by Glynn James
Two stupid mistakes that Jameson was doing his best to focus on, but it was hard to ignore the basic fact that something – one of them – had gotten through the net that had been dropped around Folkestone. It had to be a fast one to have gotten away before they closed in, which meant trouble, a lot of trouble.
There was also the profoundly unsettling fact that Canterbury was scarcely sixty miles from London. Even on a tiny island like this, that was nothing. It certainly wasn’t enough buffer between the planet-wide surging hordes of the dead and humanity’s last stand. Hitler on his most ambitious day never dreamed of such a thing.
But all that definitely didn’t bear thinking about. And Jameson had to keep his mind focused on his immediate task.
The rolling fields of Kent flashed by the heavy all-terrain vehicle (ATV), the first in a line of over twenty vehicles, Vikings and WMIK Land Rovers, all rammed full of his Marines out of Risborough, reinforced by infantry from the Harbour barracks. The drivers were pushing these ungainly things to their limits.
Five minutes, he estimated. Just five minutes and they would be treading concrete on the streets of Canterbury, hunting down whatever was causing chaos there. It would be simple for the infantry from Harbour, they would be tasked with roadblocks and border checks, basically pulling perimeter security, and would soon be joined by at least two other regiments to put a stranglehold on the downtown area.
The Risborough Royal Marines – his men – would get the real job of hunting down the enemy. Under normal circumstances he might feel a rush of adrenaline at this thought, and might be psyched to the maximum by the time they got there, but the problem wasn’t fighting Zulus.
No, it was fighting Zulus from his hometown that Jameson had a problem with.
Boy
Deep footprints in the dirt marked the way he walked down the road to town. The old track had been there for decades, but had been mostly unused, and somewhat overgrown, until the boy and his parents had arrived.
He hated living in the damn woods, he hated the isolation, and he usually hated his parents. Lately, it seemed, he pretty much hated everything. Two years had taken its toll, as had the utter lack of anything to look forward to.
All he could do was look back.
Just as he had started getting somewhere in school, just when he actually managed to make a few friends who didn’t try to beat him down each day… also, there had been the girl, Andrea, whose attention he thought he had finally caught… And then everything had gone to complete shit. To make matters worse, he knew his mother, the über-capable police officer, looked at him with thinly-veiled disappointment. She seemed to know everything about survival.
But what did she know about her own son? Nothing.
And his father could be even worse, as everyone had seen just now. He hardly seemed aware of the situation they were living in – and he certainly didn’t regard his son as a complete person who could help the family survive. All that was bad enough.
But that he’d humiliated him in front of Juice and the other commandos burned like acid.
He continued to trudge along the path, not particularly taking in his surroundings. He’d walked this way so many times, it was all familiar to him, and none of the dead came this way. Their place was so remote.
That was another thing that drove him crazy. Being so far away from the town, from anything else, from anyone his own age. At his stage of life, pretty much the last people on Earth he wanted to hang out with were his own parents.
Unfortunately, his parents might actually be the last people on Earth.
He knew why the remoteness was necessary. His mother never let him forget it for a second – with her chiding, and her reminders about avoiding noise and light. And about never going too far alone.
Especially not to town.
It wasn’t until he could see the back of the first building through the trees that his nerves started to tingle. The dead were everywhere that people had been, and there would certainly be some of them down there now, hidden amongst the overgrown and crumbling ruins of the town.
I shouldn’t be down here. I know I shouldn’t be down here. But I just don’t give a damn right now…
They didn’t scare him, the dead. They were just lumps of lifeless meat wandering aimlessly. And if you kept your distance, and kept quiet, they usually didn’t even notice you. Brainless, stupid, robotic. He knew how to handle them. And if one of them came near him now, it wouldn’t matter. He had the shotgun clenched tightly in both hands, and felt a deep satisfaction at its touch. The cold metal somehow made him feel stronger.
Even with that, he knew that this was probably the worst idea he’d had in a long time. As much as his mother harped on at him to be careful, and as much as he hated how she did that, he knew deep down that she was right.
Of course, that was what infuriated him most of all.
She was always right.
But some part of him needed to do this. To prove to himself and, okay, to the soldiers, that he could handle himself. If he came back with the timing belt they needed, if he got out from underneath his mother and father, maybe they’d be impressed. Maybe they’d take notice – and not laugh at him, as so many of the other kids in school had. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure why he looked back so fondly on his old life; maybe it just looked good by comparison. He needed to look forward now. His parents would never see him as more than a child.
And, even though he knew it was a fantasy, he couldn’t help fantasizing: if he completed this mission on his own, maybe the soldiers might take him with them, and he could get the hell out of this dead place.
That would be something.
* * *
The truck wasn’t far or hard to find, parked out front on the main road, near the northern end. The dead were all on the other side of town, at the church; he’d figured out that much from the adults’ conversation. Now was the perfect time. He would be in there, snag the belt, and be gone in just a few minutes.
A cold wind blew through the buildings as he approached the back of the nearest house. His stomach churned like it was full of bugs. Why? He’d been this way before, even at night, and there was still daylight now. So what if it had always been with his mother? He no longer needed her to watch over him, to tell him when he was doing something wrong.
The house at the end of the street was one of the newest in town. He’d seen it often enough. Now, two years in, with its broken windows, its overgrown back garden, the peeling white paint, it didn’t look so new. He knew that the front door would sometimes swing in the wind and bang against the cracked frame, and he knew that the front porch, a thing that defied gravity by clinging on to just a few rusted nails, would creak and sway. One day he would walk down here and find it had collapsed, but not today. As he crept alongside the house and into the street, he saw that it was still hanging in there.
The end of the road was a cul-de-sac with four houses facing onto the small, round patch of cracked and weed-riddled tarmac, all of them in a state of disrepair and degradation that seemed to have progressed more rapidly here than elsewhere. His mother said they had been holiday homes, thrown up on the cheap and offered at extortionate prices. She and his father had carefully surveyed the town and its occupants, before buying the plot to build their cabin on.
The boy stood by the fence for a minute or so, waiting and watching, looking up the road toward the church. He couldn’t see the it from here – too many buildings in the way – but he knew the direction it lay in, and he squinted in the late-afternoon light, trying to see if there was any movement.
Nothing.
He moved across the road as quickly as he could, and started to make his way up the main street. With every footfall on the ground he told himself that he was one step nearer. He passed a dozen houses before the buildings began to close in. This section of the street was mainly shops, or had been shops. He remembered visiting them when he was younger: the bakery, the general store. Now every one of them
had broken windows – gaping holes, dark even in the daytime, that set his nerves on fire. Any one of them could conceal a mass of the dead.
But he knew differently. There were some of them in the buildings, of course, but those still left were trapped in rooms, forever unable to escape – well, maybe not forever. They might break down a wall or a door eventually, but for now they were going nowhere. Some of the things were strong enough to break through wooden walls and windows, but not the pathetic ones trapped in these streets.
Finally, as he passed what used to be a bar and grill, he spotted the Ford pickup. It was parked as it had been for two years, half on and half off the pavement, both front doors wide open. The hood was already popped as well – this would not be the first replacement part they had scavenged from this vehicle.
Unfortunately, the original driver was also still in his seat. Whenever they passed this way, the boy always looked at that driver with his empty chest cavity, eaten through all the way to the back of his ribcage. His parents said that there would be hundreds of millions of them wandering North America now, but when he saw what was left of that man it always made him think they were wrong. Half their estimate, maybe, but the other half? He thought the other half had become food.
When he reached the vehicle he stood up straight and looked around, making one last check before he propped the Mossberg against the side of the truck. He kept glancing at it as he worked, missing its heavy, cold touch and constantly paranoid that he would turn back to see the gun was gone.
For God’s sake. I’m as paranoid as my mom.
He pushed the thought away and went to work, leaning in under the hood and peering in at the engine, and his goal – the timing belt.
I knew it. Perfect condition. And she doubted me. As always.
He worked as quickly as he could, pushing aside the hoses in his way, and forcing the belt’s heavy rubber away from each of the pulleys that it wound around. For one panicked moment he thought that it was trapped, and that it was too tight to remove, but then one of the pulleys clicked and moved; some sort of tension switch. The belt went loose and he easily unwound it. Finally, after a few minutes longer than intended, he hauled the thing out and held it up in triumph.
And, somehow, the hood slammed closed.
Shit.
He scanned the gloom down and across the road. Sure enough, some of them had been roused by the noise. It looked like two or three were now perked up, and shambling his way. They were also starting to make noise – which the boy knew would bring others. This was scary, but it was okay. All he had to do was hightail it.
He knew he could outrun them.
He pocketed the belt, hefted the shotgun, and turned on his heel. But he’d only taken two steps when he heard other footfalls behind him – approaching fast.
Way too fast.
Steeling himself, he spun around while raising the shotgun and bringing it to his shoulder. Over his sights he saw one of them, closing terribly quickly. It moved with a speed and a fury that the boy had never seen, its torn clothing actually flapping behind in its slipstream. Yes, he had seen the fast ones, and even seen his mother kill a pair of them. They were pretty frightening, and may have been quick, but they were just as predictable in their movements as the slow-moving ones. But this one was different. The boy sensed this immediately.
I can’t outrun this one.
He had half a second to consider all this before he pulled the trigger. He had expected the creature to clamber around the truck to get to him, but it did something he hadn’t anticipated; it leaped up onto the hood, scrambled over the top of it, and then dove, arms outstretched and reaching for him.
The shotgun went off with a shuddering boom and the hurtling corpse came apart in mid-air. The shot was low, and while the pelvis of the creature vanished in a spray of black gunk and lumps of flesh and bone, and the legs dropped off, the top half carried on, smashing into him and sending him backwards, shocked, to collide with a rusted-out newspaper box behind him.
He felt a sharp pain in his upper thigh and, as the nightmare creature flailed at him, he scrambled frantically away, pulling the shotgun behind him. The legless monstrosity began to drag itself across the sidewalk with its fingernails, and the boy lurched to his feet and lined up a second shot. Boom! The head disappeared, and with it the threat.
Feeling again the burning in his leg, he put his hand down and felt warmth and wetness. For a moment he stared dumbfounded at the dark red blood on his hand when he drew it away. He looked frantically at the sharp corners of the newspaper box, then back at the dead thing with its claws. For a moment his stomach lurched and he thought he would vomit, but a deep breath calmed him.
And he saw the slow-moving ones – still locked onto him, and much closer now than they had been.
The boy hefted the shotgun, turned around, and got himself moving again. Another sharp twinge of pain seared his leg as he put weight on it. Scanning the street over his shoulder, he saw that not only were the first few still coming toward him – but more were appearing behind them. The shotgun blasts had woken the town. Now every corpse there was focused on him.
I have to get out of here. Before more like that one turn up, and they’re too fast to lose…
He limped frantically toward the head of the dirt road.
Shut the Damn Gate
Amarie’s daughter Josie woke up whimpering, the sound of the sirens startling her, but her mother was there so quickly the child barely had the chance to build up to full-on wailing cry.
Amarie spoke to her softly, holding the little girl close as she opened the door of the tiny flat and carried her out into the hallway.
Already other doors were opening, and as Amarie stepped out into the hallway the one directly opposite opened, and Alderney, the aging shopkeeper who had been Amarie’s self-appointed support throughout their time in the Channel Tunnel, rushed toward her.
“What is with the siren?” she asked, her eyes wide and her heart beating as she rocked Josie in her arms.
“It may just be a drill,” said Alderney as he rushed past, heading for the stairwell.
Amarie followed, and soon there were a dozen of the Tunnel survivors heading down the stairs to the ground floor. They were quickly joined by others, including Hackworth, the middle-aged Englishman who had been on holiday in France when the outbreak had started, and who had been the group’s informal leader during the two years they had spent in the dark. By the time he opened the front door of the building, all the occupants – the entire surviving group from the Tunnel – were together on the ground floor. The group’s survival instincts, it seemed, would never leave them.
The tenement building was old, one of the oldest structures not in the Canterbury town center. It was set twenty feet back from the main road, and had a yard at the front surrounded by a five-foot stone wall. The Folkestone military commander – Amarie had forgotten his name – had insisted that the entire group be housed together and in a place that was suitable as a soft quarantine. The tenement was the best they could find.
Colley, a dark-skinned Moroccan man of immense size, followed Hackworth out into the yard, and together they rushed to the main gate. The big man was already wielding a large wood axe, but this didn’t surprise Amarie. They had been strictly forbidden any weapons inside the quarantine, but Colley was a very resourceful man – and the one most responsible for the plan to construct the barricades inside the Tunnel that had kept them alive. He was Hackworth’s right hand – and a heavy, massive hand it was.
“They said we shouldn’t be opening the doors,” came a voice from the back, and a few others mumbled quiet agreement. But another voice, that of Siobhan, Amarie’s friend, shut them up.
“They didn’t survive the Tunnel,” she said aloud. “I say we follow our own instincts.”
Hackworth and Colley still stood at the double gates, with three others. They peered up and down the street, and spoke quietly to one another, while the rest of the group stoo
d patiently awaiting their verdict.
Hackworth shook his head.
“No one else is coming out of any of the buildings,” said Colley.
“I know,” replied Hackworth, shrugging off the bigger man’s obvious comment off with a sniff of arrogance. “That doesn’t mean it’s the best thing to do. If those things are here then our best plan of action is to get as far away as possible.”
They all startled at a sharp crackle of distant gunfire, far away up the street.
“What is that?” asked Colley, pointing at something that Amarie couldn’t see from her position at the bottom of the steps. She craned her neck, trying to pinpoint what he was looking at, but the building next door to the tenement was in the way.
Hackworth stared up the street, and Amarie could almost hear the cogs ticking in the man’s head.
“Is that…?” But Colley stopped speaking.
“Yes,” said Hackworth. “That is them. They fucking got out. I knew it. Gods, I knew it. Pissing zombies.”
Colley’s big bright eyes flared, and he took a deep breath, gripping the axe even tighter.
“No,” said Hackworth. “Look. There are a lot more of them behind those coming down the street.”
“How long do we have?” asked Colley.
“Five minutes. Ten at most. And there are a lot.”
Hackworth turned and walked back into the yard, leaving his giant friend at the gate.
“Okay, folks. We go back inside.”
There were a few cries of surprise at this, and more than one voice that asked Why?
“We can’t run now. It’s too late. They’re already nearly on top of us.”
