by Rob Lopez
“Why don’t we go that way?” said Nobby. “I bet there’s tons to find there.”
Zak shook his head and drove straight on. “That’s Llandudno. It’s a peninsula and there’s nowhere for the undead to go, so they’ll be holed up in there. It’d be a deathtrap. That’s where most of the zombies we encounter are coming from. Big population, and unless you’re looking for ice cream and doughnuts, you won’t find much there.”
Zak drove through the streets and past a supermarket. The large car park was empty of vehicles, but full of listless zombies. The windows of the supermarket were broken and the store looked like it had been thoroughly looted, with discarded packaging and dumped electrical goods strewn across the forecourt.
“Tried that place before,” said Zak grimly. “There might be something still left in there, but it’s not worth the effort to hold off the undead just for a bag of lentils and some spilled cereals. We’ll try elsewhere.”
Zak moved off before the faster zombies could reach the vehicle. The undead were everywhere now, and bodies hammered against the bull bars as Zak drove out of town, reaching an overpass. Abandoned cars and buses clogged the main highway, and instead of turning onto it, Zak continued beneath it, heading out onto a country lane that wound into the hilly interior. The numbers of wandering undead petered out until they found themselves on a deserted road, surrounded by empty fields and woods. Zak halted the vehicle and consulted his GPS, scanning the rolling map displayed on its screen.
“Does that still work?” said Breht.
“Until the batteries run out, yes. But the satellites are still functioning, and will continue to do so, with their solar panels. Civilisation may have fallen apart down here, but they’re still going to be orbiting the planet for years to come, sending their signals whether we can receive them or not.”
“Where exactly are we headed to?”
“East is a nightmare, too close to the coast and the refugee camps. I reckon we should go south into the hills. Seems quiet enough here, though, so I think I’ll take a leak before we set off.”
Leaving the engine running, he got out to urinate by the roadside. In a show of solidarity, Nobby got out to urinate too.
Sitting in the back, Breht felt like a child on a family outing. On a sloping field that led down to a stream, sheep continued to graze. With wispy clouds drifting overhead, it all looked perfectly normal, and Breht felt again a strange disconnect with the reality of their situation.
“You see what I mean about Nobby?” said Cobb, looking out.
“What?”
“Nobby. I told you yesterday that you needed to handle him with disdain to win his respect. See? Zak treats him like a piece of shit, and now he’s got Nobby eating out of his hand. I bet if Zak told him to shake him dry, he’d probably do it. That’s what you should have done.”
“What, asked him to shake me dry?”
“You know what I mean. It’s leadership. Zak’s got what it takes.”
“And I don’t?”
“I don’t want to be so blunt, but I have to be honest. You used to handle raw recruits in training. You should know how it works.”
Technically, Breht should have known how it worked, but recruits were easier to master as they seemed to be in a permanent state of shock – the system was designed to keep them that way. Nevertheless, Breht was aware of just how much confidence he’d lost since those days. Gazing out at the sheep, he realised he was looking at a lost world, in more ways than one.
“I’m not sure I ever did,” he replied.
Before Cobb got a chance to answer, Zak and Nobby re-entered the vehicle. “Right, kids,” said Zak, “off we go now, and on the way we can play a game: I spy, with my little eye, anything beginning with Z. And I don’t mean me.”
*
They headed south along winding and increasingly narrow roads, and nobody got a prize for spotting zombies, as there were none to see. Dense woods carpeted with ferns hemmed them in on both sides, and occasionally a track with a cattle grid would branch off and climb towards some lonely hill farm or isolated cottage. Streams cascaded down rocky gulleys, disappearing into culverts beneath the road, and sometimes Zak would grind the gears to get them up a particularly steep incline, cresting a ridge and affording them a view of the rolling landscape ahead, with dry stone walls snaking across fields and wind turbines turning lazily on hill tops, but they saw nothing that indicated life, or even unlife, and they met no other traffic. It was impossible to tell, however, how many diseased bodies lay in the ferns, or how many bruised cadavers stood around in barns wearing farming overalls, no longer bitching about the price of wool on the market, but simply staring at empty stalls, or feasting on the bloodied haunches of once prized cattle. Prim zombies in aprons could be sitting at dinner tables, shedding fingernails – and maybe fingers – onto crocheted doilies, no longer worrying about dust or the opinion of the local vicar. Undead parishioners could be sitting in pews in churches that were themselves abandoned and forlorn, solitary stone monuments to entire villages that had been wiped out in the great plagues of centuries past. Or maybe none of these things existed and the land around them was truly as empty as it looked.
They passed through a hamlet – just a cluster of cottages at the side of the road – and still they saw nobody. Breht noticed that the driveways were clear, the cars all gone. Everybody had fled, it seemed. Zak didn’t stop. He had some other destination in mind as he consulted his GPS. Turning left at a deserted junction, he drove on.
Several minor roads later and they arrived at a town nestled at the foot of a green valley, bare hill slopes extending in every direction. A small river flowed under an arched, stone bridge. Outdoor shops for hikers and climbers dotted the main street. A slate faced hotel and a tall stone cross dominated the central junction. An empty bus waited in vain at a stop. A dry stone wall surrounded a small, empty car park. A medium sized supermarket sat by the car park, steel shutters down, trolleys chained up.
“Where the hell is everybody?” said Nobby.
Everything looked strangely clean and quiet, with not even a sweet wrapper blowing around. It looked like a model village. Or a film set.
Zak backed the trailer up to the supermarket shutters and killed the engine. In the resulting silence he looked around, cautious. Seconds passed as he watched and waited, then he reached for his rifle and clicked open the door.
They all debussed, safeties off, and stood around, suspicious of the solitude.
“Over there,” whispered Cobb.
They turned and saw a dog trotting down the centre of the road. It was a mongrel, but it had a collar.
Zak gave a low whistle and reached out a hand to attract the dog, who veered towards him, tail wagging. Zak stroked its head and felt its flanks. “Bit thin, but he’s not starved.”
The dog sniffed at the Land Rover’s tyre and urinated against it.
“What’s its name?” said Nobby.
Zak read the name tag dangling from the collar. “Lucky.”
Nobby smirked. “Sounds about right. Hey, Lucky, come here dog.” The dog responded, going over to sniff his crotch as it was petted. “Oh my god, why do they always do that?” he said as he pushed aside the dog’s muzzle.
“Wants to see if you’re healthy or not,” said Zak. “Smell your fluids to see if you’ve got disease.”
“Or he’s checking you for drugs,” said Cobb.
Nobby laughed. “Nah, I’m clean, man. Haven’t been on steroids for ages.”
Zak looked up and down the street. “I’m half expecting to see sage brush blowing through. Still, the dog’s calm, so there can’t be any nasties nearby.”
“But why?” said Breht. “People lived here. Where are they now?”
Zak thought about it. “There’s no hospital here. When the plague hit, patients would have been taken north, probably to Llandudno. If it was as bad as I heard, most of the population would have fallen ill and been taken away. The rest likely cleared out, af
raid they’d catch it too.” Zak opened the back door of the Land Rover and pulled out a giant pair of bolt croppers. “Doesn’t matter, really. We just need to get supplies and be on our way. We’re not detectives. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we’re gone. Nobby, take this and snap the lock on the shutters. Then grab a trolley, we’re going shopping. Breht, hoof yourself over to that wood store by the hotel and grab as much as you can. Cobb, keep watch. If we’re in luck, we’ll be celebrating tonight.”
“And if we’re not?” said Breht.
Zak turned to him. “Now what did I say about staying optimistic?”
“Yeah, positive vibes,” jeered Nobby. “Maybe you should grow a pair and stop being such a woman.”
Breht didn’t answer. While the others set about breaking into the supermarket, he crossed the road to the hotel. In the driveway by the hotel, there was a covered store with neatly piled logs, presumably for the open fires in the hotel so that the tourist hikers could gather with their wine and whiskey to discuss their latest walk. When he got to the logs, however, he caught a strong whiff of petrol.
He couldn’t see anything to explain the smell, but reasoned that maybe a vehicle had been parked here frequently with a fuel leak, though he couldn’t see any stains on the cobbled ground. Maybe it had seeped into the soil.
The hotel was a sturdy, three storey block – an old coach house made from local stone, with tiny black windows. Breht peered inside and saw the lounge with a fireplace and bar. All the comfortable chairs had been pushed to one side, and blankets were strewn across the floor in untidy bundles.
It was the first sign of disorder Breht had seen in this town, but he couldn’t work out if it meant anything. Maybe it was part of a hasty evacuation.
Gathering wood in his arms, he crossed back to the supermarket and dumped his load in the trailer. Nobby rushed out of the entrance with his trolley piled high with goods. “Give us a hand, mate,” he said breathlessly to Cobb. “We’ve got loads more in there.” Lifting the entire trolley onto the trailer, he grabbed another one and wheeled it into the store.
Turning back to fetch more wood, Breht thought about the bus. It was parked by the bus stop outside the hotel, and at first glance seemed innocuous. There was nobody aboard, and Breht couldn’t help but wonder why it was there. Buses normally returned to their depot at the end of a shift, and it was hardly likely that the driver left it there to walk home. Breht went over to it and round to the front. The sign read: Sorry. Not In Service.
Looking inside he saw discarded blankets in the central aisle.
Breht remembered some vague details about the plague – that the victims suffered from flu-like symptoms and complained that they always felt cold.
At the woodpile, he smelled the petrol again. Walking past the shed, he pushed through a gate into the hotel garden. On the patio slabs by the rear door he found rows of jerrycans, caps open. Lying next to them was a pile of dirty hazmat suits and discarded surgical masks. Above the smell of fuel, he detected the rank odour of burnt wood.
The dog had followed him across the road and when it came into the garden it sniffed the air and dropped into an aggressive posture, growling. It started barking at Breht, backing away with its tail between its legs.
The garden sloped down to the stream and some woods. Breht saw the faint wisps of smoke.
He followed the path down to the open gate, saw the ground churned to mud by heavy boot prints. Crossing the shallow stream, he stayed on the trail until he got to a clearing.
A large mound of smoking bodies occupied the clearing. A huge pile, taller than he was. Charred bodies stacked untidily, arms and legs sticking out from all angles, muscles contracted by the heat turning hands into clenched claws.
With the hospitals full to overflowing, emergency measures resulted in victims being bussed to the hotel. The occupants of surrounding valleys had been brought here for emergency care, and as the death toll mounted, the bodies had been hastily burned in an attempt to stop the virus spreading.
The human body, however, contains a lot of water, and is difficult to burn. At least all the way through. Throwing petrol on the bodies wasn’t enough.
Breht watched as the corpses stirred, charred skin flaking off as fingers were flexed. The dog’s barking, or maybe Breht’s presence nearby, was rousing them from their terminal sleep.
Breht ran back to the supermarket, where Nobby and Cobb were sweeping contents from the shelves into waiting trolleys.
“We’ve got problems,” he said.
Zak, checking items on a list, turned. “You could be more specific.”
“The town’s not as empty as it looks. There’s a pile of bodies behind the hotel and they’re waking up. We need to go.”
Zak was unfazed. “Thought as much when I heard Lucky barking. Okay. Take Nobby and hold them off, we’ll finish up here. Need to grab some painkillers and sanitary towels.”
“Sanitary towels?”
“Yeah, sanitary towels. We’ve got a lot of women back at the castle. You don’t want them bleeding all over the place, do you?”
Breht wasn’t sure how to answer that, so he didn’t. He went back outside.
Blackened corpses were already shuffling out from behind the hotel. The dog was running up the road, getting as far away as it could. Breht aimed his rifle at the undead as Nobby came alongside.
“He’s looking for tampons for you,” said Nobby. “Because you’re a woman.”
Breht ignored him, lining up his scope on the leading zombie. Magnified by four, he could see that all the hair had been burned away. The lips had shrivelled, exposing white teeth, and the eyeballs were milky.
Nobby leaned in close. “You’re a liability. We don’t need you. Why don’t you run off, like the dog?”
“Why don’t you focus on the threat?” said Breht.
Nobby sneered. “What threat? You heard Zak. These zombies are easy. You should listen to him. He knows what he’s talking about and he doesn’t shit himself at the sight of undead. If you weren’t such a fanny, you’d have remembered to close the gate over there so that they couldn’t come through, but you were probably bricking it, running like a scared kid. You didn’t deserve those stripes. All you wanted to do was to prance around like a queen, looking to bugger someone. I bet you used to hang round outside the showers, checking everyone out. All those cute young recruits, waiting to be touched. Turned you on, didn’t it?”
Breht planted the reticle on the lead zombie’s forehead. How the hell could that thing see, he thought, with its eyes like that? He squeezed the trigger, blowing the top of the zombie’s head off and splashing some of its brains over the face of the zombie behind. His chosen target didn’t fall, however, staggering onwards with the broken skull fragments poking out of the top of its head like an eggshell.
“Can’t even shoot straight,” muttered Nobby, peering down his own scope. He fired a shot that landed between the zombie’s eyes, knocking it over like a skittle.
Zak and Cobb came running out with a trolley each, stacking them on top of each other. Zak threw cargo straps over and ratcheted them down until they were firmly secured, grasping the trolleys and pulling at them, to be sure. Then he fished his keys out and leapt into the driver’s seat, starting the engine. The zombies, walking stiffly, were about halfway across the road.
“We’re good to go,” said Zak.
Everyone got in and Zak pulled out of the car park and onto the road, clipping a zombie for good measure. “Easy in, easy out,” said Zak as he drove steadily out of town, checking his mirror to keep an eye on the cargo. “Well done, lads. Nice work. Though Breht, you could have got hold of some more wood. Those few logs aren’t going to last us long, are they? What were you doing?”
Nobby sniggered, but Breht looked out of the window.
What was he doing, indeed?
*
The arrival of fresh supplies was another cause for celebration that night, especially with the arrival of fresh alcohol:
Nobby had plundered the booze aisle. Zak led the partying that night, with drinking games between himself, Nobby and Cobb.
But not Breht, who walked in the shadows away from the firelight, completing a circuit of the castle interior. He was passing through the remains of the old hall, his feet crunching on the gravel, when he caught sight of someone sitting on a stump of wall.
“Not the partying type?” said Filipova.
“Not particularly,” said Breht.
“You are planning on staying, aren’t you?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that? There’s nowhere else to go. Everywhere’s either deserted or crawling with undead.”
“I imagine somewhere that’s deserted would be attractive to you. You don’t strike me as a social animal.”
“I don’t see you at the party, either.”
Filipova looked across until the fire was reflected in her eyes. “I prefer my moments of solitude, but it’s not something I choose to be miserable about.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t mean anything by that. I’m just saying I like to be alone but I don’t feel ostracised.”
“And I do?”
“I don’t know, but if you’re not, say so.”
Breht leaned on the remnants of a wall. “Doesn’t matter, does it? We’re stuck here, whatever the reason.”
Filipova looked at him. “I don’t think you’re stuck here at all. You’re either waiting for your chance to go, or something else is keeping you here.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. What’s it to you?”
Filipova shrugged. “Just making conversation.” She lit a cigarette, exhaling a long plume of smoke. “Well, not really. We’re a small group now, so the actions of one individual can have a lasting effect on the rest of us. Curiosity is an existential imperative now.”
“Whatever that means.”
“It just means there’s a need to know.”
“Well, I told you, I don’t know. If you’re worried about group cohesion or any of that shit, go talk to Zak. He’s in charge now.”
