Undead (ARC)

by McKay, Kirsty

  you’re not one of them, are you?”

  I wipe at my face with my sleeve. “Just a nosebleed. And yes, they’re

  here. We have to go. Now.”

  1 4

  As I climb out of the bus with the two stowaways, Smitty’s and Pete’s

  faces are an absolute picture. It’s a classic moment; I wish I had time to savor it. Pete actually does a double-take, then kind of scuffles and falls into the ditch. The boy giggles, and his sister shushes him.

  “Who the f —” Smitty starts.

  “It’s OK,” I say. “They’re not infected.”

  “You sure of that?” Smitty recovers quickly; he’s fixing Alice’s floppy

  feet to a snowboard.

  Pete picks himself up off the ground, still staring. “You were hiding

  on the bus? Where did you come from?”

  “I’m Lily,” the girl says. “This is my brother, Cam. We were in the café,

  but then we went out —”

  There’s an ominous groan from the end of the bus. They’re here.

  “Great to meet you, stories later,” Smitty grimaces, tightening the

  fastenings over Alice’s feet. “We have to move. Malice is not home, but

  we can pull her along.” He hauls her to her feet and flings one of her arms over his shoulder. “Muscle up, Pete, and take her other arm. She’s heavier than she looks.”

  “Oh my god!” Lily screams as Gareth appears around the side of

  the bus.

  I reach down and swipe up Cam, blood from my nose gushing onto

  his poor little face. Lily snatches him from me as he begins to wail, and

  they run through the snow to the other side of the tree trunk. Gareth

  looks really, really annoyed. Maybe he’s got a nicotine crave on. That

  must really suck: being a zombie who can’t get a smoke.

  Two men appear behind him, staggering forward, drooling and groaning. One is wearing a torn, blood-spattered white shirt and checkered

  trousers, topped off with a little paper hat. The other guy looks like a

  builder; he’s wearing the remains of denim overalls and a tool belt. Together they make me think of LEGO figures. “Here’s LEGO Zombie Chef! Here’s LEGO Zombie Builder! See their grasping hands and posable limbs!”

  “Roberta, are you coming?”

  Smitty’s shouting shakes me into reality. I hitch on my backpack and

  hike another couple of bags over one shoulder, grab a snowboard, and

  scramble into the ditch and around the tree. Smitty and Pete are handling Alice-on-a-board just fine, but it’s up to me to haul all of our bags.

  I throw the board down, stuff one foot in the bindings, and push off. I’m

  no natural boarder, but it’s not like there’s time to don boots and skis.

  It’s a chase scene in slo-mo, like one of those dreams where you try to

  run but can’t. The snow is not too deep, but there’s thick ice below it. We move as fast as we can — which is not very fast, just enough to keep the motley crew behind at a distance. Lily leads the way on foot with Cam

  on her back. The moaning behind us is louder — clearly they don’t like finding an obstacle in their way, either — but I don’t look around. Keep going and they can’t catch you.

  It’s getting darker and it is mercilessly cold. At the back of my mind

  is a nagging realization that if we don’t find shelter, the cold may well

  finish us off before the monsters do. I can see the junction leading out

  onto the main road. I push myself off and glide past the girl and her

  brother. Please god, don’t let me wipe out — Smitty will never let me forget it.

  I reach the junction in no great style and try to remember which way

  we turned in — and did we pass through any villages before we got here?

  To the left is silent road and trees, to the right is the same, but leading up a steep hill. I’m stunned at my own lack of observation. I have absolutely no memory of what came before the Cheery Chomper. Luckily, I don’t have to remember.

  “Turn right!” the girl shouts. “We live up there.”

  “There’s a town?” I ask as she reaches me, panting.

  She shakes her head. “It’s a wee village, really. But we’ll be safe in our house, and there’s a phone.”

  “How far?” Smitty and Pete have caught up.

  The girl shrugs. “A couple of minutes in the car.”

  Smitty makes a face. “Lucky I brought my Ferrari.”

  She stares at him. “Maybe a mile or something?”

  I can see Pete begin to wilt.

  “That’s nothing.” I force a smile. “What, twenty minutes on foot? We

  can get there before it’s totally dark.”

  “Dragging Alice?” Pete begins to shake. “Up that hill? With them

  behind us?”

  I look behind me. They’re still coming: the LEGO men, Booby

  Woman, the couple, and Gareth. All bar Carrot Man. Something tells

  me he’s probably rolling around in a ditch.

  “Look how slow they are, man!” Smitty says. “We keep going, they’ll

  never catch us.”

  So we start up the road. I focus on the brow of the hill. The horizon

  undulates ahead of me, the trees leaning in on each other over the road,

  the road appearing to move as if I’m on an endless white treadmill. I fix

  my gaze on it, willing it closer. And then it does move.

  I stop. We all do.

  Smitty looks up the hill and frowns.

  “What’s wrong?” Pete asks, nervously looking behind us.

  Our pursuers haven’t made it onto the main road.

  Smitty raises a hand. “Listen.”

  We strain our ears. There is something. Something is off. It’s almost as if the pressure’s changed, like when you’re on a plane and your ears pop and you start hearing things in a different key. It’s a hum, so low and

  constant that we didn’t notice it creeping in at first.

  “A car!” Pete says, elated.

  A truck, maybe. Or a tractor. Something grittier than a car. And it’s

  coming toward us from the direction of the hilltop. My mind races as I

  imagine a cavalry of soldiers coming into view. I’ve never been one for

  boys in uniform, but I might be rapidly changing my mind on that one.

  “Stay chill, people,” says Smitty, but I can hear the hope in his voice.

  “They’re coming,” Alice moans, her head lolling on Smitty’s shoulder.

  “Hey, Malice!” Smitty says to her, almost affectionately. “Way to time

  waking up! Bang on, old girl!” He kisses her head, and a shameful little

  part of me dies somewhere deep inside. “Lean yourself against Uncle

  Pete for a mo’, ’kay?” He practically throws her onto Pete, and starts to

  stride up the hill. “Woo-hoo! Here we are!” he calls. I wonder if this is his definition of staying chill.

  Then he stops. And at the same moment, I realize why.

  The gray blur on the horizon sharpens into focus just as the noise does.

  No trucks, no tractors, no military men to whisk us away to safety, but

  hundreds of stumbling shapes, growling and groaning and grumbling.

  An army of monsters.

  Lily lets out a strangled half gasp.

  “Scaredy Lily?” Cam mumbles into her shoulder.

  “What do we do?” Pete whispers. His head whips from up the hill

  to down, where Gareth and his unlive crew have started up the incline

  toward us, slow but relentless.

  “Don’t panic,” I say, which must go down in history as the All Time

  Lamest Comment Ever. We instinctively back into the tree line, dragging

  Alice with us. Smitty is still transfixed by
the hordes.

  “We have to go back,” I say. And once I’ve made the decision, Pete’s

  throwing himself down the hill at speed, leaving me to prop up semi—

  conscious Alice. Lily follows with Cam. “Smitty!” I yell. He’s still staring up the hill at the oncoming masses. “Some help here!”

  He looks back at me, utterly crestfallen. My heart breaks a little;

  I feel it, too.

  The Gareth Posse are now walking in a line, shoulder to shoulder,

  across the road. Must be some kind of hunting instinct. Lily falters and

  turns to shout up at me. “We can cut into the woods!” She points. “Find

  a way up the hill to get to the village!”

  I shake my head. “We’re faster on the road. And newsflash,” I add

  cruelly, “your village is infected. There’s no point heading there.”

  “But what about — ?” She thrusts out a hand to the six who are cutting

  our way off, her face desperate and crumpled.

  “We can get past them!” I struggle down the hill, sliding Alice on the

  board, and yes, she is heavier than she looks. There’s a dark red mat of

  hair at the back of her blond head. I flashback to the triangle of flesh

  on Pete’s skull. All things considered, it’s amazing either one of them’s

  still standing. Says the girl with a hole in her leg and probably a broken nose. Then Smitty’s there, taking Alice’s other arm, his eyes wild and his breath heavy. I look at him and swallow hard. “Take my board. Whiz

  down the road and do your thing. We need you to distract them while we

  get Alice and the kid past.”

  He doesn’t need telling twice. In fact, he’s almost too fast, already

  nearly down at the bottom of the hill before I can catch my breath and

  say something along the lines of “be careful.” He buzzes Gareth, making

  him fall over on the hard ground, before doubling back and taking out

  the legs of Booby Woman.

  “Quick!” I tell the others. “Get down the hill as fast as you can.”

  Alice shrugs me off. It’s as if she’s drunk. She kicks her feet free, sits on the snowboard like it’s a sled, and before I can stop her, lies back and pushes off. The board flies down the bank. But she can’t control it, and as she leans and banks sharply left, she wipes out LEGO

  Zombie Chef.

  “Go, Malice!” yells Smitty as he dodges past Gareth again. “Zombie

  Luge Bowling!”

  It hasn’t done much for her concussion, though. She falls off the

  board into some soft snow by the tree line. Pete, Lily and Cam, and I

  hurry down the hill on the other side — as LEGO Zombie Builder stumbles toward her.

  But Smitty’s on it. He pushes his board into action, and reaches her

  before LEGO Builder can. He pulls her up in front of him, and they ride

  his board in tandem. Semi-conscious doubles snowboarding: a new

  sport for the winter Olympics?

  We’re past them. I look back up the hill. The growling legions are

  still advancing, but they don’t have snowboards, or brains, or even fully

  functioning legs. As they emerge out of the shadows, I can see young

  kids and grannies, and probably the mailman and the guy who came to

  fix the frozen pipes. How did they all turn? Did they get the evil veggie

  juice, or were they bitten? And how are there so many of them? Is this

  everywhere? Where will we be safe?

  I run clumsily after the others. Alice is walking now, occasionally

  shooting out a hand to steady herself on Pete’s arm. Now I know she

  must be concussed — there’s no way she’d consciously touch him if

  she wasn’t. Smitty is trailblazing to who knows where. The road ahead

  gives no clues.

  Full-on dark now. If it wasn’t for the snow and a sliver of moon, we’d

  be totally screwed. We could be heading from the frying pan into the fire, for all we know . . . but hey, at least it would be warm then. Anywhere but here is fine with me. And if we stick to the road there’s always the chance we’ll meet some more live, non-monstery people — preferably with

  vehicles and big guns. Isn’t there? Despite their glaring absence so far?

  Soon we’ll be out of the zoms’ sight. I wonder if they can track us, or

  if they only chase what they can see or hear. Or smell.

  I catch up with the others. They’re having a discussion about where

  we’re headed.

  “So, is it near?” Smitty is — typically — striding ahead, the board now

  tucked under his arm.

  “I said I don’t know,” Lily says, exasperated.

  “Actually you said you ‘dinny ken’!” shouts Smitty. “And unless he’s

  Ken” — he points to her brother — “I don’t have a clue what you’re on about.” For a semi-literate snowboarder, the boy sure gets hung up on the proper pronunciation of the mother tongue.

  “Me neither,” I say. “What are we looking for?”

  Lily turns to me, breathing heavily as she struggles to keep walking

  with Cam on her back. “There’s a village — or a small town, I think — a

  few miles away. I don’t know how far because we only moved here a few

  weeks ago.”

  “Great!” Smitty blusters. “The only survivors we find haven’t got a

  clue where the hell they are, either!”

  “Here!” Pete shouts at us from the side of the road. “This way!”

  We rush over to where he’s brushing snow off a brown signpost

  pointing left. On it is a little picture of what looks like a chess piece and the words 1 mile.

  “It’s a castle!” he says, triumphant.

  “So?” says Smitty.

  “Fortification.” Pete’s eyes gleam.

  Smitty frowns at him. “Thanks, but you’re not my type.”

  Pete ignores him and carries on. “Thick stone walls. Big wooden

  doors with solid locks. Little windows. And weapons, Smitty, weapons.”

  “Where is it?” Smitty’s decided.

  “Wait!” I say. “What about sticking to the road in case there’s someone looking for us? And what about this village or town that might be a

  couple of miles away?”

  “Might be,” says Pete. “Bobby, it’s cold, it’s dark, we’ve had kind of a big day —”

  “They must have a phone!” says Lily, jumping ship. “And something

  to eat.”

  There’s a thump a few feet behind us.

  Alice has fallen headlong into the snow; she can go no farther.

  “Castle it is, then,” I say.

  Smitty and Pete gather her up. The turnoff is a single car-width of

  virgin snow.

  I pause. “What if they can see our footprints?”

  “More likely smell that trail of blood you’re leaving,” Smitty says.

  My hand goes up to my nose. It’s started dripping again. “They’re

  not sharks, Smitty,” I say snippily. “For all we know, it’s your rancid feet they’re attracted to.”

  We tramp down the lane in silence, Smitty and Pete sliding Alice on

  Smitty’s board this time, me feeling like a packhorse with all of our bags.

  The trees block out the sky in places. I feel like we’re trespassing, and that any minute now something is going to jump out of the darkness.

  It doesn’t.

  Every one of us keeps stealing a glance behind, hoping not to see we’re

  being followed. After a couple of times, it becomes a joke — let’s see who can hold out the longest without checking. But it seems like we might have given them the slip. The adrenaline of the chase has gone now. I’m

>   cold and exhausted.

  Finally the lane bends sharply, revealing a black mass against a

  glittering background. A castle and a frozen loch.

  And there’s a light on.

  1 5

  “Somebody’s home,” sings Smitty, “over at the Frankenstein place . . .”

  We’re standing at the castle gates. Most of us are standing, anyway.

  Alice has collapsed onto her knees, and we’re too tired to pick her up.

  Smitty is the only one left with any energy: Manic, with a side of Musical Theater. He has been singing all the way down the lane since we spied the castle. At first it was kind of funny and creepy, now it’s just plain annoying. The wind is picking up and my un-gloved fingers are threatening to drop off. The straps of all the bags are cutting through my shoulders like the thinnest of ribbons. I clamp my hands under my armpits and look up at what has stopped us.

  The gates are high, with a heap of heavy chain wrapped around them

  like a snake, and a big ol’ padlock. Whoever is in the castle is not at home for visitors. The light that led us here is from a ground-floor window next to a huge, dark doorway that I can barely see. One light on, and

  one only.

  I look around for some kind of entry phone on the gates, but this is

  Scotland, not Beverly Hills. At the risk of losing my skin, I shake the

  gates of freezing metal, but they barely move. They’re made of elaborate

  wrought iron with no easy foot-or handholds, and are attached to an

  equally high brick wall, which Smitty has already tried to bounce over,

  Tigger-stylee.

  “Do you think we can get in around the back?” I ask.

  “Wouldn’t that defeat the point of having high walls?” Pete snaps.

  “Why don’t we shout?” Lily says. “Whoever is in there will come and

  let us in.”

  “No shouting!” Pete almost breaks his own rule, nervously glancing

  behind us. “For all we know, the hordes are close by.”

  “Why . . . don’t we go in through the gates?” Alice slurs. She has

  dragged herself up and is leaning against one of them. She fiddles with

  the padlock and slowly unwinds the thick chain, which slithers to the

  ground with a muffled thud.

  “How the hell . . . ?” Pete stutters.

  “Malice?” Smitty says. “Did you pick the lock with a nail file?”