Death Tide

by Devon C. Ford

  It didn’t know how it knew, but some instinct or smell or other sense told it that this man was already dead and was simply not registering as food when there was moving prey nearby. But the body did present itself as a reliable handhold with which the crawling nightmare could haul itself over to fall on the three wounded men, who, as loud as their screams were, could not raise the alarm over the cacophony of war and flame and smoke.

  By the time those three men had bled to death from the cruel bites to their throats and forearms and wrists and hands and faces, the first soldier to have fallen prey opened its milky eyes and sat up to search for fresh meat of its own.

  “Attack rear! Attack rear!” came the panicked shout of one man, who was fumbling with the Sterling sub machine gun in his shaking hands. But his frantic shouts went unheard as he fell victim to his friend of many years, who in that instant, did not recognise him as anything but food.

  By the time the firing to the front had faded away and those soldiers at the front of the line, led by Lieutenant of Marines Chris Lloyd, had been reorganised and moved on to defend the beach, there were six fully-mobile zombies hunting men in the rear of their forces, thanks to the impossibly damaged remains of just one man. There were shouts and gunfire from the waterline below them, but the higher-pitched screams of women further up the island’s incline grabbed the attention of three of the zombies, who began shambling their way uphill and into the undefended streets filled with civilians.

  Cut off, under attack from the water and with a growing enemy gathering strength from within their own enclave, the people left behind on the island were doomed.

  TWO

  Peter and Amber had huddled together as an unseasonably chill wind ripped across the coastline. She had listened to the music on his cassette player until the batteries wore down, to then play the songs in slow-motion, she hugged the limp and dirty stuffed lamb up under her chin and sat in her characteristically quiet manner. It wasn’t cold inside their new home, even with having to leave a small window open so that the cat who had decided the two small humans belonged to it could come and go as it pleased. But the whistling wind made them both feel insecure and forced them upstairs, where they sat with their knees drawn up and quilts wrapped around them, just waiting for the night to end.

  Part of that collective feeling of unease was the hour of booming noise in the distance that began like thunder and ended like the ceaseless banging of multiple drums, until no single sound was distinguishable from another. Those sounds had dropped suddenly in their intensity, as though the bass drum had simply stopped working, then the other sounds faded away to echoes of nothing. Still, they sat quietly upstairs in the big house they had taken over and each drifted deep into their own thoughts before sleep took them.

  Peter replayed the events of that day over and over in his head, of how he had truly known terror like he had never experienced in his life when he thought that he had failed Amber, and that she would be killed by the zombie that had caught them unprepared in the house they were searching for supplies. He was sure, or at least he hoped, that she did not know how close she had come to being failed by him and being eaten; torn apart in blood and screams.

  He again thanked whatever it was up there looking out for him and giving him his streak of luck, which, he had to admit, was still teetering on the side of good, given that he, that they, were still alive.

  He had guessed that the rolling thunder was some form of battle raging in the distance, but since he felt he had no place among the grown-ups left behind after everything went wrong, he decided that seeking out their assistance wasn’t a priority for him and his ward.

  And, he thought logically, if the army, or whoever, are in the middle of a battle, then they’re probably worse off than we are.

  After they had made it back to their new place and dragged the last of four cartloads inside to stockpile their plundered resources, Peter had allowed himself to replay the recent events, and paid special attention to the minute details his mind conjured up about the last three monsters he had killed with his pitchfork and spike. Two of those, he hated to accept, were conquered by sheer luck.

  The female zombie who had walked into the house where he had first found Amber, the woman who used to be a nurse, or who at least dressed like one, had moved faster than he’d expected, and only his good fortune had pinned her snapping jaw shut as he missed her brain with the weapon. He had pulled his back-up, his spike made from an off-cut of the pitchfork, and he’d managed to kill it, but he’d felt then that it was too close for comfort. He hadn’t had time to consider the what-ifs of that scenario, because he had convinced the young girl to come with him and flee the village, ranging over low hills and fields until they found somewhere safer to be.

  The other two had been dispatched only hours before; the first a naked, bloated and repulsive creature rising from the low, green water of a brook. He’d been crossing the small bridge and had not even seen it until Amber’s curious and eerie warning had made him turn back to look at her. The memory brought with it the smell, and his stomach flipped angrily as it threatened to show him the can of soup he’d had earlier.

  Shaking that away, his mind brought back the slow-motion action replay of the last person, no, the last zombie, he had killed. That one terrified him the most, not for fear of his own violent death and dismemberment, but for the fact that the thing was reaching out for Amber when his run of good luck had struck again, and the tip of his pitchfork, thrust out ahead of him as he fell, punctured the spine of the thing and paralysed it from the neck down.

  Amber seemed unperturbed by this, and he reckoned that she didn’t know how close she had come to getting killed. He knew that she didn’t realise he had fallen over the raised edge of a rug and nearly ended her life through sheer clumsiness, and he had no plans to tell her. Ever.

  He’d been doing fine for a few weeks after his miserable existence on the family farm came to an uninspiring but utterly bowel-loosening, terrifying conclusion. He had been driven off his land by a crowd of zombies, a crowd larger than all the people he had ever seen before in one place together. He had been quietly going from house to house, moving at night and sneaking into the quaint country homes to eat whatever tinned food they had, and drink the water left in their taps. He didn’t understand why some houses still had running water when others did not, but in terms of priorities he decided that it didn’t really matter.

  That quiet drifting had lasted until he was woken one daytime by men in a car who had dragged away a woman from a cottage opposite his hiding place, leaving behind his new purpose in life in the form of a crying, terrified girl.

  He had been happy just looking after himself, but that existence had been pointless, other than to simply remain alive until something changed. As a rule, he avoided any other people, alive or dead, but now that he had a child to look after, he felt differently about everything.

  Amber, all four and three-quarter years old of her, was more than half of his own age, as he wouldn’t turn ten for another month, but that age difference was relative and circumstantial. He was old enough to protect her, so he did just that.

  Add to that the responsibility of the cat who had followed them for miles from their last hiding place, and his need to be on the lookout for cat food, as well as anything that could sustain them, and Peter felt in that moment more than a little overwhelmed by life.

  It had always been his sister who had looked out for him, who had protected him and not told him about the dangers of life, because he was too young to have to face them. Now, following that model, he became that person for Amber, who could not protect herself.

  Standing up as quietly as he could, because she had finally fallen asleep, Peter tiptoed down the stairs and into the dark, open-plan ground floor of the modern house. It was dark because they had tightly drawn all of the curtains on the front and upstairs rear of the house, leaving the long, wide picture windows of the kitchen uncovered as that was overlooked by nothi
ng, and he’d decided it was safe to leave that way.

  A small window beside the back door, one high up and too small for a person to climb through, was left open as a means for their four-legged follower to use as access. Pet wasn’t the right word for it, as no person can ever claim to truly own a cat, as the species practically invented the word capricious. Nevertheless, it had followed them and stayed with them, if only for the fact that Peter used the magic tin opener and fed the black and brown cat a meal that it didn’t have to hunt first, while avoiding the foul-smelling, slow-moving humans who seemed to want to grab it every time they saw it. Peter was happy for the cat because each night they had been together, it had reappeared at some point and was always curled up on or next to Amber whenever they woke.

  When it realised they were awake, it would purr loudly, like marbles rolling around inside a hard leather case, and it would nuzzle the girl until she giggled.

  The sound of her laugh cut through his soul every time he heard it, as though that sound alone was the only thing worth going through their daily routine for.

  As soon as he walked into the kitchen and gently turned the tap to run cold water into a glass, a noise sounded at the window and Peter’s head whipped to the side to see the animal teetering on the frame, half in and half out of the house. It meowed at him, rolling the sound into a chirping gargle before dropping down with a thud onto the worktop and then to the floor in stages as it trotted to his feet with a raised tail curled over at the tip like a question mark. The rattling purr wound up to full intensity and he stepped carefully over the cat to pick up a tin of the smelly meat chunks in gravy, and he opened it to stop the noise and the nagging which snaked between his ankles in a ceaseless figure-eight.

  He put the dish on the kitchen bench and watched as the cat sniffed at the meal, then looked back at him to emit a croaky meow and step lightly to the tap which was still dripping from when he’d run himself the glass of water. It fussed at the tip of the tap, turning its head and licking at it to force a small dribble of liquid to run out, which it lapped at.

  “You thirsty?” Peter asked it, speaking more to himself, but seeing the cat respond to his words with another chatter of dry-throated meowing. He opened three cupboards in turn, looking for something appropriate and finding a small, glass cooking dish which he filled with water from the tap. The cat stepped with one paw onto his forearm to begin drinking as the tap still ran and made it awkward for Peter to hold the dish until he managed to put it down near the food.

  He watched, sipping his own water, as the cat lapped desperately at the cool liquid to slake a thirst the boy hadn’t thought to predict. When it had finished, it sat down and wiped a paw over its face to clear away the droplets attached to the fur on its snout, before dropping down again to trot across the tiled floor, tail raised in the characteristic curl, and up out of the window again.

  Peter thought about the brook and the only natural source of water he had seen in the small village, deciding that the cat probably didn’t want to drink from it because of the rotten corpse contaminating it.

  He took his water to the wide corner settee in the open lounge area, shrouded in late afternoon gloom with the curtains drawn, and he sat. The thunder, or the guns as he had guessed they were, had stopped hours since to leave a menacing memory, and the air outside had taken on an ominous silence, with the exception of the gusts of wind which howled in fits and bursts. He knew he would have to wake Amber up soon, to make her some food from their newly-acquired stocks that were piled neatly on the kitchen benches in order of category.

  As long as they didn’t attract the attention of any crowds of the monsters passing through, and as long as none of the other houses in the village held unwelcome surprises of more than one or two, or worse still, the faster ones who seemed to collect a gang of the others around them, he guessed they could stay there for weeks.

  If they were lucky.

  THREE

  Corporal Daniels, sitting inside the ungainly but more spacious static armoured vehicles, their remaining Sultan, tried repeatedly to get a response on the radio until a hand rested on his arm. Turning to the big man in the small seat beside him, his Squadron Sergeant Major shook his head once at him. The sudden silence was replaced by a muted and weak banging sound from outside their hull, making the four men crammed inside freeze and listen. A faint moan drifted to them, telling them instantly what was outside, looking for a way in.

  Their mixed convoy now comprised a single tracked Spartan, their command vehicle of the Sultan with its oddly configured taller profile, two of the brutish and rugged Saxons, which contained Maxwell and his two crews from the abandoned Spartans, and a four-man Special Air Service patrol, as well as their four remaining Fox armoured cars of Strauss’ One Troop.

  Thirty-one men, squeezed into eight of their original ten vehicles and dangerously short on ammunition after pouring lead into the disgusting, roiling mass of decaying bodies, now sat in silence inside their armoured hulls, and they waited. Waiting was something they were accustomed to, only not in those specific circumstances. Anyone in any branch of the military would be intimately acquainted with the concept of hurrying up and waiting, but none had ever faced any concept of danger anywhere near their current stress levels.

  They waited for an order, waited for something to do and to feel useful. The sounds of moans and bodies bumping into their vehicles echoed and sowed the seeds of panic and fear amongst them. Only a few men held their nerve convincingly, and four of those were in the rear of one Saxon personnel carrier. Major Downes, officer commanding the SAS patrol and referred to simply as Boss by his three men, regarded the rest of his small detachment.

  Mac had his eyes closed, but Downes knew he would not be sleeping. Even if he was, he knew that the man would come awake instantly and be fully combat effective inside of a second. Beside him, and similarly motionless, was Smiffy, and to Downes’ left was Dez, who was slowly and quietly checking the action of the dismounted general purpose machine gun, or gimpy, taken from one of the abandoned Spartans. He evidently liked the weapon, but being the patrol’s demolitions expert, it came as no surprise that he held a reverence bordering on an inappropriately romantic involvement with a weapon so capable of destruction. His fingers ran over the linked ammunition for it with a light caress; part technical assessment and part suspect eroticism.

  The weapon was undoubtedly a serious piece of kit, and indeed their own vaunted regiment had demonstrated that a single belt of two hundred rounds of the heavy 7.62 ammunition could be used to create a doorway in a brick wall. In polar-opposite contrast, their personal weapons were the small-calibre suppressed version of Germany’s best mass-produced sub machine gun, the Heckler & Koch MP5SD. Spitting their lethally accurate 9mm projectiles with a coughing sound and able to fire in single shot, three-round burst and fully automatic modes, it made them a perfect weapon for close-quarters battle with the undead, who seemed to demonstrate an unnerving ability to locate their prey by sound alone.

  The noises made by the few undead pawing over their vehicles outside didn’t bother them as it wasn’t their problem to deal with yet, but that wasn’t to say that they weren’t aware of the threat, in case it became their focus in the near future.

  In the command vehicle directly behind them, Captain Palmer and Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson exchanged a look. It was instigated by the young officer, and it asked for ideas as to what the hell they should do next.

  They were desperately low on ammunition, unable to raise anyone on the island or anywhere else for that matter, and they had to make a decision. That decision hinged on whether the island had been overrun or not, but to find out they would be forced to leave the safety of their armour.

  Using the viewports available to him, Palmer tried to count how many Screechers, as their detachment of mixed forces called them, were in their immediate area.

  “Retreat a few hundred metres,” Johnson suggested in a low voice, seeing no response to his word
s from the officer, other than his fingers moving to switch the channels on his radio to address the convoy.

  “Withdraw, minimum three hundred metres,” he ordered, hearing the engines of the different vehicles bark and growl into whistling, clattering life as gears engaged with heavy, mechanical, clunking noises and engine pitches rose to a high whistle before they performed turns and drove away from the wide swathes of broken dead.

  Sergeant Strauss, commanding the Fox scout car at the rear of the column, pointed out a raised bluff of ground ahead and to their right, which could accommodate his troop to provide all-around cover. Occupying that position, alien to the warfare he had trained for, to give any attacking force a clear view of their silhouettes, but far more sensible for fighting the new biting, unthinking infantry they had been forced to rapidly adapt to, Strauss opened his hatch and scanned the landscape below them.

  The scene was utterly repulsive and stomach-churning. It was horrifying to behold the incredible, destructive power of their guns, which had spread shattered and ruined bodies over almost a mile of flat ground, all the way to the huge mounds of zombies

  laid to waste by the combined might of tanks and shore

  bombardment. Strauss was torn between a perverse pride in what they could do against vast numbers of enemy infantry, and yet simultaneously sickened by the unnecessary waste of life. His only blessing, he knew from unwelcome experience, was that he was not close enough to truly experience the smell.

  Physically shaking his head to force his thoughts to return to the task in hand, he transmitted a report for the benefit of their commanders below.

  “Approx. thirty Screechers in close,” he said, estimating the numbers of undead who had shambled their way towards the retreating armour, “no Limas.”