by Woods, Mark
Barty’s jaw was all bloody, and much of the skin around his jaw was rotten and peeling. Even from here, Arthur could make out things crawling around Barty’s mouth and snout. Maggots maybe - some other form of parasite perhaps - maybe even Zombie maggots....was that possible?
How far down the food chain had the infection spread?
Did it even bear thinking about?
Barty shuffled down the hall towards him, more bits of flesh sloughing off against the tattered wallpaper that lined the hallway, snuffling and snorting all the way along as though struggling to catch its breath.
Did these things even still breathe? Arthur asked himself – he didn’t know, but the sound coming out of Barty certainly sounded like breathing, and he could see blood bubbles forming and contracting at the creatures snout, just as he had earlier with his other cows. Suddenly Barty stopped, and seemed to cock his head to look at Arthur as though only just realising he was there and noting his presence there in the kitchen, at the end of the hall.
The bull began to grind its front hoof on the laminate flooring of the hallway.
Grinding it backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, and Arthur knew exactly what that meant.
“No...no Barty, it’s me...you know me...it’s me, Arthur!”
Arthur knew it was useless trying to reason with something as dead, and as lifeless, and as empty of any consciousness as Barty, but tried anyway regardless.
The fact was, with his ankle, he was unable to move.
Arthur wasn’t going anywhere.
He had nothing left to lose and if there was anything left of Barty in there, then maybe, just maybe, Arthur thought, if he spoke kindly enough to him, the bull might recognise his former owner and decide to turn around.
It was a small chance, a slim hope, but it was the only one Arthur had left…
“Barty, please...look at me. Don’t do this...turn away. I’m dying anyway. I’m no good for you. My flesh...it’s no good. It’s ruined, diseased, infected....please Barty, don’t do this...just turn around and go back, there’s a good boy.”
As he carried on speaking, keeping his voice quiet and calm – or as calm as he could make it - Arthur fumbled for the last few shells he had left in his pocket. Keeping his eyes on the bull, he ejected the spent shell casings from out of his shotgun and frailly, tried to slot the new cartridges into the empty holes. It was slow work, painstaking, not least because the flaring, throbbing pain in his ankle, now moving all up and throughout his entire body every time he moved, continually distracted him, but eventually he did it.
With a loud and distinctive click, Arthur was finally able to close the shotgun. He looked up.
Barty was watching him, unmoving still, with those cloudy white eyes, flecked with trails of blood as though something inside of them had burst still glaring at him.
Arthur smiled and slid the shotgun into his mouth.
If he was going to die, he decided - his earlier resolve to do his best to survive forgotten again now in the face of such insurmountable odds – then he was doing it on his own terms.
He was going out his way.
There was no way, he thought, that in his drunk and weakened state he was ever going to be able to shoot Barty in the head before the bull reached him, and there was no way, he thought, he was going to go out being mauled to death by a crazed Zombie bull, so that left him with only one other choice.
With a sudden movement, way faster than Arthur might have thought possible for something dead, Undead, whatever you wanted to call it, Barty the bull began to charge...down the hall and towards him. Arthur closed his eyes, squeezed the trigger…and then everything went black.
They came with the cold…
Shit, it’s colder than a witch’s tit in here, Connor thought, and pulled the thick, winter coat he was wearing ever tighter against his body as he did so.
But I bet it’s even colder out there…
Connor looked out through the small glass panel that sat in the centre of the door he stood behind, and gazed out at what little he could see of the horizon through the heavy snow, still falling thick and fast outside.
An army of distant figures could just about be seen out there. Marching steadily ever forwards in the distance, towards them; headed their way through the thick snow and ice, barely silhouettes against the backdrop of the setting sun, and if he hadn’t already known they were there, Connor thought, he’d probably never have even spotted them at all.
But there they were.
Steadily drawing closer.
An army, yes, he thought, but no ordinary army.
An army of the Walking Dead.
It was almost like a scene out of that HBO show, Game of Thrones, he thought. Though instead of being armed with swords and shields, many of the dead rapidly approaching them were carrying much more mundane weapons such as hammers, fishing poles, and harpoons, and seemed to be made up not of White Walkers, like in the show, but of people, not so long ago, that he and his two pals had come of think of as neighbours, close acquaintances and even in some instances, as friends.
Connor had tried to watch Game of Thrones a few times when it had been on but had missed a few episodes and so, having come into it half-way through, had found it all a little bit too convoluted and complicated for his liking.
Someone had told him if you’d read the books, it all made a bit more sense but Connor just didn’t get the time to read anymore – at least not for pleasure – and he had seen the size of some of the books on which the show had been based, and seen for himself how they seemed to get bigger and bigger in size with each latest instalment that was released.
But one scene in particular had stuck in his mind from the one episode he’d watched all the way through, and it was this scene that came back to him now – a scene featuring an ever advancing, unstoppable army of near-impossible numbers marching towards the main characters.
An army of the Walking Dead.
Just like the one currently headed towards them now.
It had been Simon’s bright idea to come out here, Connor thought. To retreat out here to this old, abandoned government research facility, buried deep out here in the heart of the Alaskan tundra, miles from anywhere.
He’d said they would be safe out here - that the Dead would never be able to make it all the way out here and that even if they did, the intense cold this far north would be more than enough to freeze them, and halt them in their tracks.
But now, as it turned out, it was beginning to appear like Simon had been wrong…dead wrong…though in the current situation, that was probably a bad choice of words.
And now, here they were, the three of them – Connor, Simon, and their other mate, Kev – all trapped here inside this old research facility, with the Walking Dead outside headed their way; drawn to them like iron filings to a magnet, like somehow they could sense Connor and his two friends were out here; almost as though they possessed some kind of weird sixth sense or something.
They come with the cold…that’s what people were saying about the dead now - or at least had been in the last radio broadcast that the three of them had managed to pick up, shortly before locking themselves away in here.
It had been the last radio contact they’d had with the outside world and since then, there had been nothing.
But that, Connor thought, was like something out of Game of Thrones too.
The people speaking on the radio had not seemed to know for certain whether it was the cold that attracted the Walking Dead - or whether the dead brought it with them, heralding their arrival - but had seemed determined to get the message across, even at the cost of their own lives.
You need to know, need to pass on the message, the voice on the other end of the radio had told them. You need to pass it on so others can be warned – they come with the cold. I repeat, THEY COME…WITH THE COLD…
A few minutes later, all that could be heard was the sound of screams and after that, the radio had gone dead.
>
It all sounded ridiculous, fantastical even, but then, there were almost as many theories and explanations as to what might have all of a sudden brought the dead back to life as there were Walking Dead themselves.
Some said the dead coming back to life was the result of a series of mass-terror attacks that had allegedly occurred in capital cities all across the globe, all at once, just a few days ago. Others still seemed to think that the virus was a mutated strain of either Mad Cow Disease or Avian Flu, depending on who you spoke to, and that the terror attacks being reported were all just a series of false flags. An attempt to try and distract the general public from the main cause of the uprising.
Others still thought the dead had been brought back to life as a result of solar radiation, or that a falling satellite, returning to Earth, had brought back with it some new kind of deadly bacteria and it was this that was responsible for what was happening, not anything else that was being reported.
The simple truth was, no-one seemed to know for sure, Connor thought, and so the theory that the dead were coming with the cold as some kind of by-product of the extreme weather conditions the world was currently suffering, to his mind, made as much sense as any other theory he had heard.
Connor and his two best friends in the world – Kevin and Simon – had been out on their annual pre-Christmas fishing trip when the news had first broken about Z-day, and so had missed most of the initial drama when the first attacks had occurred. They had been just starting to head back to the small town they called home when they had first started hearing worrying news reports on the radio - all about a series of terror attacks on several major cities, and the violence and rioting that had allegedly begun occurring in their wake.
This had been quickly followed by so far uncorroborated stories of the dead coming back to life to feast on the living, and though at first the three of them had dismissed it all as some sort of elaborate hoax, when they had eventually fired up their cell phones and started seeing for themselves the news reports and the home videos that people had begun putting up on YouTube, slowly the full horror of what was going on had started to sink in.
They had begun hurrying for home, but as they had drawn close to town, they had seen the horde of Walking Dead themselves - had smelled them in fact, before they even saw them – and in that instant had known two things.
First: that the stories they had been hearing were all true, and Second: that returning home was no longer an option, their town having obviously already fallen to the Walking Dead.
The three of them had retreated – headed back the way they’d come as quickly as possible – and that was when Simon had come up with his suggestion.
That they all head out here - out to this abandoned former government research facility – and attempt to seek refuge here.
Rumour had it, he told them, that as well as having been used in more recent times as a research facility, the outpost was also some kind of former military base, dating back from before the Cold War, and that there was still a nuclear bunker hidden somewhere underneath.
And that although the research facility had allegedly been shut down, and all personnel moved out, from what he had read of such bases, many bunkers such as these were often left still fully equipped and stocked up just in case of an emergency.
A bit like the one happening now.
They could seek refuge there, Simon had said, and wait out the current crisis in relative comfort, and both Kev and Connor had agreed that was as good a plan as any. With any luck, the dead would be unable to pursue them because of the extreme cold - and would hopefully all turn into frozen popsicles even if they did try and follow.
And so, without further ado, so the three of them had climbed back aboard their snowmobiles and started to head out here. Back towards the abandoned research facility that lay out here in the middle of nowhere, miles from any form of civilisation and hopefully The Walking Dead.
They’d been half-way there when they first heard the radio broadcast about the dead supposedly not just thriving in the cold, but somehow bringing it with them like some kind of early warning system of their arrival, but by then it had been too late to turn back.
That had been thirty six hours ago.
***
It had taken them a good couple of hours to reach the abandoned research facility – and most of that spent on foot after the snowmobiles they’d been travelling on had all run out of diesel, not long after first starting out.
When they had first planned this year’s annual fishing trip, almost a year ago now, they had only allowed enough fuel to get them out to their regular fishing-hole and then back to town, with very little left to spare.
The last thing they’d been planning had been to make any extra trips.
Hence why they’d run out of fuel when they were still only half-way here.
Upon arriving at the facility, Kevin had jimmied the door open and the three of them had all quickly piled inside. It hadn’t taken them long to discover that the stories Simon had told them about an underground bunker being here, hidden beneath the facility, apparently all appeared to be true. Unfortunately for them though, the bunker appeared to be electronically locked – entry strictly denied to anyone who didn’t possess the relevant codes.
Fortunately, Simon was something of a computer expert – someone that back in the nineties had fancied himself as a bit of a hacker, but who now worked for a big multi-national company as the Head of their Cyber Security division.
Simon had taken one look at the bunker’s security, and then quickly assured both of his other two friends that given enough time, he thought he could probably hack into the system.
Unfortunately, right about now, time was no longer something they were in abundance of.
With presumably the same horde that they had seen back in town slowly closing in on their position, suddenly Simon’s earlier theory that the cold would hopefully stop them in their tracks, no longer appeared to be valid – just as that last radio broadcast they had heard had warned them.
There was no denying the evidence out there, way out in the distance.
The army of the Walking Dead were coming…and apparently would not be stopped.
Not by anything…
Not even the cold…
***
“Are they here yet? Are they upon us? How far away exactly are they? How much time do we have left? Speak to me, Connor. Speak to me, over.”
Simon’s voice came out of nowhere, startling Connor, broadcasting over one of the walkie-talkies that Simon had issued his two friends, not long after their arrival, so that he could keep in constant contact with them while he continued to try and crack the code that would allow them access to the bunker beneath. That very same bunker that despite promising them relative safety, for now, at least, still lay tantalisingly just out of reach.
Connor hit the button to reply.
“Looks like the dead are still a few hours away at least,” he said, replying into the walkie. “Or at least, as far as I can tell. The weather doesn’t seem to be stopping them either. It’s like those people said in those last broadcasts we heard, about the dead bringing the cold along with them. The snow and ice outside is starting to get really thick now, and it’s almost like the weather is getting worse the closer they approach. Where’s Kev? Is he still alright? Have you seen him lately? Spoken to him? Heard anything from him? Over.”
Kev had taken to exploring the vast underground tunnels they had discovered running underneath the research facility, shortly after first discovering the bunker. Tunnels that seemed to have been built to accommodate the passage of huge, great military vehicles such as missile carriers and the like.
The vast underground passages were entirely hidden from the outside world, and none of them had any idea where they might lead or whether or not they might provide another possible exit out of here should the complex become overrun, so Kevin had taken to exploring and mapping them in the hours since they had arrived.
Unfortunately, radio contact down in the tunnels was erratic and sporadic and so Kevin had been forced to spend much of his time exploring in radio silence – unable to be reached – and whilst this worried both the two friends, they also knew that what he was doing was of vital importance. Might even end up providing the three of them with another means of escape should Simon fail in his mission to get them into the bunker.
Though Kevin tried to check in whenever he could, and whenever he could manage to get a brief signal, when he was down in the tunnels, it had not become unusual in the last thirty six hours not to hear from him for at least a couple of hours at a time.
“Not lately, no,” Simon said, his voice sounding kind of tinny through the small walkie-talkie. “But he did promise, the last time we spoke, not to wander too far – and told me he just wanted to see how far the tunnels stretched, just in case I don’t end up cracking this goddamn fucking code before the dead end up breaking down our door.”
“And how’s that going, by the way?” Connor asked, and thought he could almost imagine Simon shaking his head on the other end of the line.
“Slowly,” Simon said, confirming Connor’s suspicions. “It’s a lot harder and more complicated than I thought, and whoever set this up certainly knew their stuff, but I am getting there, I promise. It’s just taking a bit more time than I thought it would is all.
“It’s not like the movies, or television, you know. This sort of stuff takes time – there are a whole host of complicated algorithms to solve, various computations to manipulate, endless variables to work through – whoever designed the security for this bunker certainly knew what they were doing. I’m going as fast and as quickly as I can. Over.”
Connor pushed down the button to talk again.
“I know you are,” he said to his friend. “But you might want to try and hurry it up is all I’m saying. I don’t think I need to tell you, time’s running out and if it wasn’t against us before, it certainly is now. Over.”
