouraged. “You can do this.”
The Jeep pulled off again and veered past the family car and rode over the hump of the bridge. We passed the gas station and then the road opened up, and Davis accelerated past the signs for the prison.
“When you see a car in the road up ahead, we’re there. Pull up next to it,” I told Davis.
After rounding a couple of bends in the road, we spotted the car, still in the middle of the road, next to the wall that had protected us during the first epidemic. Its occupants were long gone. The driver had been the first victim of the second outbreak. Patient Number One. And then he’d killed his wife and probably his kids too. Next he had come after me.
The gates to my house were still wide open, and Davis pulled the Jeep alongside them. Bateman and Chris had their guns up to their shoulders as we climbed down from the Jeep and our boots crunched on the gravel driveway.
“Steady!” Bateman advised.
“Looks like your place has been ransacked,” Chris said, indicating the front door. The first of the Remakes had crashed his way through it as he’d chased me through the house. It hung on one hinge, creaking quietly in the breeze.
“I guess so. I got out of here as soon as I heard what was going on,” I said. My feet felt like lead weights. It took every ounce of effort I had to pick them up and place them on the ground in front of me. It was only a matter of time before someone walked out towards the back garden and then I’d have every question in the world to answer. But it was more than that. My best friend, my brother, and I had gone through so much in that house together. When our parents died, we were each other’s backbones. We kept each other standing tall. And this was the house I brought him back to after he’d been bitten, after he’d turned, and this was the house where he’d died. The house where I’d buried him.
“Garlick, post on that corner.”
Chris, gun still poised, moved to the path at the side of the house that led to the rear. He began to walk out of sight. My heart stopped.
“No, on the corner. From there you can cover front and back.”
“Sir!” Chris answered and his eyes were everywhere, alert.
“Davis!” Bateman called. “Spin the Jeep around. I want you ready to get us the hell out of here if we need you to. And keep your eyes on those trees.”
Davis saluted and moved the vehicle.
Finally, Bateman turned to me, a thumb hooked over his shoulder pointed at the garage door.
“Bikes in there? Locked?”
“Yeah, in there. It’s not locked.”
“And the motorbike keys?”
I swallowed.
“Inside. There’s a study just to the right. The keys are in the top drawer of the desk.”
“Okay, follow me.”
Bateman stepped into my home, the muzzle of his assault rifle leading the way. The house was silent except for the whistle of the breeze. Dust motes floated in the air. It was like stepping into an old museum. He moved first to the left, checking to see that the living room was safe then advanced through into the kitchen. I tucked myself close behind him. Glass was scattered across the kitchen floor, and the shattered backdoor was still open. Luckily the curtains were still drawn over the windows. Bateman took a step towards the door.
“The study is back here,” I said.
He stopped and walked back to the front door.
“The house is clear. Get the keys.”
I squeezed past him in the hallway and grabbed the two sets of motorbike keys. I lifted them up to show Bateman I had them and we left.
“You look awful, kid. You going to be able to ride?”
“I’ll be okay as soon as I get out of here.”
He gestured with his head for me to move. We came back out into the fresh air, and only then did I realize how hot and oppressive the atmosphere in the house had been. I grabbed
the handle to the garage door and swung it up and open. The two motorbikes sat just where I had left them. My blue bike, Danny’s red bike. My helmet was placed on the seat of my bike. Danny’s helmet was still down in the shed, plastered in his blood and slobber. That was of no use to us anymore.
“Let’s get moving,” Bateman said. “Garlick, on the Jeep. Matt, I need one of the keys.”
I gave him the key to my bike. I didn’t want anyone riding Danny’s bike except me. He passed my helmet across to me.
“You wear this,” he said with a caring look on his face. “The general will kill me if I put a civilian at any risk.”
I pulled the helmet over my head and secured the chin strap before plunging the key into the ignition. Both bikes started on the first try, and the sound of the Yamaha engines made the walls of the garage rock. We rolled the bikes backwards out of the garage until the front of the bikes faced the open gates. I took one last look at the house and eased up on the clutch, rolling the bike out past the Jeep and onto the road.
The relief I felt was incredible. The evidence of what I’d done, how I’d started this second epidemic, had remained undisturbed. I’d gotten away with it. No one had ventured into the back garden. No one had seen Danny’s grave. I looked back over my shoulder as Bateman brought his bike out through the gates. I began to say a silent and final farewell to Danny, my poor brother who had deserved more in death than I had been able to give him.
And then I saw Chris Garlick. He was sitting once more in the passenger seat of the Jeep, and I saw the way he was looking at me. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure I had gotten away with it after all.
25
The motorbikes made progress through the back roads much more efficiently than the Jeep would have. Rogers wouldn’t let me ride out ahead of the convoy, saying that keeping watch with a pair of binoculars was one thing but giving me more responsibility, letting me take that kind of risk, was a step too far for him.
“I like you where I can keep my eyes on you,” he told me.
Instead, Bateman and one of the soldiers, Andrews, took on the role of reconnaissance. I continued to ride in the troop transport with the general and Robbie. The boy had become mute again. After seeing his father shot in the head, Robbie’s initial outpouring of emotion gave way to restless sleep and bouts of sobbing. My words meant nothing to him. Even though I was with him, he must have felt more alone than he’d ever felt before. The news of the cure had lifted his spirits. He began to believe he’d have his dad back one day. Now that was never going to happen, he looked like his world was over.
I had been in his place. Hoping beyond anything that Danny could have been rescued from inside the hungry husk that was his zombie form. Part of me wanted to tell Robbie that the cure wouldn’t have made any difference. Maybe I should tell him that it wasn’t a cure after all but a way to wipe out Nick and everyone like him in one easy swoop. But that wasn’t what he wanted or needed to hear. And to tell him would have broken General Rogers’s orders about sharing the information with any of the refugees. The man was clearly on the edge of some sort of meltdown, and I didn’t want to be the one to trigger it.
We had reached an abandoned school on the outskirts of Bath just as the daylight began to dissolve away. The troops had broken into the gym, a large rectangular building that stood alone from the rest of the complex. The only windows were narrow and high up, close to the ceiling. Once we were all inside it would be easy to defend if any of the undead ventured our way. Within minutes of us arriving, Rogers had dispatched Bateman and Andrews to check out the situation at the university and after checking the map, they headed off into the city.
The survivors and the soldiers decamped into the gym and made themselves as comfortable as they could. There were plenty of gymnastic mats to use as beds. I found Robbie tucked away in the corner of one of the store rooms, his blanket pulled up to his chin. I gave him a plate stacked with sliced tinned meat and cold beans. He ate a couple of mouthfuls then put it down on the floor.
“You’ve got to eat,” I encouraged.
“I will. Just not yet.”
“When then?” I asked
He pointed across at the wide double entrance doors and the still evening beyond.
“When they barricade us in. Those things could come for us at any second and until we’re locked in, I can’t relax.”
I had to admit that the kid had a valid point. One that I hadn’t even considered.
“Most of the soldiers are outside. If anything comes this way, they’ll take care of it.”
“But if one gets in?” he asked. “My dad would have told them not to hurt me, but now?”
Tears welled in his eyes and he rested his head on his knees.
“Now there’s no one to stop them from eating me.”
I sighed.
“There’s me, Robbie.” It was all I had.
He lifted his head and stared at me with defiant eyes.
“Can you make the zombies move aside by raising your hand?”
He looked older than his years. His eyes beat a pulse into the back of my skull, challenging me to say he was wrong.
“I didn’t think so,” he concluded.
I was relieved to hear the sounds of the returning motorbikes outside.
“Please try to eat,” I said and walked out through the doors.
Bateman and Andrews were already briefing Rogers and the rest of the soldiers when I arrived. A few of the other civilians had tagged along with me.
“The roads are clear,” Bateman said with confidence. “We didn’t get too close to the campus, but we managed to pick out the science block through the binoculars. It looks locked down but there are about fifty Romeroes wandering around outside.”
“Well those we can deal with easily enough,” Rogers stated.
“Where there are fifty, there may be five hundred,” I heard myself saying, even though I’d planned on keeping my mouth shut.
“What?” barked Rogers.
“Well the Romeroes are like the zombies from the last outbreak,” I said, feeling the pressure of being the center of attention. “And they were drawn to pockets of people. They came to my house. They came to stadium. They come to their food.”
I expected Rogers to rebuke me but instead he nodded thoughtfully, his left index finger tracing the line of his scar.
“Yes. Yes,” he said quietly. “Good. At least we know the scientists are still alive in there.”
“What do you propose, sir?” Bateman asked
“First thing in the morning, you will take half the men and wipe out the Romeroes as quickly and as quietly as you can. The rest of us will stay here with the civilians. When the campus is safe, send Andrews back and we will come to you.”
“You can’t send the soldiers away!” the woman next to me shouted out.
“I can do what I like,” Rogers sneered arrogantly. “There’ll be enough of us here to babysit you, don’t you worry.”
She began to object again but my attention was drawn to the door of the gym. Robbie slowly walked outside, the blanket still draped over his shoulders. I broke away from the group and walked over to him.
“You need to stay inside,” I said.
He pointed out of the school grounds towards the road.
“The streetlights don’t work here,” he said.
I hadn’t noticed but now he had highlighted it, I couldn’t fail to notice how quickly darkness was stealing over us.
“We’ll be okay,” I said, trying to sound like I believed my own words.
“Will we?” he asked. “If it’s too dark to see. How will we know what’s out there?”
26
Someone found an emergency generator and powered it up after siphoning some fuel from one of the buses. Rogers didn’t want the main overhead gym lights used because he felt they would be a beacon for the undead. Instead, he allowed a few of the lights in the storerooms to be switched on, and that cast a pale luminescence across the wide room. T
he room Robbie had chosen for himself was one of those with the light bulb burning and that seemed to calm him. I didn’t see how he was going to sleep in the bare glare, but it seemed to soothe him and he was flat out in minutes. I’d dragged a thick crash matt in there for us to sleep on but while he snored, I sat with my back to the wall, wide awake.
The main entrance door and the fire exits had been barricaded with pommel horses and balance beams, which were secured in place with heavy dumb bells. Rogers and Bateman had decided to stay outside, sleeping in the security of the troop transport but also ready and able to act if there was any trouble at our door. They parked one of the buses across the front entrance to make sure nothing could get in that way. The rest of the soldiers, although inside, slept close to the doors, prepped for action at a moment’s notice. This seemed to make people feel more at ease, and it appeared that many of us were getting our first fully restful night since we’d left Cardiff. Although there were still a couple of whispered conversations taking place, the more common noise was gentle snoring.
My eyelids began to feel heavy and my head sagged forward. I felt that--
Gunfire!
The first burst was like the worst alarm clock I’d ever heard, piercing the night and waking the whole gym with startled yelps. Robbie jumped to his feet, blanket falling off him. The gym filled with shouts and screams, noises that were echoed from outside the building.
“No, no, no, no,” he repeated, his feet sliding on the crash mat as he tried to seemingly push himself even further into the corner of the room. I glanced out into the main gym and Chris Garlick already had his rifle ready and was pointing for the civilians to get further back into the hall. The rest of the troops appeared around him, guns cocked. The engine of the bus parked outside the door rumbled to life, and it sounded like the vehicle was being moved out of the way,
