by Luke Duffy
She shuddered involuntarily at the change in temperature as she stepped through the doors. The lights in the corridor flickered endlessly, and the smell of mildew and unwashed bodies was strong in the atmosphere. Her footsteps echoed hollowly as she moved along the corridor, headed for the infirmary.
The interior complex was beginning to show the signs of age. Water leaked in through the roof in places and some of the walls and floors had warped as the buildings settled and damp got into their frames and foundations. They had done all they could to preserve the base, but after twelve years much of the plumbing and electrics were failing. Many of the rooms were without lights or heat except for the candles and lanterns that were steadily dwindling in number, and working toilets were now a rarity. Food was running low, as was fresh water, and ammunition was becoming a problem. With the base beginning to fall apart around them, everyone at the weekly council meetings agreed that it would soon be time for them to abandon the FOB, but to where, no one knew.
The sounds of coughing and groaning was getting louder as she neared her intended destination. She halted at the door to the base’s inadequate hospital. She refrained from going any further and peered through the reinforced glass window at the rows of cots that were filled with the sick and dying.
A handful of doctors and nurses, dressed in what protective gear they had available, did what they could for the unfortunate souls, but it was never enough. She tapped against the window with the knuckles of her left hand, instantly grabbing the attention of a man wearing rubber gloves and a face mask, as he busied himself with a clipboard that was filled with charts and figures. He looked up, his red-rimmed eyes appearing sad and exhausted from behind his mask. He blinked and nodded to her before shrugging his shoulders and then shaking his head.
Tina understood. There had been no improvement from any of the flu victims. Medical supplies and knowledge were limited, and the doctors were unable, despite their efforts, to stop the plague. She stepped away from the door and sighed. Even after all these years, the flu was still in the air. Most of its victims now were the weak and frail, mostly the old and very young members of the population. It seemed that the majority had become immune to the virus over time, but the elderly and young children were particularly easy prey.
There had been numerous deaths over the years, but there had also been many births. However, the mortality rate amongst newborns had risen substantially, now mirroring the death rate expected from a few hundred years ago. Most of the time, the plague snatched away the babies from the world before they were even a week old, and those who survived still had a long way to go before their bodies were strong enough to fight the infection.
The small cemetery on the southern side of the base was steadily growing. The thought of one day being buried there after years of surviving behind the walls horrified Tina. She wanted more from life than mere existence, and it had been years since she had seen any real beauty. She missed the trees, the sounds of birds, and most of all, clean air free from the foul stench of rotting human beings who refused to remain dead.
She took a final look through the window as the doctor turned away to tend to a patient who was convulsing, coughing up blood, and clearly close to the end. Her people were dying. Even the ones that were not sick were slowly fading away around her. She wanted more for them, too.
She turned away and headed for her personal quarters, hoping to be able to rest and maybe get some sleep. She knew that it was futile, but there was nothing else left to do. Along the way, she walked by the recreation room. A few people were around—the usual faces, drinking their homebrew, and talking in monotone voices. The room was dimly lit, casting most of it in shadow with the only light being provided by a few candles that were scattered here and there, illuminating the drawn and saddened faces with their faint orange glow. Most conversations were dull, filled with despairing nostalgia, and barely listened to as the speaker droned their rhetoric. As some read the tattered books and magazines or attempted to play board games that had pieces missing, others sat staring into space, nursing their ghastly and toxic cocktails as they attempted to drift from reality.
Tina paused at the door and watched for a while. The people around her seemed to be becoming as lifeless as the infected outside. They were numb with their existence, and it was obvious to her that everyone was simply waiting out the passage of time. It was no wonder that the suicide rate in the base had reached an average of twenty per year. They were surviving, existing, from one day to the next, and with nothing to look forward to.
She rushed to her room and slammed the door shut behind her. Things were getting worse, and she wondered for how much longer they could survive. Just having a heartbeat was not enough for the living. People needed more than protective walls, bland, meagre food, and the privilege of having air in their lungs.
She slumped into the armchair beside her bed and ran her fingers through her hair. Soon, her mind began to drift as she fantasised about them all escaping from the fortress and making it to an island with trees and fresh air, and where the walking dead could not reach them. She shook her head after a while, expelling the thoughts from her mind. It was pointless to indulge in such dreams. They had not yet worked out how to get away from the city and the base, let alone where they would end up. Of course, Tina and a handful of her soldiers could easily escape, but she would never consider leaving the rest of her people behind.
She stared at the painting that hung on her wall. It was the only real colour in the room and everything else had turned to bland shades of greys and browns over the years. She had never been an expert on art. Far from it. She had no idea what was good and what was bad in the eyes of the critics and experts, only her own taste in what she thought was beauty. Al and Tommy had snatched it for her during one of their long range reconnaissance patrols almost nine years ago. It had been hanging in a gallery, on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, and had somehow caught their eye. They arrived back at the base brandishing the expensive painting like triumphant warriors bringing back their spoils of war, and grinning like lunatics. Tina had no idea why, but they had intentionally grabbed it with her in mind. It had taken her a while, but she had eventually discovered that the painting was titled ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’ by the artist Georges-Pierre.
She eyed the people in the painting; the vibrant colours and the tranquillity of the setting. She longed to see such a place again.
“Beautiful,” she whispered.
An hour later, and she was making her way through the dark and damp corridors again, headed for the perimeter. Pushing her way through the doors, she walked across the gravel and mud and over towards the rickety shack that housed their communications centre at the foot of the wall. She pulled the cold and wet canvas sheet to the side, a wave of heat and light suddenly blasting against her face and making her squint and cough. It was a shock to her system after the chilled air outside.
Stepping through and into the smoke filled room, she looked across at the two men who were sitting at the small table, playing cards and looking bored. Neither of them bothered to look up or acknowledge her. They were apathetic, and she could see that they were stuck in auto-pilot, fulfilling the same mundane tasks, and carrying out the same repetitive duties, day in and day out.
“Anything?” she asked after a few moments, feeling obliged to break the oppressive silence and make her presence known.
“Not a murmur,” the older man replied from behind the burning cigarette that was clutched between his teeth, his attention remaining fixed upon the playing cards he was holding in his hand.
Ron was ancient. Even when Tina had first arrived at the base after Al and Tommy had saved her, the man was much older than anyone else there. He had at least twenty years on the next oldest member of the survivors and he looked it. His nicknames had gone from the likes of ‘Grandad’ and ‘Old `un’, to ‘Fossil’ and ‘Dracula’. Despite the fact that he was never seen without a cigarette in
his mouth, and never exercised, Ron seemed to be impervious to the ravages of time. His body aged and his features were that of a man in his eighties, but he stubbornly clung to life with a grip that defied his years and his lifestyle. Rumour had it that he was actually one of the undead but had not yet realised it. He was extremely ill tempered and everything was an inconvenience to him. Tina had long since learned to avoid him, but from time to time, communication between the two was unavoidable.
She waited to see if anything else would be said or if Ron would even look at her and offer any kind of enlightenment. She knew that it was futile, and she was not disappointed when the old man continued to ignore her as though he had forgotten that she had even entered the room. She looked over towards the VHF radio that was sitting on the table beside him. Tina could see that it was switched on, and the handset was close by. If there were any news, and despite the inconvenience to him, she was sure that Ron would pass it on.
“Nice talking to you, Ron,” she finally said, and turned to leave.
“It’s only been a couple of hours, Tina,” a voice said after her.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw the face of the other man in the communications room looking back at her. His name was Gary, and he was much younger and more cooperative than Ron. He had been there from the beginning, joining the survivors in the base as a civilian, but learning to become a soldier over the years through necessity. Four years earlier, Tina had assigned a number of the survivors, including Gary, to Ron as apprentices. They all knew that Ron would not last forever, and when he was gone someone would need to take over as the communications expert.
“Thanks, Gary. I’ll check in later.”
She closed the canvas flap and headed for the steps leading back up on to the perimeter wall. Footsteps rang out behind her as she ascended, and she turned to see that Gary had followed her. They stood side by side for a while in silence staring into the great nothingness that surrounded the FOB.
“Ron’s an arsehole,” Gary finally offered. “He’s bloody hard work at times.”
Tina nodded with a slight smile and a shrug of her shoulders, her eyes remaining focussed on the wall of blackness around them.
“Yeah, he always has been, and he seems to be getting worse.”
“He’s like one of those grumpy old men that every street had when we were kids with a huge collection of confiscated footballs in his shed.”
Tina laughed, picturing Ron in that exact same light, snatching away anything that landed in his garden, and refusing to hand it back to the pleading children of the neighbourhood. They both fell silent again, lost in their own thoughts for a while.
“You’re worried about them, aren’t you?”
“Al and Tommy, you mean?” Tina clarified, knowing that she did not really need to. “Yeah, I don’t like the waiting and not knowing.”
A sudden gust of cold wind wafted towards them, hitting the base of the wall and travelling up over the parapet. Both of them grimaced at the foul stink that the breeze carried and the discomfort they felt against their exposed flesh. In unison, they hunched their shoulders and stuffed their hands into their pockets.
“They’re the best we have,” Gary continued in a reassuring voice, hoping to put Tina’s mind at ease.
Despite her efforts, he had always been able to see beyond her façade of cold indifference. They all could.
“They know what they’re doing better than any of us,” he continued. “They’ve been out there a million times.”
“That’s what worries me.” She turned and looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Look around you, Gary. All we have left are semi-trained civilians and a few of the original platoon that was assigned to the base. The rest are gone, dead, including the pilots. Those two lunatics out there are our best hope, and if they don’t come back, we’re fucked.”
Gary watched her, thinking on her words and understanding that without Al and Tommy, it would be virtually impossible for them to make it through the wilderness. Finally, he shrugged, clearing his throat and stomping his feet against the steel grates of the walkway.
“I think you worry too much, boss. I’m sure they’re both just fine.”
3
“Fuck,” Al howled, squeezing back on the trigger. It was more of an instinct than a consciously thought out reaction.
With a burst of rapid flashes, the first of his rounds spewed from the barrel of his rifle, ripping through the space between him and the ghouls that were standing in the doorway. Pieces of shelving fragmented as the hot, metal slugs punched through them, sending up chunks of jagged aluminium in all directions. Others thwacked into the walls and the window frames, flinging clods of mouldy plaster and rotten wood through the air. In the glow of the eruptions, the face of the approaching corpse was highlighted for a split second, its head instantly snapping backwards as one of the bullets punched a hole through its face and into its skull, spattering the remains of its decomposed brains across the shelves behind it. It veered off to the side, dropping to its knees, and then smashing face first into the floor.
In the restricted space of the store, the report of the rifle fire was painfully loud, causing the air pressure to change violently despite the suppressor attached to the barrel of Al’s rifle. More shots exploded from close by as Tommy stepped into the fight, moving to the right of Al and creating a base of fire from where they would attempt to batter back the crowd before they came too close. More heads shattered as the speeding bullets ploughed through them, sending up clouds of fragmented bone and putrefied brains into the atmosphere of the shop. Already, the smell of rotted blood, fetid internal organs, and cordite was rapidly mixing into a noxious stench, stinging at the eyes of the living. The corpses continued to drop.
“Cover the right,” Al screamed as he loosed off another volley of shots. “They’re coming through the fucking windows. Cover the right, Tommy.”
Tommy turned to where Al was indicating. A throng of dark shapes were clambering over the low sill of the large window that covered the majority of the store front. He turned his barrel and fired, the tracers tearing their way through a number of the infected, causing them to glow from within as the magnesium burned right through their dried and withered bodies and causing a few of them to spontaneously combust.
There were too many of them. Dozens of the infected bodies were pouring in from outside, relentlessly trampling over the mutilated corpses of the fallen as they advanced on the two living men, howling lustfully while they dragged themselves into the building.
“Watch your left,” Tommy cried across to his partner.
Al turned in time to see that one of the infected, its legs having been severed at the knees, was crawling along the floor through the aisle on the left. It was now only a metre away and could very easily have taken a bite out of Al before he even knew it was there. He blasted its head wide open with a single shot. He turned and glanced at Tommy, giving him an appreciative nod in way of thanks.
They continued to fire into the tide of rotting flesh, their empty cases piling up at their feet as they struggled desperately to halt the progress of the crowd. Their weapons jerked and chattered endlessly as scores of the dead tumbled, but they were steadily being forced back as more and more of them spewed in through the gaping windows and shattered doorway, wailing with excitement as they caught sight of the living.
There was no way that Al and Tommy could stem the flood and they knew it. For every one of the dead they managed to kill, five more would take their place in the line. The men continued to move backwards, deeper into the shadows of the building, relinquishing ground under the enormous pressure as the rotting corpses pressed their attack. Their rate of fire would have forced a living enemy to retreat, but the reanimated bodies, uncaring about the bullets that ripped through the air, never took a step back. Their only concern was to reach the men and strip the flesh from their bones.
“Magazine,” Al yelled, hitting the
release catch and dropping the empty to the floor.
Grabbing a fresh one from a pouch on his vest, it was slapped into place within the magazine housing, and the barrage of fire into the rotting mass continued without letting up.
“Here,” Tommy shouted over the roar of rifle fire and dead voices while grabbing hold of his friend’s harness and dragging him backwards into the dark storeroom behind them. “Get in, close the fucking door.”
The pair of them disappeared from sight and into a cavern of blackness. Once inside they began grabbing hold of anything they could use to block the entrance and give them a moment to form a plan of action. A plan that could get them out of the mess that they were in. Crates of beer, boxes of bottled spirits, even a rickety steel stacking shelf and a filthy old mattress, was thrust up against the door, creating a flimsy barricade that both of them knew would not hold for long.
“Grab anything you can,” Tommy ordered, throwing a wooden stool through the air and onto the growing pile.
Within seconds, rotting hands began to pound at the door from the other side, causing it to shudder against its hinges and lock. Heavy thuds, the sound of heads and bodies slamming into the thick wooden obstacle that separated them from their meal, boomed through the darkness, sending terror rippling through the bodies of the two trapped men. They slowly stepped away from the barricade, watching it with eyes as big as footballs. They knew that it would not hold, but if it could just keep them back for a few minutes, then maybe they could find a way out of the trap.
“What do we do? What the fuck do we do?” Al screamed over the noise, the pitch of his voice heightened with panic.
“How the fuck do I know? You got us into this mess.”
Together, with the narrow beams of their lights, they began to search for a way out of the storeroom. At the far end a door blocked their path and they quickly realised that a gate of rusted iron bars reinforced it from the inside. Many years ago, it had prevented thieves from breaking in, but now it impeded the flight of the living from the undead. Al pulled against it and felt that it was set solid into the frame, secured by two large and rusted padlocks at the top and bottom. He pulled again and again, rattling the bars and snarling with frustration. It was locked tight, and it was clear that they would not be able to pry it open with sheer brute force.
