by Luke Duffy
The clouds had disappeared from the sky, allowing the temperature to drop, and exposing a blanket of blackness that was coated with twinkling stars. Without the false light from the houses and street lamps creating glare and spoiling the view, the night sky had become an awe inspiring sight. Even the faint, cloudy smear of the Milky Way had become easily distinguishable above the crumbling relics of civilisation.
The street to their front was scattered with the rusting carcasses of stalled cars and clumps of debris that had been thrown out in a wide arc during the explosions that had rocked the town in the early days of the outbreak. Weeds were quickly taking root, spreading out over the tarmac, and smothering the buildings and vehicles that lay silently awaiting the passage of time. The bodies of the dead, the lucky ones who had not been able to reanimate, lay amongst the wreckage, their bones slowly becoming a part of the landscape, and eventually, crumbling to dust like the rest of humanity and its creations.
Al hunched his shoulders and huddled down, lifting his arm close to his face and checking his watch. Raising his head again, he looked towards the eastern horizon. The sky there was still as black as coal, and it would remain that way for at least another three and a half hours before dawn began to make its presence known. He glanced across at the dark shapes of Tommy and Tina just a few metres away to his right. He could see their breath misting in front of their faces and their eyes sparkling in the starlight. Both of them had their attention fixed upon the flats, watching for any sign of movement.
Off to the right, along the street and barely visible, a number of shadows moved. They were hard to distinguish, but there was no question that they were the wandering bodies of the dead. They lumbered around through the darkened avenues, scraping their feet, and from time to time singing their woeful lament.
To the left, just four metres away, a single corpse sauntered by. It moved sluggishly, barely lifting its feet as its gaunt face, obscured by a mass of lank dark hair, stared down at the ground beneath its feet. It was oblivious to anything around it as it made its way along the path. The three of them watched as it passed, their beating hearts pumping their rich, flowing blood through their veins just below the surface of their warm flesh. The creature had no inclination that the living were so close, observing it as it mindlessly shuffled by. It headed away and was soon swallowed up by the gloomy night.
They had gathered all the information that they could, which was actually very little in the way of enemy strength, capabilities, weaponry, and intentions. Most of the information that they had gleamed, they already knew. After reaching their objective, Tommy had wanted to conduct a three-hundred and sixty degree sweep of the target but Al had rejected the suggestion. They had no idea if there were any other units in the area, and he did not like the thought of them stumbling upon a rear protection group on the blind side of the building. They would be too far from their nearest support, cut off and unable to make a retreat. The patrol could very easily have found themselves caught in a devastating crossfire if they wandered into another position and made contact.
“Ready to move in ten minutes,” Al whispered, finally having had enough and surmising that they were unlikely to see anything more.
Tina and Tommy did not move but began to mentally prepare themselves. They kept their attention focussed on the area to their front, eyeing the top of the building and listening into the darkness. Earlier, they had been able to see the soldiers through their night sights and heard their muffled conversations, interrupted by the static hiss of their radio as they relayed information back to their commanders.
Al had pushed forward, closing to a distance of just twenty metres from the entrance to the building while Tina and Tommy remained static, ready to give him covering fire if he was compromised. There, he had seen another two strangers sitting in the dark. They were positioned close to the main doors, providing protection while the troops on the roof continued to observe. Al crept forward, slowly slithering his way across the ground, hiding amongst the small bushes and gutters as he moved himself into a position where he could hear their hushed conversations.
In the silence of the night, small snippets of information had been harvested from what Al could hear. The soldiers had estimated the numbers of the people in the FOB quite accurately, and they even knew that the civilians had received a degree of training and now occupied the walls along with trained snipers and machine gunners manning the towers. They seemed to know a lot about their numbers and weaponry but they - Al and his reconnaissance patrol - knew virtually nothing about the people they spied upon. It was clear to him that the soldiers had either been watching them for quite some time, or they had been given the information from someone who had first-hand knowledge of the base, its setup, and its occupants.
Then, a few hours later, it had all stopped. No more movement could be seen from the building, and the whispered chatter ceased as though a switch had been flicked, and the soldiers and their activities had been shut down. The two men at the entrance to the building had simply vanished into the darkness right before Al’s eyes, as though they had sunk into the earth.
Al had returned two hours later, having gained no further information while he skulked in the shadows, close to the main doors and directly below the soldiers stationed on the rooftop. The observation post had become deathly silent. He wondered if they had all fallen asleep or even left the area. Or maybe the soldiers had gone into hard routine, keeping their noise and light discipline to a minimum. They had shown no such tactical considerations during the day time when they had moved into position, so he concluded that they would conduct themselves in the same manner during the night. Now, it was as though the soldiers had disappeared from right in front of them.
“I don’t get it,” Al mumbled as he checked his watch again. He raised himself up into a squat, resting his rifle across his knees as he studied their target.
“What?” Tommy asked, eager to begin their patrol back to the base and into safety. “You don’t get what?”
“Any of it. I don’t get any of it, Tommy. They turn up, moving like a bunch of recruits but clearly knowing how to set up an OP. Then they start watching us and reporting back to someone through their radio which must be pretty hi-tech with frequency scramblers or data burst transmitters, because Ronnie couldn’t pick anything up. Then they go all tactical on us? I don’t get it, mate.”
“They could be asleep,” Tommy suggested. “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve caught blokes getting their heads down on stag.”
Al nodded, keeping his eyes firmly locked on the target and studying the lay of the land. None of it seemed to make much sense to him. He doubted Tommy’s simple theory of the soldiers sleeping while on duty. There seemed to be a definite plan, but no matter how hard he tried, Al was unable to work it out.
“Yeah, but something tells me they’re not sleeping, Tommy.”
He was tempted to break radio silence and ask Harry stationed upon the wall whether he was able to see anything, but if anyone else was listening in their position could be compromised. No, he decided to avoid the temptation and call an end to the patrol. It was time for them to move back and accumulate whatever intelligence they had gathered, adding it to what Phil had been able to see from his over-watch position close to the FRV. They hoped that the soldiers back at the base listening in on the radios and watching from the towers had also managed to gain some information during their absence.
Tina had a feeling in her gut. She felt vulnerable and open to attack. It seemed almost as if they had been lured out from their base and into the open, attracted to that position by the blatant activities of the soldiers. Now, as the men they had been watching had faded into the shadows, she became nervous. She imagined scores of eyes watching her from their vantage points and waiting for the opportunity to spring their trap. A cold hand ran its icy fingers along the length of her backbone.
“I don’t like this,” she whispered.
“Me neither,” Al replied fl
atly as he looked out to their left and right, studying the lay of the ground. “It feels like a ‘come-on’ to me.”
He considered moving back, deeper into the built-up area, but that would mean travelling along an unproven route. They had no real idea of what lay to their rear and amongst the buildings on the outskirts of the town.
“This whole thing is beginning to feel like we’ve been stitched up. Like they wanted us to see them,” he grunted to the others as he thought more about how keenly they had set out on their patrol into an area where they were vulnerable and exposed. “Come on; let’s get going before all this turns into a gang-fuck.”
Al slowly raised himself to his feet and stepped out onto the narrow path that ran around the edge of the building they had been using for cover. They remained tucked away in the gloom and obscured by a row of leafless bushes that paralleled the road in front of them and kept them out of sight from the block of flats. Al turned and headed back towards Phil and the rendezvous point. Tina moved out, closely followed by Tommy, their weapons held at the ready and their eyes nervously scanning their surroundings.
Phil was still in position three-hundred metres further along the road and nestled amongst the trashed bedroom furniture of the house he had identified as a good over-watch position. He had a clear line of sight to the target from his vantage point, set back from the window and lurking in the shadows. He, too, had observed the soldiers on the roof for a number of hours, but as with Al and the others, they had abruptly vanished from his sights. Now, he sat watching the rest of his patrol from behind his rifle as they made their way towards him for the rendezvous. He watched their flanks for the infected, his finger gently touching the trigger, ready to fire in a spilt second should he identify a threat headed towards the others. He breathed slow and shallow, keeping the barrel of his sniper rifle perfectly still as he scanned the street.
They were now just one-hundred metres from the Final Rendezvous. Al was up in front, carefully patrolling forward and creeping between the dark recesses, using the shadowy outcrops of walls, doors, and mangled vehicles as cover. He was methodical in his movements and each step was placed with extreme caution, ensuring that he did not trip or create any noise, potentially alerting the thousands of wandering dead eyes that filled the streets around them.
He stopped and moved into a crouch, raising his rifle and pointing the barrel directly ahead of him. Tina and Tommy also halted and slowly lowered themselves into cover. Just a few metres away, a ghostly shape trundled through the rubble, tripping over debris and barely managing to remain upright as it crashed from one object to the next. Each sound that it made seemed to shatter the silence all around them. Its footsteps were heavy, and its snorting grunts rattled loudly in its throat. It soon became obvious to Al that the creature could not see where it was going. The dead, although always clumsy with their footing, were still capable of negotiating uneven ground. This one, however, was undoubtedly blind.
Al watched it as it limped and staggered across his path, oblivious to his close proximity. Then, he saw the other. Walking right beside it, on the opposite side from where Al was crouched, was a second figure. It was much smaller than the first and barely noticeable in the darkness. It stayed close to the larger body, as though it was using it for protection, or Al wondered, companionship. The thought seemed ludicrous to him, but as he continued to watch them, it began to seem distinctly possible. One thing that Al was sure of was that they were definitely travelling together for reasons that he could not understand.
They were now barely beyond an arm’s reach away, and as well as being able to smell them, he could make out some of the larger corpse’s features. In addition to being blind, it did not appear to have much left of its lower face. Its swollen, black tongue drooped out of the dark chasm where its mouth had once been and swayed with each step like the bloated tentacle of some creature from outer space. One of its arms was completely missing, and the other had been severed at the elbow. Without meaning to dwell upon the two figures in front of him, Al surmised that the two had more than likely known each other when they were alive, possibly parent and child, and they had remained together in death.
He squinted and saw something that made his stomach begin to knot and a silent gasp rise and become lodged in his throat. At first, he refused to believe what he was seeing, but the more he watched, the more his brain acknowledged what his eyes relayed. The smaller figure was unmistakably guiding the larger, holding onto its tattered jacket, and helping it to navigate through the hazardous wasteland.
He had never seen the dead act in such a way or even remotely acknowledge the existence of the other bodies moving around them. Al began to wonder just how conscious these creatures could be and even whether or not they were self-aware. The thought made him shudder internally.
Fleetingly, he considered stepping forward and ending their existence but thought better of it. The bodies had passed them by, and he could not risk drawing any unwanted attention for the sake of putting two of the infected out of their misery. But there was something else. In the two meandering and eternally bonded walking cadavers, he saw a glimmer of what they once were. They were human at one time, with their own thoughts, feelings, and desires. Their own personal dreams, wishes, and ambitions. Neither of them had wanted to die and return as one of the walking dead, yet the love they had shared in life evidently held them together even in death.
He slowly turned his head and glanced back to where Tommy and Tina squatted. He doubted whether they had seen the spectacle, but now was not the time to enlighten them or discuss the matter. He would keep it to himself for now and bring it up at a later date. Checking to his left and right to make sure that the immediate vicinity was clear, Al pushed himself upwards and carefully stepped forward again, continuing to lead their stealthy patrol back to the Final Rendezvous point.
A few minutes later, as the meeting point came into view, there was a faint popping noise far off to their rear, quickly followed by a low fizzing sound, similar to the noise made by a burning fuse. Deep in his mind, Al instantly recognised what the scratchy resonance meant, but the rest of his brain was slow to catch up and force his body into action. He turned and saw the shimmering trail of sparks soaring up into the black sky behind them, appearing like a dull comet streaking across the earth’s atmosphere. Anyone that did not know any better could have been forgiven for thinking that it was a firework being launched into the air, but Al knew that it would not result in an explosion of pretty colours and cascading tendrils of light. For a fraction of a second, as the dimly lit object rose higher above the houses and buildings, he felt his stomach knot and his feet become heavy.
“Down,” he hissed loudly, lunging to the side and taking cover amongst the rubble of a collapsed wall. “Get down.”
Tina and Tommy wasted no time in obeying his commands. They jumped into whatever cover was nearest to them, burying their faces into the ground to protect their eyes and burrowing their bodies into the earth, trying to get as low as possible before the area was suddenly transformed into daylight.
“Shit,” Tina rasped as she took cover and screwed her eyes shut.
She cringed, clutching her rifle close and waiting for the inevitable burst of light that would bathe them in its brilliance while they lay cowering in their inadequate cover. Her muscles contracted, and her scalp began to tingle as a flood of adrenaline soared through her veins. Their patrol was about to be compromised, and she knew what would follow.
The flare burst to life with a deep resounding pop, instantly covering the landscape with its eerie, white glow and causing the long reaching shadows of the scorched trees and lifeless buildings to dance across the ground. Night had suddenly been changed to day. Suspended below the small white parachute, the intensely burning magnesium of the flare oscillated across the night sky, being carried on the gentle wind as it drifted along, high above the rooftops. Al and the others sunk deeper into the dirt, pressing their bodies flat in an attempt to beco
me invisible and gain what cover they could. Every muscle and sinew became tauter with each anxious second that passed.
Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack…
All around them the air erupted with a sudden and devastating torrent of gunfire. Deafening cracks shattered the silence of the night, accompanied by hisses and heavy thumps as the storm of bullets smashed into the ground and buildings, snatching the breath from their lungs and threatening to implode their eardrums. Hundreds of rounds were sent whipping along the street, snapping at the air, and flinging up veils of dust and fragmented rock like murky fountains as the bullets ploughed into the churned earth. The speeding rounds struck the cars, scattered bricks, and chunks of concrete that littered the road while bright red tracers, zipping along close to the ground at lightning speeds, slammed into hard objects before ricocheting vertically into the dark sky.
“Contact rear, contact rear,” Al was screaming into his radio as a series of bullets chewed through the layer of bricks just above his head, showering him with dust and sharp fragments that nicked at his bare skin.
A cacophony of ear-splitting cracks, thumps, and snaps was being played out above the heads of Al, Tommy, and Tina. It was impossible to think of anything other than sinking into the earth, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the overwhelming fire that ripped through the space above their heads, just centimetres from where they lay. They were instantly pinned down and could not dare to raise their heads.
“Stay down,” someone was screaming from Tina’s left from within the crescendo of gunfire. She could not remember who was where as her head buzzed, filled with shock and terror, and struggling to make sense of what was happening. “Stay the fuck down.”
Her body was shaking uncontrollably, and her legs instinctively kicked against the dirt as her nerves and instincts took control of her actions, trying to burrow her deeper into the ground. She was howling like a demon, screaming up at the mind rattling noise and the pressure that pushed against her ears. The bullets, hundreds of them, shot through the air faster than the speed of sound, creating a vacuum that snapped angrily and in quick succession like a thousand whips being cracked in unison. She twisted her head and looked up. Tracer rounds, blazing and glowing red, were tearing through the air above the small crater in which she was hiding. They were relentless, unending, and forming a canopy of deadly projectiles that would keep her trapped within the shallow hole. Clouds of fine, disintegrating plaster, asphalt, and clods of earth showered over her as she huddled into cover. Her mind was frozen with fear as she curled her body into a tight ball, screwing her eyes shut while she screamed back at the roaring thunder.
