by Frank Tayell
I kept crawling, my hands constantly searching out for gaps through which I could squeeze. Then I heard the sound of a body hitting gravel. The undead must have reached the grounds and the snipers must have seen Them. Perhaps they thought I was dead, perhaps they hoped the undead heading towards the maze would flush me out. Either way I knew I was no longer the focus of their attention. I waited until I heard another body thump to the ground, then I stood up and half dived, half fell through that hedge and the next and the next, until I fell flat on cool grass.
I picked myself up and hurried across the parched meadow that had once been a manicured lawn. I kept my eyes fixed on the house, holding my breath, gritting my teeth against the pain I knew must come when the bullet hit. But it didn't. I made it to the wall.
Standing with my back against it, I listened. I heard more gravel scatter, as another body fell. I gave a silent cheer. I was safe. Relatively speaking, of course. It sounded as if the undead were approaching from the same direction I had left my bike, which meant that I was leaving the Manor on foot. It dawned on me that with my pike broken, still wrapped in my jacket at the centre of the maze, I would also be leaving virtually unarmed.
I checked my belt. I had my hatchet and chisel and an empty water bottle. I was still wearing my pack, with a day's worth of food left, the laptop, the hard drive, the first volume of my journal, a rope and a few other essential supplies. All in all it wasn't much, but it was enough. I could find another bicycle, I could find more tools and make another weapon, I just had to get away.
I crept along the wall, listening carefully now to the noises around me, expecting at any moment to hear the sound of the approaching undead. When I heard a soft scratching sound, it took me a moment to realise it was coming from inside the Manor, from a room just a few windows away. I slowed as I got closer, and I saw that one set of windows was boarded up, not from the inside like the others, but from the outside.
Someone, or something, was trying to lever a window open. One of the undead, perhaps, trapped in the room for some macabre purpose. It had heard my approach and was now scrabbling at the glass, scraping at the paintwork, trying to get out. Except, what zombie would do that? Wouldn't it just hit at the glass until it broke? It made no sense. Then I heard a more familiar sound. The undead were coming. They were close.
I stopped a couple of yards away from the window. The sounds inside ceased but the sounds of the approaching zombies were getting closer. Whatever was inside, I didn't want to know. I was more than half way around the building, in a spot as good as any other. I braced myself and got ready to dash to the tree-line. It was, I judged, less than two hundred yards away, if I could just...
“Hello?” a voice called from inside the room. A woman's voice. I paused. “Hi.” The voice came again, slightly louder this time.
“Hi?” I replied and then closed my mouth, unsure what to say next, uncertain even how to say it.
“Can you help me?” the woman asked.
“You were shooting!” I replied, the words barrelling out in a rushed slur.
“You think if I had a gun I'd be trying to break out of here?” That was a fair point. I was having difficulty processing all of this, though. People, conversation, they're not what I’m used to.
“Would you mind?” There was an edge of impatience in her voice. “Let me expand on that. Would you mind levering off the board blocking this window?”
“Right. Sorry. Yes.” I said, still off balance. I took out the chisel, raised it to the board covering the window frame and hesitated. I tried to work out whether or not she was a prisoner. If she was, should I let her out? The other windows were all boarded up from the inside, but if she was in league with the...
“Whenever you're ready.” This time the impatience was coupled with sarcasm. That sealed it, I don't know why, but there's just something trustworthy about anyone who can be sarcastic in the face of adversity. I pushed the chisel into the gap between the wooden board and the window, hammering it into place with the hatchet.
“I meant quietly!” she hissed. “I assumed you'd understand.”
“No time,” I said. “Zombies.” I heaved at the chisel, levering the board back. I repeated the action on the other corner. In the distance another body thumped to the ground, somewhere far closer I heard the shuffling dragging step of a foot on gravel.
I had both of the corners free, and began to pull and tug at the bottom of the board until there was a foot wide gap. I reached as high as I could and hammered the chisel in once more. There was another thump. I started counting.
The nails gave and the board fell to the ground. Now all that was between us was the glass window.
“Stand back,” I said. It was too dark to see, I just had to hope that she'd heard me. I swung the hatchet at the window. It broke. The tinkling of glass on the floor of the room seemed to echo all around the grounds.
“Well,” I said. “Climb out.”
“Can't. Chains. Wouldn't get far,” she replied, stepping closer to the window. Under the reflected moonlight, I glimpsed an unkempt, haggard face. “Here, give me that.” Her hand snaked out and snatched the hatchet.
I stood there, uncertain. Then there was a shot and the sound of a bullet hitting stone, but there was no corresponding thump of a body falling. I peered out into the night, wishing she'd hurry up. It was fifteen seconds before the next shot, and again it was a miss. The snipers had switched. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't like it though.
“Hurry,” I said, turning back to the room, but it was too dark, too filled with shadows to make out more than her outline.
“Stand by the window,” she hissed back. “Get ready.”
I couldn't see what she was doing, nor could I hear any sound of her breaking whatever chains were holding her. Unsure what I was getting ready for and because I had no better plan, I did what she said.
Close by, I heard the tread of a foot on dry grass. I turned to stare out into the night just as the door to the room opened. The light of a torch shone out onto the back of my head and out around the window frame, into the night. Behind me, I heard a meaty thwock, and a man screamed, but I didn't turn to look. Before the light disappeared, as the torch was dropped, it had illuminated a zombie, less than three feet away from me.
The torchlight had taken away my night vision. I was blind. I swung the chisel in a violent sweeping arc in front of me. Left to right. There was a second wet crunching sound from inside and the screaming stopped. Right to left, left to... It scored against something soft. I swiped again, slightly lower, and the chisel jarred against flesh. I pulled my hand back, ready to thrust it forward into where I thought the zombie's face was, but then it was on me.
Its mouth clamped down on my wrist. The chisel fell from my grasp. I pounded my free hand down on its skull. I pushed and I shoved and I pulled my wrist free. I grabbed at the creature, my hand closed around a handful of dank rotting hair. I twisted my grip, half turned and slammed its head into the brick wall of the house, again and again and again until it stopped moving.
I felt around on the ground for the chisel, found it, stood and listened for the next creature. Torchlight came through the window to illuminate the grounds. I turned.
“You al...” the woman began, then the torch in her hand shone down on my wrist. “Oh, hell,” she murmured softly.
“What?” I looked down at my wrist. The bite wasn't that deep. “It's OK. I've had worse.”
She looked at me with an expression of pitying disbelief. Then I realised why.
“No, really it's OK. I’m immune,” I said into the silence, as I fumbled in my pockets for a bandage. I tied it off. It was a crude affair but sufficient for the moment. Then I rolled up the sleeve of my other arm. “There, see,” I said, and waited until the torch was shining on the unmistakable, though no longer fresh, teeth marks. “So...” I waited a moment. “Look, this isn't the time to explain more. Help me in, or I’m clearing off.” I tried to say it bluntly, but eve
n to my ears it sounded petulant.
“I'm Kim. That's Cannock,” she said, pointing the torch at the body when I was inside in the room. His right hand, still gripping a pistol, was almost severed at the wrist, a thin strip of flesh and gristle all that kept it attached. “Sanders is the one upstairs,” she added, as she bent down over the body.
The scream must have come after that first blow nearly severed his wrist. The second blow had killed him. The hatchet was still embedded deep in the man's skull.
“Is there anyone else here?” I asked.
“No. Just them and me,” she replied, as she fished in the dead man's pockets. She pulled out a set of keys. That was when I first looked at her. It was too dark to make out her features, but I could see that her clothes were ragged, torn and ripped into wretched shapelessness. Around each ankle was a pair of handcuffs, cuffed together in the middle.
“Who was he?” I asked.
“Cannock? Ex-military. Or claimed to be. He was a good shot, so who knows. Sanders... He's just...” she unlocked the cuffs. “He's...” she stalled again, unable to find words to describe the man upstairs.
I looked around the room. It was beyond Spartan, it was bare. There was no furniture, not even a blanket. There was nothing to secure the window with and nothing to keep us here a moment longer.
“Come on,” I said. “We should go.” I walked over to the window. With the torchlight flickering around the room it was difficult to see far, but I could just make out the slow moving silhouettes making their way towards us. “Not this way,” I muttered. “Sanders, he's in one of the bedrooms?”
“Top floor. Corner bedroom,” she said, bending over the body once more. She gripped the hatchet and tugged at it. It came free with a sucking wet sound unlike anything I had heard from the bodies of the undead.
I didn't like the feeling of being unarmed. I walked over to the corpse stepped on the hand until the fingers popped, and the gun was released. I picked it up. It felt unfamiliar, flimsy compared to the hefty weight of the weapons I had grown used to.
“I think there's a back door,” I said, “in the kitchens on the other side of the building. We should be able to get out there.”
I’m not leaving Sanders here,” she said.
“You want him to...” I stopped. I was going to ask if she wanted him to come with us, but I could see in her eyes that was not what she meant.
I don't know why I stayed. Why I didn't just find a door and leave. It would have been easy. It would have been sensible. But I didn't. I moved the pistol into the torchlight, and checked where the safety-catch was.
“You know how to use that?” she asked. I hesitated and looked down at the gun. It was an automatic, the same kind I had found in the cottages at Grange Farm next to the former police sergeant who had died from the vaccine. I knew the theory well enough, but except for firing a shotgun at clay pigeons, theory was all I knew.
“Swap?” I suggested.
The hatchet was heavier than the gun, but it was a reassuring, almost comforting, weight. We left the room, closing the door quietly behind us. Now that we were inside the Manor silence descended and with it came a realisation of what it was I was about to do, what I had to do.
I have killed the undead, and these days I have few qualms about it, for I no longer see Them as human, but I have not killed another person. Until a few months ago it would have been unthinkable, since then I have had neither the reason nor the opportunity. Inside my head played the perennial parliamentary debates about reasonable force, and the differences between self-defence and murder. I shook my head, trying to rid it of those unhelpful thoughts. I tried to focus on the journey, on moving stealthily, on each step, one at a time, and not on its terminal conclusion.
Halfway along the corridor Kim pointed at a section of wall. I looked back at her, puzzled. It seemed identical to all the others, until she pushed at an otherwise nondescript wooden panel. A door swung open revealing a hidden staircase. I was almost shocked. I'd always taken the stories about the secret passages to be no more true than those of the monster which lived in the lake.
Kim raised her finger to her lips, pointed at the stairs, then raised a hand with all fingers extended, then lowered it, then raised it again another eight times, then once with only three fingers showing. Forty eight stairs. She turned off the torch.
I stepped in front of her, to go up the stairs first. Though it was almost impossible to see in the near darkness I think she rolled her eyes when I took the lead. As we climbed, I began to hear more clearly the sounds from the sniper's nest. There was a click-clack each time the gun was reloaded. There was an odd muffled bump of wood against wood, an occasional flat tinkling as a spent cartridge fell to the floor, all against an incongruous, off-key humming.
I had to feel for the stairs with my hands. We reached a landing. The stairs twisted and climbed once more. Another landing, another twist and with each step upwards the noise from the room grew. After the last twist, the stairway was illuminated by the thin ray of light flickering through the gap in the door, now only a few steps away.
Kim tapped on my ankle, once, twice. I don't know whether she was indicating that she was right behind me or telling me to hurry up. I ignored her.
I waited until I heard the soft thud of the rifle's recoil and a triumphant hiss. Then I pushed the door open and half fell, half ran into the room.
In such a silent world I'd misjudged how far those little sounds had carried. The bedroom was far longer than I had thought. Sanders, half turning towards me, was still a good dozen feet away.
His expression, illuminated by a sputtering oil lantern on the floor, seemed determined as he swung the rifle towards me. I was ten feet away when he levelled the barrel of the gun at my chest. Eight as his lips curled in sneering triumph. Seven when he pulled the trigger. Six when he realised the gun wasn't loaded. Five when I twisted my arm behind me. Four when he let go of the rifle and reached for his belt. Three when my arm reached the top of its arc. Two when it came down on his neck.
His scream was terrible. The wound was fatal. In our old world it wouldn't have been, but here, now, where medical treatment is limited to bandages and antiseptic, he would die a long slow death. I remember thinking that, as I stared at him screaming and convulsing on the floor. The axe had dug into his shoulder, breaking the bone. From the way the blood was bubbling up around the blade, it must have nicked his lung.
There was a concussive explosion from behind me. Sanders slumped to the ground, dead, a bullet hole in his forehead. The headphones he'd been listening to fell out, and the room, now seemed to fill with the sound of tinny thrash metal.
“It's over,” Kim said, before dropping the gun and collapsing to the floor.
12:00, 26th June.
After Kim collapsed last night I didn't really know what to do. Unable to lift her, and unsure where I would carry her to even if I could, I covered her with a duvet. I threw a blanket over the corpse and picked up the mp3 player. As I turned it off, I saw that a corner of the room was littered with discarded smart phones, mp3 players, tablets and laptops. Going by the number of devices and variety of brands, they must have been taken from every house in the neighbourhood and beyond.
I was thirsty. I was hungry too, but I’m used to putting hunger to one side. I glanced around and saw a porcelain jug of clearish liquid by the table. I lifted it and took a sniff. It was water, but not fresh. Probably, it came from the lake. Would Sanders and Cannock have thought to have boiled it? I put the jug down and glanced around. There was a cooler by the bed. I rooted around in it and found a solitary bottle of iced-tea.
Unscrewing the cap, I walked over to the window and peered out. Perhaps it's the lack of light pollution, but the moon seems brighter these days. I could clearly make out the individual zombies heading down the drive towards the house. The sound of the two men's screams, the single, unmuffled shot, and the constant thumping of bodies hitting the ground, all put together it had been enough to
summon the undead from miles around. There weren't enough to call it a pack, let alone a horde, but enough that I was beginning to feel that familiar sense of being under siege.
I lifted the rifle and peered down at Them. Through the green and white magnification They resembled nothing more than a ghoulish parody of the horror They represented. My injured arm began to twitch with pain. I set the rifle down and picked up the torch, intending to go and ensure the house was secure. I walked over to Sanders' body. I hesitated. I couldn't face the idea of retrieving the hatchet. Instead I picked the pistol up from the floor, telling myself that it was better, that if I needed to use it, the sound would wake Kim. I didn't believe the lie.
I went back downstairs, slowly, listening out with each step, but all I could hear was the creaking of wood and the sound of my own laboured breathing. I found the door to Kim's cell easily enough. It was still closed. Standing with my ear pressed against the wood, I thought I could hear the undead outside, pawing at the broken window frame. I looked around for something to barricade the door with, just in case. There was an abundance of ornamental furniture dotted along the corridor. Ornately embroidered chairs that were never meant to be sat on, well-polished benches and delicately engraved cabinets containing now worthless antiques.
I half carried and half dragged them all over to the doorway. The barrier was up to chest height before I realised how stupid I was being. They can't climb, so there was no way that They were going to get through the broken window. If the zombies did, then the door wouldn't open unless They were able to turn the ceramic door knob. If They managed that, then since the door opened inwards, then all They would need to do to get through the barricade is push. That is something the undead do well.
