by Luke Duffy
Another of them jumped across the ditch and closed in behind him. Andy crouched slightly, his hands held at his sides and the elbows bent. It was a natural instinct that forced him into that stance and he could feel the urge to throw his hands out in front of him with all his strength at anything that came near.
He gnashed his teeth and growled at the figures that shouted at him, wanting to take him away. He dodged the two in front that attempted to snare him and he continually looked back at the one that approached him from behind. He wanted to turn and face them, but his legs were planted in the mud. He twisted and thrashed as they continued in their attempt to get the rope around his neck.
Suddenly, a force from behind sent him tumbling forward. The mud squelched and threw his feet free as he was thrown to the ground. Before he could try to stand, something pinned him down. He thrashed and growled, snapping his teeth at the feet and legs that he could see moving around him. He was being shoved and pulled, and then the noose came down over his face.
He recognised it instantly as it passed his eyes. Anger flashed through him. He began to roar and thrash harder, his head jerking in all directions as he attempted to break free.
His captors shouted and laughed as they dragged him to his feet and up the embankment. They kicked him and shoved him in all directions. He was scared and angry. He knew what the fast movers did to the ones like him. He had watched them smash their heads in, set them on fire or run them down, and now they were dragging him to the truck where they had put the others.
He pulled at the cord around his neck; it cut into his soft and delicate flesh, the same flesh that he so desperately wished to preserve. His feet dragged and scuffed against the ground as he attempted to stop them from pushing him in the truck. They were too strong and they pushed him along easily.
Andy was helpless.
20
"Where are we going?" Simon whispered, a little too loudly.
Johnny was just a few steps in front of him, crouching and hugging the rough brick of the building wall as he peered around the corner and out into the open. He stepped back, his eyes still fixed on the corner of the building as he slowly moved back towards Simon. He turned his head and glared at him, a look of annoyance etched across his face as he raised a finger to his lips.
"Be quiet," he whispered as he leaned back and pointed to the corner of the building. His short stubby finger, dirt and grime embedded in the tiny creases of skin and beneath the fingernails, directed Simon's focus towards the edge of the bricks where they met the open air.
"They’ll hear you."
Simon's eyes widened as he stared at the corner, expecting a grotesque and rotting corpse to stagger into view at any moment. He could feel himself wanting to step back and put as much distance as possible between him and the open ground beyond the wall. Even after being continually exposed to them since he left his bunker, he was still just as terrified of them as he was when he had come face to face with them for the very first time.
Everything about the dead frightened him; the way they looked, their smell, their movements and of course, what they were capable of doing to a person. The very concept of the dead returning to life and attacking the living was something from his worst nightmares. In fact, worse, because had never dreamed of it and it was still something he found hard to comprehend, never mind accept.
"How many of them are there?" he asked with desperation in his voice.
Johnny turned to him and blinked. The question seemed irrelevant to him. "Enough," he replied with a nod of his head.
Since leaving the house, where he had found and been saved by the eccentric little homeless man, the two of them had spent most of their time hiding in the shadows. They scurried from one building to the next, avoiding detection, or slowly and silently staggering and shuffling in the open, past hordes of the festering wandering bodies as they attempted to blend in and act as one of the dead.
Simon's nerves were shot. His mind threatened to crumble on him at any moment and he constantly battled with himself to prevent him from screaming aloud or collapsing into a blubbering wreck in the middle of the street. Since they had run from the house where he had found Johnny, they had travelled through some of the more densely packed areas of the town. Johnny insisted that he knew the perfect place for them to go, but he never told Simon where that place actually was. Every time Simon asked, Johnny just replied with, "You will see, trust me."
To Simon, it seemed as though Johnny enjoyed walking amongst the dead, as though he got some kind of kick from it. The first time they did it, Simon was horrified at just the idea of it. The fear had gripped him so powerfully he could literally feel it squeezing around his throat. Then, when Johnny smiled at him as though it was something as simple and easy as scratching his head, Simon had realised that Johnny truly was crazy and that it was not just a misconception due to his appearance.
He had watched as the scruffy little man had stepped out and casually strolled through the street without a care in the world. Simon wanted to run or to turn back the way they had come, or even to just stay where he was and cower in the corner, but he fought his fear and slowly followed the insane Johnny out into a street packed with the repulsive and horrifying things.
Simon had kept his eyes glued to the floor, refusing even to glance upward for fear that he would make eye contact with one of them. The thought of staring into a pair of those lifeless eyes, their pupils dilated into a black cavernous hole, flat through lack of blood pressure and misted over giving no hint of emotion, made him sick with fear.
He watched his own feet as he gently placed one in front of the other, concentrating on where he was placing each step and his movements. He was terrified of making the slightest sound in fear of causing one of the dead to look in his direction. Every single muscle in his body was taut and coiled like a spring. If one of them had so much as reached out for him, he would have leaped ten feet in the air and bolted for his life. It was a wonder that he did not collapse during the short, but dangerous, walk because he was not breathing for most of it. It was only later, when he reached the relative safety of the houses across the street they had crossed, he realised he was suffering with the early stages of carbon dioxide poisoning from holding his breath.
As he shuffled, he only saw the dead around him from the waist down. That scared him enough, but it was always at the front of his mind that he only needed to look up slightly and he would be face to face with the most terrifying things he had ever seen. Some of them came very close as their paths crossed, their soiled and torn clothing just inches away from his. He could even feel some of them brush against him as they shambled about in no particular direction. He heard their grunts, the sound of the numerous insects that filled the air and fed off them. Now and then, one of them would let out a long moan or sigh, sounding like someone grieving or, even bored. Their cold and lifeless bodies were so close that he would only need to reach out a little to touch them.
One body, its legs and lower torso missing, its flesh shredded and hanging from it in tatters like a grotesque skirt, pulled itself across his path as its blue and bloated innards trailed behind it leaving a path of noxious sludge in its wake. It was naked. Its skin was green with pus and maggot-filled sores that oozed up from within. He could see the bones of the shoulders working beneath the thin and putrefied skin, threatening to cut through the thin layer of flesh and expose the white tips of the blades as it reached out, alternating its arms and dragging itself along on the hard concrete of the ground.
Simon had almost bolted at that point. A gasp had threatened to escape from his throat and he hesitated before stepping over it and continuing in Johnny's footsteps.
Their smell caused his head to spin, his eyes smart and water, and his stomach churn; a stench that he could not describe. To him, there was nothing more repulsive and nauseating in the whole world. The smell itself seemed to be alive and wanted to spread itself throughout his body. It clung to his clothing, his flesh and even p
ermeated in his hair. Most of all, it seemed to embed itself in to his nasal cavity and refused to budge. Every breath seemed to force it further into his senses, leaving him unable to get rid of it.
He was thankful that he had not eaten that day, because he would surely have vomited and given himself away to the countless creatures around him.
They had continued like that for the whole day, sometimes climbing through gardens and houses undetected, or walking amongst the dead, risking being torn apart. At one point Johnny had even turned to him as they both leaned with their backs against a wall after slowly making their way through a particularly crowded area. Simon, slouching against the bricks quivering, his knees threatening to give from under him and fighting the urge to throw up, while Johnny apathetically picked his nose, grinning back at him as he inspected the finger he had been using.
"See, it’s easy, isn't it?"
"No, it fucking isn't. I have lost count of the amount of times I have almost shit myself, Johnny. Are you sure you know the best place?"
"Of course, not far now," he had replied cheerfully.
Now, according to Johnny, they were at the place that he had assured him through miles and miles of diseased filth 'was not far'. Simon felt as if they had been running, walking and crawling the gauntlet for days.
Just beyond the corner of the wall was their destination. Simon did not recognise the area and wondered where they could be and what exactly was just beyond the building behind which they sheltered. Even though he wanted to get to safety and out of the open, he dreaded looking around the corner, mainly for two reasons. The first was because he knew that there were many of the dead close by. He could hear them as well as smell them, but he could not yet see any sign of them. He knew that there must be a lot of them, because Johnny was not being his usual carefree self.
The second thing that bothered him was Johnny's idea of safety and the 'perfect place' to go. For all Simon knew, the crazy homeless man could have been leading him anywhere but safe or perfect. It could have been a football stadium full of the things.
Simon squatted down, his back scraping against the rough brick as it tugged against his clothing. Johnny moved back and crouched beside him. To their left was a rusted chain-link fence with long coils of barbed wire running along the top, and to their right, was the old brick building behind which they were hiding. Its small high windows were smashed, leaving shards of misted and discoloured glass jutting up here and there from their rotten and crumbling green wooden frames. Most of the bricks had lost their smooth flattened edges and now the raw and deteriorating clay and sand mix flaked away, slowly weakening the entire structure. Simon guessed that it had probably been derelict for years and more than likely scheduled to be pulled down at some point, but now it would remain until it finally collapsed from its own deterioration.
Out in front, beyond the corner of the wall, Simon could see a wide expanse of tarmac. It was a car parking area with dozens of abandoned cars still sitting in their line-marked parking spaces. He could see the signs that designated certain spaces for disabled people and parents with children. Shopping carts were strewn all around, their contents scattered across the floor. Simon absentmindedly wondered, At what point during the disaster did people finally stop shopping? At the far end of the open car parking area was a high wall, dotted with overhanging trees that looked as though it may have backed on to an industrial estate, but Simon could not be sure.
They both squatted and listened. There were no dead in sight but they could hear the distant hum of them. It was a lingering unrelenting sound and it chilled the blood of anyone that heard it and knew what it was. Simon compared it to a sound similar to that of an electric power transformer, but much more haunting and poignant because he knew they were the voices of hundreds of diseased and lost souls.
They guessed that there must be thousands of them in order to make the kind of steady uninterrupted drone that they could hear. Now and then, the sound of an individual shriek or high-pitched moan could be heard over the hum as one of the dead became excited for whatever reason. They could also hear the endless thump as hundreds of cold, dead hands slapped and pounded against glass. It reverberated and banged, echoing around the open ground as they struck against the glass incessantly.
Simon, steeling himself, began to edge forward. He paused, taking deep breaths as he stared down at the mud and crumbled brick crumbs at his feet. He glanced back at Johnny, who returned an encouraging nod and began moving towards the corner again.
At the point where the wall stopped, Simon crouched and flattened himself against the masonry. He really did not want to look at them. His heart began to beat against the wall of his chest so hard that he could actually feel it thump his ribs. He did not want to poke his head out from around the corner and see the mass of monstrous figures that he knew he would, but he had to. He had to know where they were going before Johnny led them out there. Johnny promised him that they were almost to safety and with nothing else and no one to cling to Simon had followed along and placed his trust in the crazy old tramp.
He repeatedly reminded himself that despite the scruffy little man's appearance and eccentricities, he had been surviving on the streets since day one of the plague. Simon, on the other hand, had spent most of it either barricaded in his house, or underground. Johnny knew the dead better than he did and he knew the streets better still. His strange ways aside, Johnny was his best hope.
His cheek was flat against the brickwork of the building. He could feel the rough material rubbing against the soft skin of his face but he was determined to give the dead as little as possible of him to see.
His face cleared the brick and as his eyes quickly adjusted focus, he saw them. He could not miss them. Pressed up and packed tightly against the entire length of a long building, just fifty metres away, was a wall of grey brown figures. It was hard to tell one body from the next. All of them blended in a blur of dull shades, covered in grime and smeared with their own bodily fluids and remains.
He could see the tall windows of the buildings front; they spanned the whole length of the building and reached from the ground and up to the roof. He saw the change of light reflected from the glass as it shook and quaked against the pounding of the hundreds of bodies pressing against the large panes. Simon looked up and saw the sign above where he presumed the main entrance was.
It was a supermarket.
Either side of it were more shops, mainly clothing outlets and a tool hire shop. There was even a pet store, but at some point, from what Simon could tell, the dead had battered down the windows and rampaged through the shop, ravaging and consuming anything that was still alive in there.
A gust of wind carried the foul stench of the rotting bodies towards him. His eyes watered as his gag reflex threatened to set him off on a bout of dry retching. Quickly, he pulled his head back around the corner and to safety. He held his hand over his mouth as his body quivered, fighting back the bile that threatened to erupt from within his stomach. He crawled back to where Johnny was waiting for him.
"What do you think?" Johnny beamed.
Simon wiped the last of the fetid drool from his lips and looked at him confused. "Think of what? It's a Morrison's supermarket and swarming with those things. There's nothing to think, mate, it’s a no go."
"It's our hide out," Johnny replied, as though it had been obvious. "It has everything we need and we would be safe there. To be truthful, I don’t know why I never came here sooner. It's perfect."
"Are you really serious?" Simon's eyebrows were furrowed and he glared at the scruffy man. "This is your safe place that you have been leading me to? Did you notice the six billion hungry walking dead bodies standing outside the main entrance? What do you expect us to do, grab a shopping trolley and walk right by them?"
"Six billion, I've told you a million times not to exaggerate," Johnny grinned. "Anyway, yeah, we could just walk past them like we have been doing all day."
Simon almost laughed
. The man was so blasé about the whole situation. "Look, I've had enough of the whole pretending to be dead thing. If we try that here, we won't be pretending for much longer, because we will be dead."
"But, it's…"
Simon raised his hand and cut him off. He leaned in close to his ear, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him towards him so that they were just inches apart.
"Johnny, it isn't perfect at all. Maybe if those things weren't all over the place, then yeah, we could consider staying, but we can't get in."
"What about that then?" Johnny asked, his eyes motioning to something in the distance that Simon had obviously missed.
"What about what?" Simon asked as he followed the line of Johnny's gaze. "I don’t see what you're trying to get me to look at. You mean the cars?"
Johnny leaned in close beside him and raised his arm so that it was close to the side of Simon's head. Folding his fingers into themselves and leaving one grubby digit extended in a point.
"Over there, past the cars, on the other side is a truck."
Simon followed the line of his finger and saw the large white tanker at the far side of the car park. It was parked in a strange way, as though it had been dumped there and abandoned close to the exit to the shopping complex.
"So, I don’t get it, what are you telling me?"
"Be quiet for a minute and you’ll hear it. Just listen."
Johnny remained close in by the side of Simon, his arm and finger still extended and pointing toward the tanker. Simon watched for a moment, expecting to see something, then he realised, it was not what he could see, but actually what he could hear. With all the dead at the window, his own heartbeat pounding in his ears and his nerves threatening to explode out from his skin, he had not noticed it. Now, he could clearly hear it; the truck was still running. He could hear the distant but distinct and unmistakable mechanical clunk of its rumbling gurgling engine.
