The One Percent (Episode 3): The One Percent

by Heller, Erik P.

  I know I shouldn’t talk, with two additional houses as well as Lanchcombe, but there was a lot of history in that and my ancestors hadn’t run out the locals to build the houses. At least I hoped not. And whatever happened, Lanchcombe was gone now, a stately home for the undead.

  “Frank?” I heard Daisy from around the corner. “Can you come here?”

  I set off, feeling slightly better about the height now, and turned the corner. I could see that Daisy was staring intently off to the west.

  “What is it?” I asked, glad to have something else to think about for a few moments.

  “What do you make of that, Frank?” She pointed off into the distance.

  I peered. My eyesight wasn’t as good as it used to be and most of the distance was just a bit of a blur, so I couldn’t really see anything.

  “Of what?” I squinted along the line where Daisy was pointing.

  “That,” she said after a few moments.

  I squinted a bit more but all I could see was a dusty horizon. Actually, it looked vaguely like clouds of dust now I concentrated on it.

  “Look.” Daisy pointed again.

  This time I could see what she was looking at. It was breezy up where we were but not windy, but in the distance, the greenery was shaking and snapping around like there was a gale blowing.

  “That’s heading this way,” I said, stating the bleeding obvious.

  “I can see that, Frank.”

  “What is it?”

  “Guess.”

  “I can’t guess. It looks like …” Actually, I couldn’t think of anything it looked like, never having seen anything like it in my life.

  “My guess would be Groaners, Frank. We need to get out of here. To be causing that much damage there must be hundreds of them.” She didn’t sound scared. She did sound nervous.

  I was shit-scared. The last thing I wanted was to get stuck up a church tower while a herd of Groaners wandered through. We could have been trapped up there for days, and the way those things were taking out everything in front of them as they moved across the countryside, I wasn’t even sure the church and its tower would still be standing by the time they’d done with it.

  As we raced back down the steps I suddenly thought about the campervan and the people in the tents.

  “What are we going to do about the people out there?” I yelled over my shoulder. Climbing up was bad enough. Climbing down, I was breathing better but it was killing my knees.

  “We don’t even know if there’s anyone there.” Daisy was panting a bit behind me as we descended. I could hear Mungo’s claws clattering on the stone steps.

  “It all looked too freshly set up for them to have been there too long. We have to go check it out. It’s not far. If there is someone in there, they’ll be ripped apart. They might not even see them coming.”

  “Hark at you being all heroic,” Daisy said as we neared the bottom. “Will you know how to get there?”

  “Yeah, back into the Range Rover and drive.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  We sprinted back to the car which had been unmolested since we got there. The vicar slammed against the window of his house as we pelted past and I had to go back briefly to pick up Mungo and stop him barking at the vicar, getting him all riled up. The chances were the windows on the vicarage would hold but you could never be too careful.

  Once we were back in, we strapped ourselves in, apart from Mungo. He’s smart but there is a limit.

  I gunned the engine, and the wheels span on the gravel, kicking up dust and rattling stones against the underbody of the car, then I straightened the thing up and we were away.

  Because of the way the trees overhung the roads it was impossible to see very far, but when we did get a brief glimpse ahead, the horizon, no more than a mile away was a blur of rising dust. All I could hope was that whoever was in that mini-camp was aware of the impending disaster approaching their temporary home.

  By the look of it, there wasn’t going to be a lot of time to go into a long, drawn-out discussion about the relative merits of whether to stay or go.

  As we rounded the bend, I caught a glimpse of colour through the heavy ground cover, and Daisy obviously saw it too as she yelled and pointed. I slammed on the brakes just in time to stop by a set of open field gates and look across to where the campervan and tents were set up just inside the hedge surrounding the field.

  I leaned on the horn, then backed up enough so I could swing the car around and into the field. I leaned on the horn again and pushed open the driver’s door before Daisy grabbed my arm as I was about to get out.

  “Be careful, Frank. There’s no knowing what’s inside,” she said, looking at the tents, then the campervan.

  “I will. Make sure you bring the shotgun. Mungo stay,” I said. Mungo lay down on the back seat with a pitiful whimper and big baleful eyes.

  I pulled the pistol out of the waistband of my trousers and hoped I wouldn’t need it, so I left the safety catch on. I knew that could prove to be a big mistake, but I didn’t want to shoot anyone accidentally if they made me jump. I pulled the knife out from its little scabbard and used it to slice open the tent then stepped back sharply just in case.

  Nothing.

  “It’s empty,” I said to Daisy as she marched over to the other tent. She did things the ladylike way and unzipped the front. She didn’t say anything, just crawled inside until she was half-in and half-out, then she backed completely out again.

  Once she stood up, she held up her find. One flare gun and a box of shells for it.

  That seemed to answer the question about who had shot the flares the night before, but it didn’t explain why nobody was in the tents or indeed where the previous occupants were.

  I stepped over to the campervan and tried the door. Unlocked.

  I opened it very slowly. Nobody came rushing out, just a strong smell of something horrible. I hopped up into the campervan and called out.

  “Anybody there? There’s trouble coming, you need to get out of here.”

  Nothing.

  I spent the next couple of minutes looking around. The camper was bereft of human life although I did notice that the bed was folded down, ready for use.

  “Frank,” Daisy wailed from outside. I hopped back out and looked over at where she was pointing.

  Across the other side of the field, which was a good distance away, five figures had just clambered over a gateway and were running for their lives. They kept looking over their shoulders and after about ten seconds I realised why. The most incredible thing I’ve ever seen happened as we stood and watched. The hedgerow either side of the gate for about two hundred yards seemed to just disappear in a tsunami of the undead. It didn’t matter how thick it was, the sheer weight of the Groaners in pursuit of the five powered the crowd straight through with branches, arms, and legs all being flung into the air in a savage outpouring of base hunger.

  I could feel the pounding of hundreds, maybe thousands of feet as they stumbled and trundled after the five people who were running ahead of them, attracting them straight toward where Daisy and I were standing.

  Disaster struck when one of the people fell over, stumbling then going face first to the ground, also tripping over the figure behind. It was hard to tell from this distance, but it looked a bit like a woman tripped a man over.

  The other three, a man and two younger women, kept on running, heading our way. Daisy was jumping up and down, trying to warn them about the two they had left behind, but they must just have been in a blind panic because they didn’t seem to see her, and they were running like the wind. I mean like Usain Bolt, only faster.

  “Stay here,” I yelled at Daisy, as I ran back to the Range Rover, “Tell them to pile into the campervan and follow us once I get back.”

  “What about me, Frank?”

  I skidded to a halt by the car. “You go with them. If anything happens, you can direct them back to Marldon Hall.”

  I pulled open th
e door and jumped in, started up, and hammered the accelerator while Daisy yelled something I couldn’t hear.

  I hadn’t counted on the field being as bumpy as it was or the suspension on the car being as soft as it was as I bounced across the field. It bottomed out a couple of times with a horrible metallic scraping sound, but I just kept going as best I could. One of the people, a man came running toward me, waving his arms, and yelling, but I ignored him and kept moving forward, finally reaching the two people who had been left behind. I swung around between them and the horde, the frontrunners of which were no more than fifty yards away by that time, and a more vicious and slavering mob you couldn’t wish to see in your life.

  I opened the driver’s door and yelled at the man, who was kneeling beside a young woman, to help me get her in the back seat. ‘Quickly’ I think I said, but in the heat of the rescue mission, I may have added an expletive or three.

  The man looked completely shell-shocked, so I had to yell at him again to get him moving. Together we dragged the weeping woman into the car where she scooted across the back seat. Mungo jumped into the front seat and stood, barking at the Groaners, with his front paws up on the dashboard as they got steadily closer. The man jumped in quickly, and I just managed to get in and get the door shut before the first of the undead reached the car and slapped his hands against the passenger side window, clearly intent on grabbing Mungo for a starter before moving on to the main course. I went a bit easier on the accelerator on the grass and pulled away smoothly, staying parallel with the horde for a short time before I turned the car around in a shallow arc to bring us back to the gate and the two tents.

  “Is there anything in there you need,” I shouted into the back of the car.

  “Yep, hang on.” I watched in the mirrors as the man got out and rooted around in the tents. When he seemed to be hanging around too much for my liking, I dropped the window. “You might want to get a move on. Those things are coming fast.”

  “I can’t find it.” He was rooting around inside and amongst the sleeping bags and other assorted detritus.

  “What is it? Can’t you leave it behind?”

  If he wasn’t back inside in the next thirty seconds I was going to go, and I made sure to communicate that in no uncertain terms. With swearing, just to make the point.

  Finally, he seemed to find what he was looking for and in a flash of movement, he was by my window, pointing the biggest machete I’d ever seen in my life at my face.

  “Get out of the car,” he growled at me, his eyes flicking from me to the Groaner frontrunners who were now only twenty feet away.

  I didn’t even bother waiting to tell him to fuck off. I just booted the accelerator and spun the wheels off that field and out of the gate without looking back.

  In the wing mirror, I saw him standing in the field looking shocked at the car as I drove it away, then being overwhelmed by the mass of Groaners as they washed over him.

  “What’s happening, where’s Mike?”

  I didn’t bother replying. I was too busy concentrating on driving and keeping the car on the road. Occasionally I had to slow down and play bumper cars with small groups of Groaners who were definitely more numerous now. I assumed they must have broken off from the main wave somehow. Eventually, we seemed to clear the main bulk and I found the road back toward Marldon. I really hadn’t expected what I’d witnessed. The sheer numbers of the undead were overwhelming. It was like the whole of Swindon had died, reanimated, and decided to go for a long game of follow the leader in the Wiltshire countryside.

  All I wanted to do was get away, get back, and get the hell out of there. If that many were on the move, the chances were, they would reach Marldon and wipe the place out unless we could find a way of stopping them and given the way they ploughed through everything before them, the chances of that seemed remote to say the least.

  In the meantime, the woman in the back of the car was hysterical, yelling and shouting, trying to undo the back door in her rage. Thank heavens for the child locks on the doors.

  When she began to threaten me, I rammed on the brakes and told her in perfectly clear Queen’s English that if she didn’t shut the hell up, I’d wait until we came across another bunch of the undead which she was welcome to try and escape from when I kicked her out of the car.

  That seemed to do the trick and for the rest of the time we were driving back to Marldon, she kept her loud mouth shut. When I glanced at her in the mirror, she was glaring at me with undisguised hatred from the back seat. Her hair was a ragged mess, her bright blue eyes were ice-cold, and shooting glacial rays at the back of my head. In all truth, she looked like a refugee from a hippy commune or a protest camp. Her skin was sallow and grubby, and her clothes a mismatch of denim, tie-dye, and leather patches.

  Eventually, when I glanced again, she asked where I was taking her.

  “Marldon Hall,” I said. “We’re using it as a base camp.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Oh, there’s about a dozen or so of us.”

  “Who are you all. I guess you must own the place from the plummy accent and overbearing attitude.”

  “No, I don’t own it and what the hell are you talking about overbearing?”

  “You left Mike behind. You threatened to leave me behind.”

  “You were making my ears bleed and I’m sorry but if you’re going to point something at me, you’d better make sure I’m not sitting in the driver’s seat of a car with the engine running. What was he to you anyway?”

  “He was a fellow traveller. A free spirit. A seeker of truth, peace, and love.”

  Mungo lay flat on the seat and put his paws over his ears while whatever her name was went all spiritual on me.

  “Yeah, well, he isn’t any of those anymore. He’s dinner and I’m not sorry. A seeker of peace really shouldn’t pull a huge knife on anyone, particularly the driver of the getaway car.”

  I tried as hard as I could but nope, I felt not one iota of guilt for leaving him as lunch meat for the horde.

  “So, who are you all? Did you know each other before?”

  “A few of us did, then we got split up. One of the smaller groups met up with a group of soldiers, and we all ended up at Marldon. What about your people?”

  “No, none of us knew each other before. I met up with Mike in the little village where I used to live. He was staying with his mother there for a week when it all went so horribly wrong.”

  “Right. So, what did you do before?”

  “Teacher. I used to teach in the village primary school.”

  “You managed to get away OK, though?”

  “There weren’t too many of those … things around so we did, but we had no transport.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t … sorry didn’t have a car and Mike’s was surrounded by those things—”

  “We call them Groaners.”

  “Well, his car was surrounded by them.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe somebody was in it,” she said angrily.

  “Alright, alright, no need to get shirty. So, you just ran?”

  “Yes. Then we met the guys with the campervan and we’ve been staying with them.”

  “Why were you outside in the tents? Not very safe out in the open.”

  “It was OK, we only had the things, the Groaners one night. One of the five of us was on watch so we could get up and deal with them. Jim, the guy with the camper didn’t let us stay inside at night.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think he wanted any competition.”

  “What?” The hippy wasn’t making any sense.

  “From Mike and me.”

  “You’ve lost me, sorry.”

  “Did you see the others when you were coming to rescue me?”

  “Not really, and you’re welcome,” I said wondering if my sarcastic tone would get through to her.

  “There was Mike and me, and Jim, Lola, and Brigitte. They’re Ameri
can you know.” I didn’t know. How could I? I hadn’t even spoken to any of them.

  “Sounds like a kids TV programme. Oh,” I said, as realisation dawned, “him and two women, huh?”

  “You got it.”

  “Noisy?”

  “Yup.”

  “Right.”

  “Sounds like they weren’t taking what’s going on too seriously.”

  “They said they’d only seen a couple before what happened today. Scared the shit out of them when they saw that lot chasing us. They ran away like there was no tomorrow.” No spiritualism in that little statement.

  “What were you all doing over in those trees? I guess that’s where you were.”

  “Magic mushrooms. Mike thought they might grow there. He liked his drugs did Mike. He had his own stash of weed that he refused to share with the others. He offered me some but that’s not my thing. I don’t know why the others came. To hunt maybe? Those things, Groaners, stomped out of the woods, saw us and just went straight for us.” I could hear the fear in her voice.

  “You did well to escape.”

  “Mike didn’t.”

  “He shouldn’t have been such an idiot. Why do you think he pulled the knife on me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a tone of irritation creeping back into her voice. “I barely knew the man. We’d only been on the road for a few days.”

  I’d wondered why she wasn’t too upset about Mike’s demise. I had to admit to myself that I had reacted purely out of a sense of self-protection. I had already experienced the threat of being dumped out of one vehicle by Steve Simms, and I hoped it didn’t become a theme, because it didn’t seem to end well for whoever was trying it.

  I spun the wheel to turn right, back to Marldon. I hadn’t really given it much thought, but those Groaners were heading straight for Marldon, so if we were going to survive, we needed to get back there, get everybody out, and make good our escape before it was too late.

  “Listen … erm … sorry I didn’t get your name. I’m Frank.”

  “Libby.”

  “OK, listen, Libby. We are going to have to act fast when we get there. Those things are going to be heading straight at Marldon. How’s your leg?”