by Owner
“Oh, now this is a turn up for the books,” he murmured. The vehicle screeched to a halt, and Dennis watched several soldiers, all equipped with full face masks, run from behind the armored car and point their rifles at the pair.
They forced the two to lie on the ground face down with their arms behind their backs. A moment later, another vehicle approached and stopped behind the first vehicle.
“Well, this is not what I expected.” Dennis watched through the side window as two men dressed in white bio-hazard suits stepped out of their vehicle, which reminded him of a dog warden van. Dennis had the feeling that these gentlemen would not be transporting canines in the back of their vehicle. Both men carried a pole a couple of feet taller than them, with stiff wire loops on the ends.
They fastened the loops around the neck of the sobbing people and pushed them into the back of the van. They weren’t being very gentle, either.
“So, we do indeed have new players in the game. The action moves up one more notch.” He watched both vehicles turn around and drive further into the estate. That told him that these strangers must have set up a base on his hunting ground. “Events in Breakspear are about to become most interesting.”
Chapter Thirteen
A subtle shift in the group’s hierarchy had happened about half an hour ago. They hadn’t noticed the change, but he certainly had. Kevin had even saw it coming. This had happened to him all of his life. When he got together in a group it didn’t take long for him to be relegated to the bottom of the pile.
His girl now stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the lanky thug. How long would it be before they were holding hands? Kevin squeezed the bayonet’s handle and told himself to stop getting so paranoid. Both Stephanie and Darren stood with Kevin on the roof of a garage, searching the streets for any sign of the shambling horde. He stood behind Stephanie, wishing that he had a gun like they both did.
“Come on, you must be able to see them now.”
Darren nodded. “Fuck me, lass, you’ve got sharp bastard eyes.”
She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at Kevin. “Sorry, Darren, I’ll take a pass on that. Besides, I’m already taken.” She winked at Kevin, but by the time he’d winked back, the girl had already turned back to face the street. Kevin sighed.
Clearly the lanky thug loved his new toy. He hadn’t let go of it ever since leaving the house and found out how much of a mess it made with human flesh. He cradled his shotgun as if it was his newest teddy bear. Kevin had even seen him stroking the stock a few minutes ago.
Darren had fired two rounds while still in that house. The first one had taken out the soldier’s face while the other round had destroyed the top of Edgar’s head. Rather than leaving well enough alone, Darren had opened up the closet door to see what his old pal had been doing under the stairs; he’d believed that Edgar might have been hiding a huge cache of weapons with him. That made Kevin so angry, like it was perfectly acceptable to place everyone’s life in danger just to satisfy his curiosity. If that shotgun hadn’t worked they would have all ended up like that poor soldier.
He looked down at his stupid bayonet again and wondered if he would still be so bitter if they had found more weapons under the stairs. Past experience told him that very little would have changed. Oh, the group would have upgraded their weapons alright. Those two would have picked up rocket launchers or assault rifles, while he would have had to make do with a fucking air pistol.
There had been one discovery from Darren’s reckless act that had confused the hell out of all of them. Stephanie had discovered that the soldier was wearing some very curious protective covering under his fatigues. His legs and arms were covered in flexible, tightly-meshed armor.
Stephanie told them both that it wasn’t standard issue. In a combat situation, only the torso was protected. They both looked at her in astonishment as she reeled all this out. It turned out that his trembling new girlfriend was in the bloody Armed Forces. She’d snatched up the pistol from the chair, and within seconds, had pulled it apart. Stephanie showed them where the ID plate had been filed off and the unusual rounds in the magazine. She concluded that the soldier wasn’t regular Army, more like private security or a mercenary. Darren had agreed with her, moving his head up and down like a fucking nodding dog, and he didn’t object when she’d stuffed the gun down her jeans. Watching Stephanie take the pistol was the point wherein the shift in hierarchy had taken place. Unless the group found another survivor, Kevin believed that he’d stay there.
“It’s like a fucking football crowd,” said Darren.
He moved forward, standing just behind Stephanie and resting his hands on her shoulders. Kevin followed their gazes and felt his spine turn to water as hundreds of the shamblers slowly made their way through the estate.
“Jesus! Look at that bastard go!” shouted Darren, pointing at a house opposite where they were.
Kevin gaped in horror as a young lad leapt from an upper floor window; he rolled on the grass below and limped out of the garden gate. They could hear him screaming from where they stood.
“Come on, lad,” urged Kevin, “you can do it.”
Even limping, he was outpacing them.
“I’ll bet anyone a tenner that the guy gets eaten.”
Kevin groaned aloud when he saw a couple of the dead emerge from a garden in front of the boy. He swerved to try to avoid their flailing arms, but then tripped up over his own feet. As he went down, several more of the things homed in and fell on him, tearing away at him viciously. Kevin closed his eyes and tried not to burst into tears.
“Oh yes!” shouted Darren. “That’s money in the bank.”
He heard Stephanie call him a heartless bastard. Darren just laughed back at her. Kevin tried to imagine what he would have done in the poor kid’s place. Kevin had been lucky when he got out of the house. There were only a couple of the things after him, not a thousand. He opened his eyes and looked at the bayonet. Would he have had the guts to slit his own throat, to stop himself from changing?
Kevin wanted a gun; it wasn’t fair. Darren said that Steph could have one because she was more of a man than he was. He wasn’t too sure whether he liked the new Stephanie yet. He preferred it when she had clung to him like a limpet and squealed at every sudden movement, a bit sad and pathetic. Kevin sighed. A bit like he still was.
“Okay, it’s time to fuck off. I’m not keen on staying here when those fuckers arrive.”
Kevin decided that it was time to make his stand. He shook his head. “I’m not going to the cemetery.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, not this bullshit again. Now you listen to me, you fucking retarded clown. They are not fucking zombies. It’s a chemical bastard weapon. The dead have not come back to life.”
“Bollocks,” Kevin replied. “I know what I saw, and I saw some dead thing crawl up my fucking stairs!” he screamed.
Darren sighed and thrust his hand out in front of him. “I can’t take this bullshit any more. Look lass, he’s your fucking baggage, you sort him out.” He jumped off the shed and hurried into the back garden. “Don’t take forever either, cos I ain’t waiting.”
Stephanie walked up to Kevin, hugged him tight, and kissed him gently on the lips. “I do believe you, Kevin.”
“But you still want to go with him.”
She nodded. Kevin felt like he’d just been punched in the stomach.
“Darren is a foul-mouthed dickhead, but he’s handy with a gun, and at least he’s still alive.”
“Only just.”
“Oi Darren!” she shouted. “Is that bone yard still in use?”
“Nobody’s been planted in there for over fifty years.”
“You see? There’ll be six feet of hard-packed soil between your feet and a few old bones. Besides, what other option do we have?”
Kevin slowly nodded. “Okay then.”
They both jumped down and caught up to Darren who was busy trying to climb over a six-
foot fence. Stephanie scaled it easily and helped the reluctant Darren to the top. Kevin didn’t need any help. He reached the top and looked behind him. He couldn’t see the things just yet.
The cemetery was just off the next street. Until now, he’d never thought about how odd it was to have some deserted old graveyard smack bang in the middle of a housing estate.
“That’s a blast from the past,” said Darren. “I haven’t seen one of those old things for a long time.”
Kevin looked up to see a dark blue van slowly glide past the front of the house. “Do you think they could be soldiers?”
Darren glared at him. “What are you asking me for? I haven’t got all the answers.”
“I’ve seen that van tonight already,” muttered Stephanie.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think that we’d be the only ones still alive in Breakspear. They ain’t gonna get right far in that old thing though,” said Darren. “That tin box will stop the zombies, but as soon as the soldiers see that they’ll blast it sky high.”
Kevin watched the van turn off into a side street and disappear. “I wonder what he’s doing.”
“He’s selling ice cream, you fucking retard,” sneered Darren.
Stephanie giggled.
“It’s fucking obvious what he’s doing, ain’t it? He’s looking for survivors.”
“You mean like us?”
Darren’s eyes blazed. “You can drop that idea right now, Kevin. The answer’s no. We ain’t gonna start running after that van. Besides, I’ve got us a foolproof plan to get us out of here.”
“So what’s in that cemetery, Darren?” Stephanie asked.
“You ain’t from around here are you, lass?”
She shook her head. “No, we were just visiting. We live in Leeds.”
“Well, if you follow me, sweetheart, you’ll be back in Leeds in a few hours. There’s a stretch of land separating the old church from the graveyard, and there’s a manhole right in the …”
“If you’re thinking of that rat tunnel,” interrupted Kevin, “Forget it. The council blocked it up a few years ago.”
“Interrupt me again, tosspot, and I’ll throw you into those nettles. I bet you didn’t go down there before it got blocked up, did you?”
Kevin shook his head.
“I didn’t think so, you little chickenshit. Well, that tunnel is part of a network, and apparently one of the tunnels leading off goes all the way into the rise.”
“But how do we get in if it’s been blocked off?”
Darren jumped down. “There’s another way in.”
Kevin glanced behind him. Those things were now visible and were getting uncomfortably close. He wondered where they were heading. Kevin had the feeling that they were heading to the cemetery too. He followed Stephanie and climbed down.
They ran through the garden and onto the main road. This was the main bus route through the estate. The shops and the local pub were just a bit further down. They hurried over the deserted road and onto the grass verge on the other side. The council had erected a chain link fence all around the church and the cemetery. Kevin remembered it going up. He also remembered how long it had taken them to finish it. The estate kids kept tearing it down every time the workers buggered off home.
Kevin followed Darren as he walked along the perimeter. They passed dozens of repaired holes. It wouldn’t be long before they found one that the council had missed.
Darren stopped dead. “Bloody hell! It looks like we ain’t the only ones to think of this place.”
A whole section had been flattened into the grass. It looked like someone had rammed a car into it. Kevin followed the others through and then glanced back. His blood turned to water when he saw a group of zombies turn the corner and head in their direction. He looked the other way and saw a load more shambling towards them.
“What the fuck are we going to do?”
Darren’s arrogant features slipped for a moment to reveal a very scared-looking boy. He looked at the shotgun and then back at the approaching horde of people. “Let’s just hope to fuck that it really is there.”
“We’re surrounded,” muttered Stephanie.
“Yeah, well fuck ‘em. We’ll be out of here in a few minutes anyway.”
Darren sprinted over the rough ground like a rabbit. That unnerved Kevin. Darren was faster than him. They had trouble keeping up. They passed the old church and reached the tumbledown cemetery gates a couple of minutes later; it had been years since he’d been here, and never at night.
Just then, the moon broke through the heavy cloud cover, its pale light washing away some of the shadows, revealing the scope and depth of the ruined graveyard. The place had been neglected and forgotten for decades except for generations of kids from the estate. Kevin suspected that not many of them had shown the respect a place like this deserved. Many gravestones had been knocked down, but plenty still remained upright, the lichen-covered stones obscuring any number of horrors just waiting to grab them as they passed.
“They’ll be here in a few minutes,” Stephanie said.
Darren nodded, distracted; he was busy scanning the area in front of him. Kevin had the awful feeling that Darren had never been here before.
“Is that what you’re looking for?” said Stephanie, pointing to a large block of stone set right in the middle of the cemetery.
“Yes, that’s it, the mausoleum. There ain’t no flies on you, is there?”
Kevin forced his eyes away from the approaching horde. He was sure that they were slowing down. He stared into the graveyard, just waiting for something in there to move. Stephanie was right about it being full of mouldering bones. How could anything in there hurt him? It didn’t stop him from gasping out loud when he did see a shadow move.
“What the fuck was that?” he shouted.
Darren jumped. “For fuck’s sake, man. You scared the shit out of me. What’s up with you?”
Kevin just pointed at the corpse slowly lurching up the path. Kevin wanted to punch the air, and then punch Darren for doubting him yet again. Stephanie raised her pistol.
“Put that away, you silly cow. Jesus!”
Darren marched up to the thing and smashed the butt of his shotgun into its face. The head jerked back before the whole body dropped to the path. Darren lifted up one of his feet, winked at Stephanie, and then slammed it down through the thing’s head.
It cracked open like a rotten egg, spilling black gelatinous syrup across the weed-choked gravel path. Stephanie turned away.
“Oh Jesus,” she gasped, “the vile bastard.”
Kevin saw a few more of the filthy things, all in various stages of advanced decay, staggering between the gravestones. He moved closer to Stephanie.
“I don’t think they’ll be able to do us much harm. I doubt that they could even open their jaws.”
Darren laughed. “The fuckers probably have to get someone to chew their food up first.”
A young man wearing the remains of a suit staggered up to Darren. As it struggled to lift its arms, he turned the shotgun around and swung the stock into the side of its head. Darren kicked it as he hurried past.
“Come on,” he said, “stop fucking about.”
Kevin charged over, determined to show him that he was just as capable as Darren was.
“Thank fuck for that,” muttered Darren. “I thought it was going to be another of one of Dad’s lies.”
Kevin stopped dead. He didn’t think he was supposed to hear that. If all else failed, there was always the top of that stone; it looked high enough. He wondered how hard it would be to climb on the roof of the mausoleum and if it was large enough to hold all three of them.
He glanced over his shoulder to wait for Stephanie. He wished he hadn’t left her now. The zombies—and as far as he was concerned, they were zombies, fuck whatever Darren said—were now streaming though the broken fence. This wasn’t going to end well, he just knew it.
Kevin turned back to find that Darren was no longer in front of them. He couldn’t see him anywhere. Oh Jesus! Had he done a runner and left them in the lurch?
“He’s over there,” said Stephanie.
She pointed at a large, red-painted metal canister half buried in the soft soil.
Kevin gazed in confusion at the object sticking out of the ground. It reminded him of three oil drums welded together. There was a large gash running down the length of the canister, and a thick yellow mist escaped from the rent in the metal.
There were a dozen bodies lying around the object. Kevin turned away and stared at the ground, trying not to throw up. He thought the horror he’d seen so far tonight could not be topped. Yet the sight of what was left of those bodies looking like melted plastic toys made him want to fall to the floor, curl up into a tight ball, and want to wake up.
“Darren? Darren, what are you doing?”
The lad didn’t reply to the girl’s question. He placed his hand against the metal, and then his whole body shivered. Kevin skirted around another crawling body and walked towards him. “Darren, are you alright?”
As Kevin got closer, he gasped when he saw the state of Darren’s hand; it looked like it had been welded to the outside of the canister. Darren began to moan. He turned around and gazed at Kevin.
He took one look at those cold, unfeeling eyes and wanted to scream. Darren pulled his hand off the canister and took a step closer to Kevin. The lad’s hand hung down. It looked like a lump of melted toffee.
“No, please, not you as well.”
Kevin tried to take his bayonet out but ended up dropping it into the mud. Then he shrieked when he saw the left side of Darren’s face explode in a geyser of blood. Stephanie rushed past him, picked up the dropped shotgun and pushed the weapon into Kevin’s trembling hands. Then she pulled him over to the entrance of the mausoleum. He saw the thick steel chain wrapped around the bars secured with a padlock and knew there and then that it was over.
