The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 4)

by Luke Duffy

  There were others that were incapable of even climbing the wall and seeing what had happened to the world. There were men and women so traumatised within the base that the thought of simply stepping out from the inner complex was enough to send them into a panic. There were a number of survivors that had never spoken a word since their arrival. There were others that spent all their time in seclusion, close to madness, and refusing to deal with anyone. Everyone suffered from a degree of post-traumatic stress, but some were incapable of ever recovering from the horrors they had witnessed.

  Tina wondered how she would ever get them all to safety. She knew deep down that, no matter how they conducted their escape, not everyone would make it to their final destination, wherever it may be. People were going to die; she was sure of that. But she was determined to save as many of them as she could.

  “I don’t know about you, but it looks to me like there’s more of them out there than there was yesterday,” a softly spoken voice suddenly pointed out from beside her. “Why do you think they’ve suddenly decided to make a move?”

  She turned and saw a short, sinewy man standing just an arm’s reach away. He was leaning against the sandbags and looking out at the distant, dark line that stretched in a wide ring around the entire base. The line swayed and shimmered as the thousands of corpses pushed and shoved against one another. A faint and constantly shifting mist seemed to hang above the mass as swarms of insects buzzed around them. Even through binoculars, it was impossible to make out individuals within the crowd, and to a degree, the dark and faceless wall of bodies unnerved the besieged humans all the more.

  It was Sebastian. She had not even noticed him arrive. As always, he lurked and drifted through the base unnoticed, which was just how he liked it. However, this time he was making an approach towards Tina; a rarity for the man who clearly did not enjoy human contact. She looked back out at the faint line, and had to admit he seemed to be right. The crowd appeared more swollen this morning. Then she turned her attention to the individuals that were slogging their way through the mire towards the base.

  Her radio squawked continuously with sighting and situation reports from all around the perimeter, but she had already given the order to hold fire. She did not want any unnecessary expenditure of precious ammunition at this time, especially from nervous guards shooting at individual targets that posed no immediate threat.

  “It’s hard to tell,” she grunted, not wanting to acknowledge the truth.

  “You know I’m right. There’s something happening. They’ve stayed back all these years, and now they’re beginning to move again.”

  “Yeah. Maybe they just got sick of waiting?”

  “Or maybe they can sense that our end is close?”

  She looked at him, a little shocked by his statement. It was suddenly apparent to her that everyone in the base felt the same, although many did not voice their opinion. For someone like Sebastien to suddenly speak out about the inevitable end to their stay in the FOB was evidence enough to her that her fears were correct. The writing was on the wall, and the underlying tone of the survivors was that soon they would either be overwhelmed or they would need to leave.

  “It’s that obvious then?”

  “I have ten fingers and ten toes, and I can work things out for myself, Tina. Are you thinking of going out there after them? Al and Tommy, I mean?”

  “Someone needs to. They may need our help.”

  “I wouldn’t go just yet. You should give it a while longer,” the usually reclusive dog handler continued without looking at her.

  “Why wouldn’t you go just yet?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and smiled slightly. Finally, he turned to her, ran his hand down over his face, and then blew his nose into his bare palm. Tina watched with disgust as he wiped his mucus coated fingers over the breast pockets of his jacket.

  “I know that you lot think I’m weird,” he began, blinking rapidly as Tina continued to stare at him and unable to take her eyes away from the silvery streaks that now coated a great swathe of his camouflaged jacket. “Well, that may be the case. I might actually be batshit crazy and just haven’t realised it yet, but I do know this: going out there now would only cause more drama, and as the commander, it would be a bit hasty on your part.”

  “You just said yourself that there’s something going on with the infected. Two of our men are missing, and we need them. So how could going to look for them be hasty?”

  “For that exact reason. Look at those fucking things. They might not be jumping about, but they look all geared up to me.”

  “What about our two blokes?”

  “You don’t know what’s happened to them. I know Al and Tommy rather well,” he confessed. “I may not be the most sociable person here, but I know you all. I watch, I listen, and I take note. Al and Tommy are the best you have, but how many times have they gone out and failed to arrive back when they’re supposed to?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Well, there you have it. I know you’re worried, and there were reports of gunfire, but that doesn’t mean you should go chasing after them. Going out there now will only mean that the base is missing its strongest and finest when the people here need you more than ever. Look at them.”

  Tina glanced down at the various individuals that moved about around the perimeter while carrying out their morning duties as they trudged through the wet mud, almost appearing like drones. She knew where Sebastian was leading her. However, in all the years she had known him, she had never witnessed him speak so much.

  “They’re already crumbling. Silently, but definitely crumbling, Tina. You go out there looking for those two lunatics, and you’ll be lucky if you have a home to come back to. Most of these people haven’t been beyond the wall since the outbreak. They’ve been more than happy to huddle down and let you guide them. I call it more like wiping their arses, but that’s just my opinion. If you, Al, and Tommy disappear, who’s left?”

  “You’re starting to sound like you could be very capable.”

  “Not me,” Sebastian replied, shaking his head. “I’m here only for my dogs. I’ll do what I can while I’m here, but I’ll be honest with you—the second it all falls apart, I’ll be getting the fuck out of here. No offence, but I had a belly full of real humanity the first time around. I don’t fancy going through it all again because, when the chips are down, they’re a shitty bunch. I’m no leader, and I’m defiantly not a people person, I’m afraid.”

  “So, what do you suggest?”

  “Me? I suggest sitting tight, hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. There’s talk of us all getting out of here at some point. Those folk down there will need you when we bug-out, so you should think about it before you go running out on some mission to find your guys. If they don’t turn up, me and my dogs will be your first volunteers to help look for them. But just not yet.”

  “I thought you weren’t a people person?”

  “I’m not,” he grinned. “I’m a survivor, and those two crazy bastards, along with you, are my best hope at keeping my skin covering my bones.”

  She nodded and turned her attention back to the skyline. The grey and lifeless buildings were even more visible now. She had watched them slowly decay over the years and had almost forgotten what they had looked like at the beginning of the dead plague. Any colour that they had once held had long since faded. Now, their brick and concrete were coated with moss and years of grime. Most of the glass from their windows was gone, and the distinctive angles and corners of their rooftops now seemed somewhat rounded as the masonry crumbled and plant life flourished in the cracks. She scanned from left to right along the tombstone like buildings, but there was no sign of life. She was clinging to hope, wanting to suddenly see a signal from Al and Tommy, but the sky above the city was as dead as the land below.

  Turning her attention to ground level she focussed in on the mass of infected that kept up their vigil on the base from afar. Sebastian was ri
ght, there did seem to be more of them today. She wondered whether that was actually the case, or if she had just not paid much attention to their numbers recently.

  Their front line had not moved in the years since the fires that had incinerated thousands of their kind. They had remained at a safe distance, and no one could understand why. The dead had never withdrawn, regardless of the threat to their existence or the losses they incurred during an attack. Their single mindedness and lack of desire for self-preservation always drove them forward into the walls of bullets and flames. To see the dead turn and retreat had been almost as horrifying to Tina as it had been encouraging to the other survivors. Those who had faced the dead in battle before could not help but feel great concern for the sudden change in the actions of the infected.

  After a while, the behaviour of the dead beyond their walls made all of the living uneasy. Rumours that the reanimated bodies had developed self-awareness—even intelligence—terrified the people within the base. Panic began to spread as speculation grew, and facts were either embellished or completely fabricated. Eventually, Tina herself had led a mission out into the wasteland during darkness and snatched a number of specimens for the doctors and scientists to conduct experiments on. Their findings showed that the reanimated corpses were no further advanced in their thought process or abilities than they had been at the start of the spread. However, something was keeping them back, but no one knew what. Eventually it was assumed that they had developed a more heightened sense of self-preservation, and the experiments were stopped to save valuable resources.

  “What do you think’s going on with them, then?” Tina asked, nodding towards the horde of rotting corpses and the hundreds that were moving forward.

  “I don’t know,” Sebastian replied. “But my dogs are a little worked up today. They started getting agitated last night, whimpering and whining, and I didn’t have a clue why. Now, they’re plain shitting themselves.”

  She nodded.

  “It was only five minutes ago, when I came up here to talk to you and saw how many there were now out there that I realised what had been bothering the dogs. They can sense a lot more than we can, and there’s something in the air.”

  She nodded and lowered her binoculars.

  “Be ready for last light. If Al and Tommy are not back by then and there’s still no comms, we’re going out there. Have your best dog ready,” she ordered, leaving no room for discussion. She smiled. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about being the first to volunteer?”

  5

  The extent of their predicament became much more apparent during daylight. They knew that they were in a dire situation, but the horrific scale of the problem did not completely reveal itself in its entirety until the sun had breached the horizon. Al and Tommy stood at the edge of the rooftop, gaping with open mouths at an ocean of rotting flesh that bubbled and swished below them. No matter where they stood on the top floor of the car-park, it was the same story. A carpet of bobbing heads, open mouths, and grasping arms filled every available space below them. The noise of the crowd was almost deafening, making ordinary speech between the two men impossible.

  “They’re really going for it, aren’t they?” Al murmured.

  “What the hell are we going to do? They’re shoulder-to-shoulder down there. There’s no way of us getting out of this gang-fuck.”

  Al did not reply. He had been staring down at the seething mass below them for quite some time, watching them and trying his best to think of a feasible plan to get them both out of the trap. His mind raced, but no matter how hard he tried he could not see a way out for them. He turned and looked back at the bodies of Harry and his team sprawled out on the rooftop and reduced to mere bones. The images of him and Tommy ending up the same way refused to leave his thoughts.

  “Well, what do we do?” Tommy asked again with urgency.

  “Shut the fuck up, Tommy,” Al angrily snapped back at him, flecks of spittle shooting from between his teeth as the veins in his neck protruded from beneath the skin. “I’m thinking.”

  “Thinking? Fucking thinking?”

  “Yeah, I’m fucking thinking.”

  “You’d better think faster then,” Tommy grumbled as he turned to look over the edge once more. “Because I’m frigging out of ideas.”

  Tommy turned and stomped across the roof of the building with fear and rage rippling through his bloodstream. With a frustrated snarl he grasped at his chinstrap and ripped the helmet from his head. In a fit of anger, he hurled it the length of the rooftop where it slammed into the wall at the far end with a crunch and rolled into the corner. Pacing again, he ran his fingers over his scalp, clearly agitated.

  “Completely out of ideas,” he groaned as he turned and looked at the bodies around the rooftop. “We’re well and truly fucked, Al. We’ve had it this time. We’ll end up just like those poor bastards.”

  There were still more of the dead arriving, attracted to the area by the sound of the crowd. They hobbled, crawled, and slithered through the buildings and along the curb sides, dragging their pathetic carcasses through the city, and adding to the countless mass of agitated cadavers that had swarmed into the area. By now, Tommy imagined that most of the other streets within the rest of the urban area would more or less be deserted. Somehow, they had stirred up the entire city and become the main focus of every reanimated corpse in the area.

  He was sweating despite the morning chill, and his breathing was coming in gasps. He was scared and had no issues with admitting it to himself or allowing Al to see it in his eyes. He began to pace the open area of the rooftop again, nervously rubbing his hands over his face and slapping the back of his neck, hoping to dislodge a sudden epiphany from the deep recesses of his brain.

  “What about the flares?” he asked, turning to Al.

  “What about them?”

  “We could use them to signal base. If we fired one up, at least Tina and the others would know we were alive and where we are.”

  “Then what?” Al shrugged, a contemptuous expression on his face as he glared back at his friend. “We send up a flare, Tina gets into a flap, and before we know it, she launches some daft rescue mission, and walks slap bang into a wall of walking pus? Use your fucking head, Tommy. We need to get ourselves out of this.”

  “Yeah, fair one,” Tommy replied, and then continued to pace, peering over the lip of the roof from time to time and hoping that the mass of bodies would somehow and miraculously begin to thin out.

  Al looked around at the buildings closest to them. The parking block was the tallest in the area, with the nearest being almost twenty metres shorter in height. The distance was too far for either of them to jump, but for a while he could not help but consider and fantasise the notion. He turned and looked across to the faded, red framed box fitted to the side of the door leading onto the rooftop. The glass panel containing the fire hose was still intact, and again he slipped into a short daydream, imagining that they could use the hose as a link between the buildings while he and Tommy crawled along it to safety.

  He shook his head, snapping himself back to the real world. The fire hose would never be long enough, and besides, they had no way of securing it to the adjacent roof. Another image popped into his head; the pair of them dangling pathetically from the hose along the wall of the parking complex, stranded as their grips slowly failed them while a crowd of hungry ghouls waited below with outstretched arms.

  “Think,” he hissed with gritted teeth. “Think.”

  There was a loud crunch from beneath them that interrupted his thoughts. Even over the howls of the dead the noise was clearly audible. Both of the men stopped in their tracks, their thoughts of escape evaporating, and their eyes widening as their throats tightened and making it impossible for them to swallow. They recognised the sound for exactly what it was. There was no mistaking it. They turned and rushed to the wall.

  “Fucking hell, the weight of the crowd is too much for the barricades,” Tommy gasped, sta
ring down at the entry ramp that was directly below them. The dead were pushing and shoving at the trucks that were blocking their path. “They’re starting to shift.”

  Both of them stepped back from the wall, and once again, instinctively checked their weapons and ammunition. They raced across to the opposite side as the sound of grinding metal continued to ring out over the crescendo beneath them. The vehicles that were blocking the entry and exit ramps were slowly being pushed inwards. They could see thousands of bodies packed in tightly around the cars and trucks that were being reduced to nothing but mashed bone and pulped rotted flesh as the swarm surged and pushed from behind.

  Al watched as the rear half of what had once been a white Transit van began to crumple in on itself as it was pressed harder against the support pillar beside the entrance. The weakened metal was distorting and bulging and making deep booms and screeches as the body dented and flexed. The frames, through years of corrosion, had become too weak to withstand the pressure. They were twisting and bending, and soon they would collapse completely, leaving the way in wide open for the flood of infected to rush through.

  “Sweet Jesus. There’s too many of them, and they’ll be in here soon.”