by Stevens, GJ
I stood, whispering her name.
“Alex,” I said, in a voice only someone next to me would hear, but the reply was greater than I could have expected.
Alex’s voice shouted a hurried command, another’s deep panic matching her volume with hurried words.
As I took the first steps with the gun shaking out at my front, an explosion drowned their confrontation and a wave of energy sprayed with razors of glass as it threw me to the mattress.
82
Numb body.
Numb between my ears.
Each part of me felt like I'd lost all feeling.
The smell of burnt flesh, burnt plastic, a cocktail of unpleasantness circled around the room. Swirling, it mingled with the thin smoke clawing at my lungs. A shot of wind blasted against my sodden clothes and woke my senses as the heat turned to a chill coursing along my spine.
Glass fell to the duvet, chattering as I rose from the bed. Every muscle ached as I lifted my head. Arching my back to straighten out the kink, I stopped mid-stretch when I saw the van keys lying on the floor. They were next to the bedside table, half-buried in a pile of glass by the far wall.
A flurry of delight rushed up from my stomach until I realised the van would be useless now. Totalled.
I couldn’t help a laugh drip from my mouth, my neck aching as my head shook.
What a fitting ending, an apt punishment for my humanity to end when night fell.
Alex.
Her face flashed into my head and I stood, wanting to stretch out the crick in my neck but instead grasping for the gun just out of reach.
Soon gripping the butt tight I rounded the bed, knowing I needed to save at least one bullet for myself.
With dwindling hope, I scooped up the keys and ran from the room. I didn’t look back through the missing window. I didn’t glance again to the blood-soaked carpet.
Steadying myself, I bounded over the scarlet puddle in the hallway, searching left and right with the gun following after; the muscles in my neck only just loose enough to comply.
To my right I saw the soles of upturned feet pointed to the ceiling. They were trainers I could guess Alex may have been wearing, the ankles dressed in white socks, disappearing behind a bed.
I took a step, promising to take more notice next time, if life gave me a chance. Glass crushed under my feet, but my gaze drew to the fluttering of the curtain and the plume of smoke passing by the window.
The bomb, the explosive, the missile, whatever, must have targeted the woods, because we weren’t dead. I’d seen the result of targeted strikes before. I’d stood dressed in blue press body armour with a bulky helmet. I’d seen the gutted buildings. I’d watched while families picked through the rubble for their missing.
Speeding, I was under no illusion my steps could be the first and last if I heard the roar of jet engines on the wind again, but on my next step a figure dressed in dark clothing emerged from the right of the room, creeping out of a cupboard.
With his hand on his chest, his arm reached down to Alex’s gun dropped in the blast. At least I guessed as much as I couldn’t see past the bed.
With a blink I pulled the trigger, bypassing conscious thought, the explosive cracking through the air before I realised what happened.
The man slumped to the ground, his opening hand falling as Alex’s foot twitched to life.
Bursting forward, I took in the detail for the first time; his black jacket, black trousers, everything dark. Even the paint covering his skin, all but his nose flat to his face, the paint smudged clean off. The wound in his shoulder poured with dark treacle as I grabbed him by the shoulder and rolled him to his back.
It was the soldier I knocked unconscious, his hand holding a scarlet dressing to his stomach. He’d been in the room when I’d killed Toni. It was his nose which popped against my knee. It was his gun I shot her with and now he was here, already bleeding to death.
I slapped him square on his cheek and his eyes flew open. Blood and black paint came away on my skin. For a moment he stared forward, but I caught the point of realisation.
I saw when he remembered, intrigued by what he saw in his head; was it my face as I lay asleep on the bed, bound with my arms spread across the mattress? Or was he the one who disconnected the ropes, only to force my unconscious hands into the cuffs behind my back?
Wherever it was, I only needed him to answer one question.
Balling my fist, I pulled my arm back, but despite all that had gone through my head I couldn’t bring myself to let the punch fly.
“Where the fuck has the bitch gone?” I shouted, ignoring Alex’s rise and her open-mouthed stare in my peripheral vision.
The guy stuttered, his words caught in his throat as he fought to hold back.
I lingered the gun in his direction. Thoughts of pushing it up to his wound flashed through my mind, but out of the blue my parent’s faces peered down from up high, not quite in my vision as they shook their heads.
Breathing a deep breath through my nose, I held my arm steady and spoke again.
“Where the fuck is the bitch?”
He turned his gaze up from the ground and locked to mine; the pain in his expression seemed all but gone.
“Which one?” he said, letting out an exhausted breath.
I switched a look to Alex, who stared back with her mouth hanging open as she climbed to her feet.
“The doctor. The one in charge,” I said, turning back from Alex as she edged back and flinched a look out to the window, her eyes shot wide and her finger pointed to the sky.
A wry smile came across the guy’s face.
“Hospital, down south. Stage three,” he said, reciting words he knew so well.
“Where?” I shouted over Alex’s panicked calls to get to the floor.
“St Buryan Hospital. Field trials. The mother, too.”
My arm fell under the weight of the gun. The weight of his words.
Had I got this right? Was Toni alive? No, she couldn’t be.
The soldier’s booming laughter broke my concentration for a moment.
Was she more of a liar than I could have ever known?
I needed to sit.
I needed to think on the words. I had to interrogate further, but first I needed calm.
“Shut up,” I said. “Was it you who beat her when she tried to blow the whistle?” The words spat out in his direction.
He continued to laugh; if anything, the pained volume rose.
“No one beat her. No one alive anyway.”
I couldn’t trust anything this animal said. I needed quiet, a moment to get myself together. But he wouldn’t shut up. He wouldn’t stop the laughter.
The moment I craved came in slow motion as I sat to the bed. Turning, I watched Alex diving soundless to the floor, despite her agitated breath. I couldn’t hear the words her mouth formed, only the shock wave from the explosion ripping the curtains from the window and forcing me sideways into the wall.
83
Still numb, but not from the explosion, I picked myself up. Dust fell to the ground as I stepped over the soldier’s motionless body to pull Alex up by the arm as she reached out.
I led the way down the stairs with my ears ringing, my view swimming in and out. I didn’t stop to check left and right; I no longer cared if there were dead searching us out. With my view fixed on a patch of white panel and the bold letters down the side I’d clung to for so many years, I trudged on with my hand clasped around hers, pulling, dragging as she stumbled by my side.
In my periphery I saw cars shunted, their windows smashed and heard a cacophony of alarms coming into focus. A great fire consumed the trees and wooden shrapnel littered everywhere I placed my feet.
I saw movement, but didn’t watch. I saw the shapes sharpen into the creatures, their bodies covered with red, their skin torn off, stripped bear with the wave of energy.
They saw us and headed our way, stumbling no more, no less than before.
Alex gr
ipped my hand tight by my side as she built her strength. We dragged each other, both knowing our direction as the pace built to a level we could barely manage. Our course steered to avoid the debris, the cars blown in our path. The shards of fist-sized wooden splinters peppering each body panel.
I took no notice as a dead soldier, or at least the half remaining, lunged out to grasp as I stepped over. Alex pulled me to the side just out of its reach. My features didn’t react, my mouth didn’t turn from its thin line. The only glimpse of feeling I felt was at the sight of the van which had been too far from the blast, its windows still intact.
The keys were in my hand but I had no recollection of reaching inside my jacket. I felt like an observer watching a replay of my actions. Watching as I pushed the thin metal of the key into the lock at the back door.
Twisting and pulling free.
Watching as the handle clicked, my fingers somewhere in the picture. Watching as clawed fingers reached through the gap and a foul odour pushed me back. Waking from the trance a moment later as the door pushed me away and I fell, slamming hard to the metal fence.
I’d forgotten all about her.
The woman we’d picked up. The woman Toni had killed, but I couldn’t think her bad for that. I was a killer now, too.
She said it was an accident. I hadn’t meant to take Toni’s life, either, but now I knew there was more to her. She knew my heart would melt when I saw her wounds. But who caused them? Was it her mother, as she’d said? Or another? No one alive, he’d said. I’d killed him as well.
Still, this moment was not the time to process how I felt. Now was not the time to unpick the story. To replay the soldier’s words or to attach any meaning to his incessant laughter just before his death.
Now was the time to stand the hell up. To stop feeling sorry for myself and do something before the woman rising from her feet in front of me launched in my direction and got her revenge.
I stood, still staring on with the last of my days flashing across my view.
Alex charged in from my side, grabbing a pistol from a dead soldier’s hand. Without the top half of his head, the soldier had no use for it.
She pushed the woman to the ground and slammed two rounds to shatter her skull.
The explosions woke me to Alex’s stare, her furrowed brow asking a question. Was I broken beyond repair?
I answered; I owed this once sweet girl that and much more.
“Thank you,” I said. “This is fucked up.”
She gave a slow, dazed nod.
“We’d better go,” I said, looking to the sky, hoping the new dot on the horizon wasn’t another jet.
I looked to the woods, knowing the blackened, smoking creatures walking towards us were what I knew them to be.
She nodded again after following my view, slamming the door behind her as she climbed in alongside me and slid the bolt, following me to the passenger seat.
I would have spoken. Alex would have, too, but neither of us could pull our hands from our noses as we tried to hold back the stench of death left behind.
The engine started and I almost gagged as the breath of relief came, but turned to the window. I knew I couldn’t give them even a crack to get their clawed fingers into. I sucked down the bile and heaved the steering wheel to avoid the car pushed up against the bumper.
Swapping glances with Alex, I could see her knuckles white on the armrest and door handle either side.
I closed my eyes as the engine pushed the van backwards and tried not to think of the crushing bones the suspension couldn’t mask as it pitched us one way and then the next.
Bumping to the fence, we slammed to a stop, the echo resounding like a bass drum.
Moving forward, I couldn’t pretend it was just a bumpy road, despite my attempts. We could see the bodies, those of dead soldiers and residents. Those who had died and stayed dead and those who had not.
The great tyres rolled over in vain of my best efforts to avoid. I guessed there were at least half of the creatures left alive by the blast as they swarmed towards us. I checked I’d locked my door more times than I could have counted while we rolled along, watching the horizon for an opening in the fence whilst keeping an equal look to the skyline, searching for the dot in the centre growing bigger with every moment.
It was then I realised I hadn’t thought this through.
Yes, we were safe in the van, despite the surrounding crowd, but we had nowhere to go. We had no chance to get away from the next missile surely on its way.
I stopped with the bonnet of the van almost at the fence, then let it creep forward until nudging contact with the metal.
The metal complained as the bumper touched, but it stayed firm. I thought of the great concrete blocks on the other side. I thought of the huge square containers of water pushing down the uprights.
The dot grew and blackened hands slapped at the windows. Neither of us jumped. Neither of us panicked.
I turned and asked her down-turned face a question. “Is this how it ends?”
84
She didn’t reply to my fear-filled question; instead, turning to the hands slapping at the window, fixing for a moment before her head tilted high.
Her move soon stopped with eyes spreading wide.
Mine followed, coming to rest on the growing dot just above the fence line.
“No,” she said. The words were much louder than I’d expected. “The gardens.”
I twisted in my seat to meet her puzzled gaze.
“Their fences,” she added, but still I shook my head.
As her face screwed up, the frustration grew clear, but still I didn’t understand what she meant.
She leant towards me. “That’s how we get out,” she said, the words in a near whisper.
I paused for a moment, her voice catching in my mind as the electrical pulses traced across my synapses, sparking the first trace of understanding. I followed the route appearing in my head, tracking backward through the journey as the crowd scratched at the paintwork.
We turned the corner down the short street, the road turning to gravel and veered right before reaching the metal fence to see the rolling hills over the two sets of short wooden fences.
“Yes,” I said, with eyes electrified wide with energy.
The dot had grown even in my moment of pause. It was too slow to be a plane. It wasn’t a jet racing towards us to fire another salvo.
I pushed it out of my mind, releasing the accelerator to calm the engine and selected reverse.
Heavy on the accelerator once again, the van moved backwards as I hurried my view to the left mirror, mindful of the cars strewn in our path.
“Holy shit,” came Alex’s voice. It wasn’t the response I’d expected and snapped a look to her. “It’s heading towards us.”
I looked up to see she was right. The aircraft was larger in the windscreen and pointed in our direction.
Alex’s voice hurried. “Can’t they see we’re moving? Don’t they know the dead can’t drive?” Her breath ran hard as she spoke.
I turned back to concentrate on our best chance of escape, cataloguing the sight to remember when I spoke to the camera. Or if.
I concentrated on turning the van, on trying to avoid the creatures and the great trunks of trees littering the road whilst maintaining momentum.
With each turn of the wheel, each crunch of the tyres, each time I couldn’t avoid a great splinter, a great chunk of concrete, I thought we’d grind to a halt. I knew I had to keep the momentum up. I knew I had to keep our speed as I followed the journey I’d taken in my mind only moments before.
The layout of the road was the same as I’d seen in my head. I don’t know why I expected any different. The van was harder to control, the sideways shift of our weight greater as its bulk listed in the turn, the tyres slipping against the litter in the road.
We leant against the list to balance gravity from taking us over. Somehow we made it, the wheels scraping along the kerbstones to aid
us upright.
Still, I continued to pile on the speed with my gaze fixed on the last-minute change of direction I’d need. The turn we’d have to make. The second leap of faith we’d need to take us through the fence and into the garden and beyond, through the next and out into the freedom of the grassy hills.
We made it almost intact, just leaving the air from the front left tyre behind with the impact of the last low fence.
The suspension fed us every lump in the grass. Every divot. Every hole bleeding speed with each revolution of the rim, despite my foot being flat to the floor.
I had little control, but somehow kept us facing out to the moor. Kept us heading away from the village and the great gaping hole I’d made in what had kept us safe; in what had kept those around us from the horde.
With no barrier in their way, what remained of the creatures, burnt and skinless, would be free to roam if they survived the explosion, whose shock wave seemed to touch every atom in my body.
Slowly we recovered from the blast and I realised I’d taken my foot from the accelerator and the van had come to a rest. The wheels just slipped as I tested the pedal.
With a quick glance in the mirror at the creatures I could have guessed would make their way along our trail, I leapt out, Alex throwing me the pistol as she followed.
Whilst she dived underneath the van to search for the spare tyre, I took slow paces toward the first creatures making their way and the procession which had already formed a long trail.
Counting thirty in their slow amble, I tried to work out if we had enough time. I tried to work out if I had enough bullets, then hoped in vain I could put three down with each.
85
At my command, or it seemed so at first, an explosion detonated at the far end of the undead procession. Disintegrated flesh flew skyward in a foul spray, slapping down to the ground in a shower I could only use my forearm to protect against.
Ignoring the stench of burnt flesh, I looked up to the drone whose shape was now more than obvious.
