by Luke Duffy
Remaining tucked away in the shadows, they had watched as survivors scavenged and did what they could and must to stay alive. It was clear that there were still a lot of living people in the country but they were well aware that their numbers steadily declined on a daily basis. No one could hide forever and if there was one thing that they could count on, it was that eventually the infected would somehow find them.
It was never the speed or intelligence of the dead that was a concern. It was always their numbers and their tenacity. If a living person was seen or a hideout discovered, hordes of rotting corpses would converge on to the spot. Only people with strong defences and a means of escape had a chance at survival once they were detected.
While Marty took his turn to sleep, Danny and Bull had been watching the infected in the streets below. At first, they had made a childish game of naming the wandering figures after well-known celebrities and taking it in turns to identify which of the reanimated bodies the other was referring to. Once they were bored of that, a bet was made on which of the two infected, ‘Bill Gates’ with the computer or ‘Michael Schumacher’ in the car, would be the first to lose interest in what they were doing and move onto something else.
“I still can’t find Simon Cowell,” Danny said quietly and beginning to lose interest.
“He’s long gone, mate. You couldn’t miss him though. He had his trousers pulled up to his neck and a flat-top that would make Grace Jones envious.”
“Christ knows how I missed that one then.”
“I’d best wake up Sleeping Beauty over there,” Bull declared as he sat up and began to crawl towards the tree and the snoring mound at its base.
He looked down on Marty and consciously took note of the loaded pistol that his slumbering friend clutched in his hand. In the current state of the world, awakening someone with a sudden noise or movement could easily be enough to result in a knee-jerk reaction, and Bull did not savour the idea of being shot by one of his teammates because they were in a confused state. He got down low to the ground and saddled up beside him, positioning himself in a way that afforded him the ability to restrain his friend should he need to.
“Marty,” he whispered as he reached out to him and shook his shoulder.
Marty instantly woke with a start. Bull watched him for a few seconds and eyed the pistol in his hand but he did not show any indication of raising the weapon.
“It’s your stag, mate,” Bull continued, informing him that it was his turn to stand guard.
“What, now?”
“No, next fucking Tuesday. I just thought I’d wake you up a week early for a laugh. Get up, dick head.”
“Fuck sake,” Marty grunted sleepily.
Bull crawled back over to Danny while Marty slowly awoke. He turned around to check on him and watched in silence for a moment as his friend stretched and scratched at his head. Marty checked his watch and then peered up through the branches and leaves of the tree to check on the position of the sun. It was still a few more hours before nightfall and he considered rolling over and going back to sleep.
“Don’t even think about it,” Bull whispered across to him. “It’s your turn to keep an eye out while I get some kip.”
Marty rubbed at his eyes and began to crawl forward towards the others. He nestled up beside them on his stomach and peered through the grass and down the hill.
“Anything happening down there?”
“Nothing,” Bull shook his head. “You sure it’s worth going down there?”
“It’s worth a look,” Marty shrugged. “It’s the last built-up area between us and the pick-up point so it would be rude not to have a rummage about. Besides, it’s Danny who’s mad-keen to go down there.”
“I grew up not far from here,” Danny said quietly when he felt Bull’s questioning gaze fall upon him.
“You’re not getting all sentimental on us are you, Danny?”
“Something like that,” he shrugged. “Besides, that check-point down at the far end of the street may have something worth taking.”
Bull looked across to his right and at the collapsed barriers. The bullet riddled military vehicles sat dark and silent with smashed windows and punctured tyres, their doors askew and their occupants long gone. There were dozens of bodies lying all around the position and it was clear that the soldiers had fought valiantly. It had done them no use and the infected had trampled the remains of the defences beneath their decaying feet while they feasted upon the overwhelmed troops.
As darkness began to fall, the three of them prepared to move. Instinctively, they silently checked that their weapons were ready and their equipment was secure with all their pouches fastened and their straps tucked away.
“Anything happens and we get split, make your way back here,” Marty whispered back to them and pointed at the tree. “This will be the ERV. Wait ten minutes, if possible, then move to the pick-up.”
Danny and Bull signalled their acknowledgement with their thumbs raised.
Marty stepped out to the front and began leading them down the grassy hill and towards the row of cars. The sky in the west was still a pale blue and afforded them with enough light to be able to negotiate their way down to the streets without overexposing themselves, but they knew that they would not have that luxury for much longer. The sun had long since vanished beneath the horizon and the light was fading fast. The heat of the day was rapidly wilting from the air and being replaced by a fresh breeze as darkness made its way across the night sky and changed the landscape to various dark shades of blue and grey.
Danny followed at the rear and savoured the feeling of the cool night against his flushed skin while to his left, he could just make out the jerky movements of ‘Schumacher’ still sitting behind the steering wheel of the car. The thing was never going to move. It was far too engrossed in what it was doing.
I just missed out on five Snickers bars because of you, Danny realised.
Down at street level they kept themselves hidden behind the row of parked vehicles and crept along towards the far end of the road. To their left, where the countryside gave way to the suburbs of the small rural town, the infected lurked. The sounds of them crashing through the darkened avenues and stumbling over debris rang out through the narrow channels within the housing estate. Their voices echoed for great distances as they moaned and cried out into the silence that surrounded them. With darkness falling, the noises of the night seemed to travel further and the three men had to be all the more careful with every step.
Every few metres they would stop while they scanned the area and listened for any sign that they had been detected. Marty was already beginning to wonder why he had felt obliged to allow Danny to indulge his nostalgically fuelled curiosity, but they were almost there now and it would be just as easy to continue, as it would be to turn back.
The three of them sat tucked away behind a vehicle and waiting as the last of the light steadily faded. The sky above them was already revealing the first of its glittering stars and as their natural night vision grew, Marty and the others were able to see more details of their surroundings. After a while, they could see clearly in both directions and as far as they could tell there were no infected in their immediate area.
They stepped out from the row of cars and began to cross over towards the darkened shops and the checkpoint to their right. Danny paused and kept an eye on the area as he covered the others. As he turned to check their rear, he almost yelled out in surprise.
All along the horizon at the top of the hill he could see human shaped silhouettes. He did not need a second glance to see that they were dozens of the infected. Where they had come from he had no idea, but they were headed towards the houses and Danny and the others were about to be trapped between the rural and urban areas, hemmed in by the dead.
He stopped and hissed to the others to grab their attention. Marty froze to the spot and turned to see what was happening and instantly recognised the threat. Bull too had seen them and the three of
them took cover behind the nearest of the cars.
“Where the fuck did they come from?” Bull gasped as he peeked over the vehicle’s roof and up at the hill.
Danny shook his head.
“Christ knows, mate, but in less than a minute this street is going to be full to the brim with them.”
There were more of them coming from over the rise and the first of their ranks were quickly travelling down the slope and towards the row of cars. They staggered and stumbled, grunting as they advanced towards the built-up area.
“It’s an entire herd of them,” Bull hissed.
Marty looked back across the road and towards the buildings. They had no choice but try to stay out of sight and hope that the swarm would pass them by. He could not think of how or why they had suddenly appeared and he was sure that they had done nothing to attract their attention.
“Come on,” he whispered as he raised himself into a crouch.
With the first of the infected at less than fifty metres away, they needed to move. If they stayed where they were they would be discovered for sure. Marty just hoped that their presence was not already known.
He led Bull and Danny towards the nearest of the open doors. His intention was for them to hide in the shadows and wait it out until the herd of walking dead had passed through the area and allowed them to escape back into the vast countryside.
Just metres away from them as they headed for the buildings, a number of dark figures roamed through the gloomy street. Moving slowly and deliberately the three men hoped to bypass the dead that had still not yet noticed them. The swarm of bodies from the hill were already pushing their way through the gaps between the cars and their clumsy bangs and scrapes were attracting the attention of the others that were close by.
‘Bill Gates’ suddenly looked up from his computer and stared in bewilderment for a moment as the dark shape of Danny crossed his path. The longing moan rising up within the corpse’s throat was quickly turned to a gargle as the blade of the machete crashed down and split his skull wide open with a hollow cracking sound. As Danny pulled his blade free from the sucking mess of the man’s rotting brain, he was too slow to catch the laptop before it slipped from the creature’s grasp and clattered noisily to the ground.
The noise rang out like a siren. Everything in the area became still, including the three living men. The hundreds of nearby corpses slowly turned their heads and gazed in the direction of the commotion. Then their feet began to shuffle against the concrete as they converged on the disturbance. The questioning moans of the closest bodies were quickly joined by other voices as more and more of them began to follow.
“Bollocks,” Bull growled as he turned and headed for the nearest of the foreboding store-fronts behind them.
It was dark but nowhere near dark enough for them to remain unseen. With the noise of the falling computer, all eyes in the area were now firmly focussed on the three soldiers. It only took the nearest of the infected to recognise that they were living people and cry out hungrily and the whole pack were alerted and moving towards them.
Within seconds, the first of them arrived and charged. Danny turned to run just as a bright flash lighted up the area around him, accompanied by a bone shuddering crack as the high velocity bullet snapped at the air. Marty was the first to fire and his round exploded by Danny’s head and shattered the first of his targets. The body instantly dropped to the ground with a heavy thud as the first shot was quickly followed by another, then another.
Bull smashed and kicked his way through the debris that littered the area around the doorway of the nearest storefront. A quick scan of the interior and he was satisfied that there was no immediate threat and turned to alert the others.
“Here, rally in here.”
As Danny and Marty turned and began to head for the shop doorway, Bull began firing his rifle into the closest bodies he could see through the gloom. They appeared from all around. Some ran, others lurched, and Bull carefully picked off the ones that he perceived as being the most immediate threat. His shots were accurate and his tracer rounds glowed bright red as they burst from the muzzle of his rifle and punched holes through bone and tissue.
More and more of them appeared from the murky night. They trampled the bodies with gaping wounds in their heads, pushing forward from all angles.
“They fucking definitely know we’re here now,” Bull called out as the howls of the infected rose to a crescendo all around them.
Marty was in and already heading for the rear of the room and hoping to find a way out through the backdoor. Danny remained at the front and helped Bull to stem the tide as more and their fire dispatched more of the infected.
“On your left, Dan, on your left.”
Danny turned in time to see a body he had not noticed as it advanced along the shop’s exterior wall. It was just a few metres away and approaching him from his blind side. He swivelled and fired but his aim was off. The round missed and zipped out into the night as the creature lunged towards him. Danny fired again. This time his shot was accurate. It was impossible to miss as the corpse’s mouth was virtually over the barrel as the round punched a hole through its skull and spattered its decaying brains over a wide area. The body tumbled forward and crashed into the doorframe and landed in a heap at Danny’s feet.
“Through here,” Marty called out to them from the pitch-black interior of the building.
Bull and Danny turned and moved towards the sound of Marty’s voice through the virtual blackness. They found him in the next room standing by an open doorway and waving them forward.
“Out through the back and into the next street,” he whispered as they passed him. “We’ve broken contact so let’s see if we can sneak our way out of this gang-fuck.”
Bull led the way. He kept his finger running along the trigger-guard of his M-4 but he would not fire unless he really needed to. They had vanished from sight of the infected and stealth was their closest ally at that moment. It was pointless trying to shoot their way out. They did not have enough ammunition for that. They needed to find a place to hide and then hope to creep away when the streets were clear.
Behind them the infected had begun pouring into the store. The sounds of them crashing about in the darkness echoed for a great distance and attracted the attention of every corpse in the neighbourhood. In the street behind the row of shops Marty and the others hid in the shadow at the side of a house and watched as hundreds of roaming figures staggered by.
From every doorway and from behind every building they emerged. Some walked while others tore along the roads, flailing their arms and howling aggressively. Other bodies that were too badly damaged and barely able to move dragged themselves along the street to join in on the march of rotting flesh. The whole area hummed as they moaned incessantly. Swarms of buzzing insects filled the air in thick, dark, and shifting clouds that continuously swirled around the mass of wandering corpses.
“I think we should scrap the idea of having a nosey around,” Bull whispered into Marty’s ear as he kept one eye on the putrid river that flowed by.
The closest of the infected were just metres away from the spot where they were hiding. They trundled along, blindly following the bodies in front and headed for the next street.
Marty nodded.
All three of them sat huddled against the wall of the house and tucked in behind a large dustbin. In the street behind them, it sounded as though the dead were ripping the buildings apart with their bare hands in their search for the living. Windows shattered with ear splitting cracks and the sounds of wood splintering as doors collapsed and furniture was turned over, rang out endlessly as the crowds rampaged through the street.
They did not need to say anything but they all wondered how long it would be before the dead storm spilled into the next street and through the garden where Marty, Danny, and Bull took refuge.
“We need to move, Marty,” Danny suggested when he heard the crashes and bangs coming closer from their rear.
Marty shook his head.
“There’s still too many of them in the way. They’ll see us.”
“Fuck that, Marty. They’ll see us soon enough when they…”
Danny paused and turned to look back behind them. He squinted through the gloom and saw that one of the infected had stumbled into the narrow channel they had come through just moments earlier. He stood up and took a few paces towards it as he unsheathed his long blade and calculated his approach. It was the body of a woman. He could see nothing of her features but her voice still held the feminine tones in its grunts and rasps. She saw him and reached forward with her handless stumps which were all that remained of her arms. With a well-aimed thrust, Danny drove his machete through her face and at the same time raised his boot out in front of him. As the woman’s skull slid along the blade towards the hilt, Danny hit her in the chest with a forceful kick and sent her falling backwards into the darkness.
“As I was saying,” he continued as he squatted back down beside the others, “they’ll see us soon enough when they come crashing up our arses from the street behind us. We need to move, mate.”
“Okay,” Marty relented as he realised that Danny was right.
He could hear the approaching infected for himself and it was clear that eventually they would stumble upon them, en-masse. He thought for a moment as he watched the street ahead of them and began to form a plan in his head.
They could not turn back. There were far too many of them converging on the buildings there and if they attempted to hide in one of the houses, there was a good chance that they would eventually be discovered with nowhere left to run. Staying in the open was their best option at that moment. They had the darkness, along with their speed and agility to carry them through.
