by Aline Riva
As Vince was slammed down on to dusty boards and the creature pinned him to the floor, he reached in vain for the gas gun that was a fraction from his fingertips, then gave up on the gun and made a fist and slammed his artificial arm against the side of the corpse's head. It gave a roar as it fell, then he sprang up as the corpse jumped up at the same time, the gas gun was still out of his reach and as all he had survived flashed before his eyes he recalled while the antidote had worked, there would never be a cure for the bite...
Then gas guns burst into life as the room was choked with gas and then smoke as it billowed out through the broken window, making an ugly cloud as it rose darkly skyward, as the creature frothed blood and trembled Vince reached down, groping blind in the smoke and grabbed his gas gun, hitting the corpse with a blast of his own. It fell heavily, and as he backed out of the cloud that was still rising towards the attic beams and seeping out of the window, he looked around to see the others standing there, breathless, looking at him anxiously.
“Are you okay?” David's worried expression had become clear now the smoke was lifting.
Vince nodded.
“You got here just in time...”
Then he paused to rub at his shoulder where the prosthetic connected with flesh and bone.
“I don't know how Rick can land a punch with a metal hand, I hit that thing with my prosthetic arm and my shoulder's killing me!”
“I think we should leave now,” the Captain said, feeling thankful after such a close call to know Vince was unharmed.
“We haven't searched the cellar,” David replied.
“We'll do it on the way out,” the Captain replied, “I'll check it out. The rest of you get back outside and wait, this won't take long. We need to get moving.”
As the others came out of the house, Rick looked back as relief reflected in his eyes to see that Vince was unharmed.
“Where's the Captain?” he asked.
“Checking the cellar,” Vince replied as Rick walked over to join them, the baby was sleeping in his arms and his was only gas gun not trailing off a wisp of smoke after the others had fired on the creature in the attic.
Then Tina Swan left the house, hurrying over to join the rest of the group as they stood gathered outside.
“Cellar seems okay... light was off and boxes and junk barred the way but I took a brief look around, saw no movement, heard nothing.”
David had wandered over to a large barn beside the house, the doors were wide open and there had been no need to search the place – inside was nothing but a few gardening tools, old and rusted and on the floor, there were more recent, but almost faded out tyre marks and the outline of a less dusty area where it was clear a car had been parked.
“I bet they drove up here for that party,” Marie guessed as they wandered over to take a look. David's gaze fell on the three cans of petrol sat at the back of the barn.
“We should take these with us,” he said, “Might come in useful if we run into another horde...we can only take so many out with the gas guns, gas is running low now.”
As he reached in for two of the cans and Marie took the third, the Captain looked at them doubtfully.
“I seriously do think the worst is over – that horde we ran into back at the park were relatively small in number, we took at least half out and the rest were weakened – when the unit gets back there it won't take much to finish them off. I think we can relax now. I mean, be vigilant of course, but this mission is almost through.”
“But you never know,” David replied, “I'd rather be safe than sorry.”
As they paused for a moment, still talking with the Captain, Vince joined in the conversation and the debate carried on over whether or not the petrol would be useful at this late stage.
Rick wandered away from the group, right over to the porch of the house, where he smiled down at the baby as he opened his eyes and looked up at him.
“Almost home now,” he said kindly, “I can't wait till you to meet Lois! She's going to love you...I think I'll call her now...”
He reached in his coat, took out the phone and changed the settings, taking calls off divert, smiled as he saw he had more missed messages and calls, and then hit the number she had programmed in. She answered right away.
“Rick?” Lois sounded worried.
“Yes, it's me. I'm fine, so are the rest of the gang... we lost Jason -”
“Lost?”
“Well, I mean we intentionally lost him. He's on his own. Don't worry about him, scumbags always survive. He tried it on with some poor virus victim. I sent him on his way.”
“I can't say I really think of him as Brandon's father,” she admitted, “But... he will be okay?”
“Probably,” he replied.
“As long as you're safe, that's all that matters!” Lois exclaimed, her voice suddenly wavering as emotion got the better of her.
Rick felt his heart warm through with love as he thought of the family waiting for him back at the base.
“Listen Lois, I need to talk to you about Flossie -”
“She's fine!” Lois said, “I've been trying to get through to let you know – she had the antidote this morning.”
Rick clutched the phone tighter as alarm flickered in his gaze.
“She's had it? Is she okay? Because I was having second thoughts, I wasn't sure if it was safe!”
“She puked up some brains she had for lunch, slept for a while and now she seems a lot better,” she replied, “I'm not sure if she'll lose the corpse meat craving right away, but she's just fine.”
He breathed a relieved sigh.
“That's such good news! And listen, Lois – I have some good news too...I found another child like Flossie back at the village...a little baby boy, he's fine, there's nothing wrong with him, he's just a B Virus kid...he's a happy little boy, too.”
“Bring him home,” she said as love resounded in her voice and his heart on hearing her words.
“Of course I will! Him and Flossie can grow up together.”
Then as a shout came from the Captain, Rick turned to the woodland, his hazel eyes widening in shock and disbelief as the undead began to emerge.
“Lois... I...I have to go...” he stammered, his sights still set on the corpses.
“Why?” she demanded.
“I have to go, speak soon, we're moving out again...I have to catch up with the others!”
Rick ended the call and turned around sharply, the phone still in his hand as fear made his head spin and he clutched protectively at the child he cradled in his other arm: Corpses were emerging all round the clearing, some staggering, weakened by gas, others roaring and shrieking as they set their sights on the living. The clearing was surrounded, they were trapped by the undead...
“Concentrate firepower!” the Captain yelled as she reached for the gas gun.
“There's too many of them!” David exclaimed, making for the house and carrying the petrol with him, Marie grabbed her can too and ran after him, reaching the doorway as Rick and Tina and Vince fired a spray of gas, clouding the path of the undead, then turned around, spraying again, beating the back the tight circle of advancing corpses that were slowed by those in the front bubbling and foaming.
David grabbed Marie and pulled her in through the open doorway of the house.
“Get inside!” he yelled, beckoning frantically for the others to follow.
As the horde trampled the fallen corpses, falling and fighting over one another to reach their prey, Vince dashed through the door, followed by Rick, clutching the baby tightly to his chest. Then Vince looked on in horror as the undead swarmed, making for the house from all angles.
“Tina!” he yelled, seeing the Captain fire off the gas gun at the oncoming horde as she stood her ground in front of the house. She spun around, letting a cloud of gas fly about, felling corpses left and right as she yelled back a reply.
“Get inside, I'll hold them off, I'll try the radio...Go, Vince! Close the fucking
door!”
“We have to secure this place!” David yelled, grabbing at the broken door hanging by a twisted hinge, slamming it into place as Vince grabbed one end of a large, heavy cabinet and shouted to Rick, who handed the baby to Marie, then grabbed the other end of the cabinet and then together, after David held up the door and slammed the bolts across, they began to move the cabinet up tight against the door. As Vince pushed it tighter, he peered through a gap where outside smoke and gas was clearing, undead had fallen and the surviving corpses, now affected by the gas, were moving slowly, their speed and strength killed by the secondary effect that had destroyed the first wave.
But there were so many of them...
David stepped back and looked about the shaded hallway, where light escaped in through tiny gaps in the boarded up windows.
“We should be safe here for a while... windows are boarded downstairs... back of the house is inaccessible, high brick walls...they're weakened by the gas but they won't give up!”
Vince was still looking through the gap, catching sight of the barn door closing as Tina peered through the gap, then reached up to quietly slide another bolt across.
“She made it, she's in the barn!”
“Maybe we can radio for help?” Marie suggested as she held the baby in her arms, but Vince shook his head.
“Communications are being stretched to capacity right now – our radios link to our team, won't get much further unless other units are very close by – which they're not. Tina told me before we left, she's the only one with the signal tuned direct HQ rescue request. We just have to hope the system is back up soon and they have enough resources to get out here in time...”
Rick shot him a look of alarm.
“In time?”
The group fell silent. Outside the greatly slowed but still determined horde were up against the house, their dead hands pressing against the boarded windows as they moaned and thumped and swayed on their feet.
At once Rick understood, they did not have enough gas to fight off a horde of this size, despite the creatures being slowed, there were far too many of them...He drew in a breath and reached for the child, taking him into a comforting embrace as determination burned in his eyes.
“None of us are dying, we've come too far and been through too much shit – and this little one deserves a chance too!”
“All we can do is hope,” David replied, “They know we're in here... we can't hold them off forever. We just have to hope Tina can raise rescue on the radio and then hope rescue comes in time. It probably won't.”
“But the clean up mission is almost complete,” Marie pointed out as desperation shone in her eyes.
“And we have to wait until resources become available, we knew that when we first set out on this mission!” David said sharply, “Don't grab at straws, Marie, we already drew the short one!”
She looked into his eyes, he looked back at her, saying no more. Then he turned back to the blocked doorway, checking it was secure. The group said nothing as the sounds of the gathering undead outside increased as thumps and dull thuds sounded all about the exterior of the house. Then David turned back to the others, now sure the doorway would hold for a while.
“We should all sit down and wait,” he said, glancing to the dusty lounge area, “We can see the barn through the gap in the boards... at least we know Tina's out there and trying her best. She's our only hope now...”
In the barn, Tina was sat on the floor in the corner, having set her gas gun aside as she reached up to a shelf behind her, drawing down a rusty axe and then a scythe and placing them next to her as she looked to the locked barn doors. The survivors of the horde had not seen her thought the cloud of smoke as she had dashed for the open doors, and from what she could see through the small hole in the old wood as she sat tight against the wall, the horde had been greatly slowed by the secondary gas effect that had killed the first wave. Bodies littered the ground, surviving corpses stumbled over them, half in a daze as they went on relentlessly, towards the boarded up house. The place was surrounded, none of them had enough gas left to take out all of them, they were running out of time and hope...
She tried the radio again.
“This is Captain Tina Swan,” she said quietly, aware that a raised voice might draw attention to her hiding place, “We are at the south end of Waterbrook Forest...This is Captain Swan, with the former civilian Arctic squad requesting urgent assistance... trapped in an abandoned house, surrounded by the remains of a horde...not enough gas...Please, can anyone hear me?”
She waited, but only the hiss of static replied.
Tina gave a sigh, leaning heavily against the wall as she tried again, remembering communications wouldn't be down forever – although, under the circumstances rescue could even take days rather than hours and if that was the case, none of them stood a chance in hell of getting out of this alive...
She thought of the others, David and Marie, Rick and the baby, then she thought of Vince.
“Come on, answer me, just fucking answer!” she muttered, and tried the radio a second time, repeating the message, refusing to give up hope.
As the remains of the group were counting on Tina to make the radio contact, they sat together on the floor of the lounge area on a dusty carpet. Rick had been upstairs, found a blanket in a cupboard, shook it to lose the dust and then brought it back downstairs and laid it beside him and placed the baby on the blanket, folding it about him like bedding as the child snuggled deeply, unconcerned by the smell of the damp on it, even smiling as he detected the stench, before closing his black eyes then with a little grey hand curled about the new bedding, he had slept soundly.
The clouds were darkening outside as a far off rumble of thunder sounded, then the rain began to patter then drive harder against the boards that covered the windows. Still the undead surrounded the house, now and then the groan of nails through old wood sounded in protest as their rotting hands pressed against it, sensing the warm blood of the humans trapped within.
“It's been hours,” David said quietly, then he stood up, looking down to the rest of the group as he spoke the words he had hoped he would never have to say.
“If help doesn't come in time, we don't have enough gas to fight them off. But we do have the petrol.”
Rick had taken off his metallic hand, pausing to massage his aching wrist. He looked up at him in confusion.
“Listen, I can build all kinds of stuff, prosthetics, fancy metal hands... I can do more than that, too – I can even have a tinker with the weaponry if you want me to, I'm good at knowing what could go where – but I'm telling you, David – you can't turn these guns into flame throwers!”
David's face was pale as he cast his gaze to Marie, to Vince, then to Rick who still had the child sleeping beside him.
“I'm aware of that,” he said in a hushed voice, then he shifted the three petrol cans into the middle of the group and sat back down on the floor, as something terrible and final reflected in his gaze.
“If they get in, they'll all get in. We have enough petrol here to blow this place and take them with us -”
“We need to get out!” Rick exclaimed in alarm.
“THERE ARE TOO MANY OF THEM!” David yelled.
As Rick blinked away tears, he looked to the sleeping child then back at his close friend.
“There has to be another way!”
“Go down fighting, with gas guns low?” David questioned, “So we get the bite and end up joining them, what's next, us heading over to the barn and tearing Tina up like a piece of meat?”
Vince drew in a sharp breath.
“I can't even imagine that happening...oh god, you're right – if we go down fighting there's no one left to give us the bullet. We'll come back and join the horde!”
There was a final spark of fight left in David's gaze as he looked to the petrol cans and then back to the others.
“At least this way,” he said, “We take them with us, not the other way aro
und!”
The group fell into a hushed silence as the shock of their only real choice hit them all hard:
Vince thought of Tina, trapped in the barn as she tried a radio hoping for a reply that might never come, Rick's thoughts stayed with Lois and Flossie and the child he had brought along, never expecting it to come to this, as tears ran down his face. Marie looked in to David's eyes, a calm acceptance of the situation set in her gaze as she gave a slight nod, knowing there could be no other way if that horde burst into the house – they would kill them all, make them undead, that was the very last thing any of them wanted – it would be better to set fire to those cans and wait for the blast, taking the creatures with them, ending it the only way they could. Time was running out, so were choices now...if the undead broke in, there was only one way to end it...
Chapter 8: A Final Decision
Jason had lost track of time as he lay trapped in the freezing cold crypt where dusty, broken coffins lined the walls, some broken with bones poking out as if the skeletons were about to rise up and join these corpses on the surface that were still eating, greedily devouring prey as they paused to squabble, snatch and chew on the flesh so quickly that blood and bone and tissue were spilling from their mouths and down through the break in the soil, raining on Jason far below.
They couldn't hear him, they didn't even smell the scent of a living person... As he looked about, he suddenly realised why: This place was full of the sickly sweet stench of old decay, something the corpses would have no interest in at all – old dusty bones, incapable of reanimation...
But still they were feeding above as far below he shivered in cold made worse by the depth of the crypt, its walls of freezing earth and the blood that had splashed down as the creatures fed. He was shivering as he crawled over to an alcove in the wall, where a part collapsed tomb was wide open and a skeletal woman lie there, all bone and wisps of hair and something that remained of skin and all that lie beneath it, long since shrunken taut and mummified as she lay there in a white shroud.
