The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion)

by Suchitra Chatterjee

  Rodriquez dived for his sword as I grabbed a low hanging branch of a tree above my head and swung my body and legs up as three Twice Dead stumbled toward me, their heads exploded under a deluge of bullets. And I took a leaf out of Stevie’s book, spinning around with both my swords, the leather palm straps ensuring that they didn’t leave my hands.

  The carpet of Twice Dead was almost upon us, we instinctively moved toward each other becoming a circle so that we had each other’s backs. I was lodged next to Wolf, who in turn was next to Percy and so on.

  There was no sign of Duke, he was probably trying his luck with the coach. As the first surge of Twice Dead headed in our direction I heard Percy shout something. I turned to look at him and then I heard his words, “Petrol tanks!”

  The Colonel understood instantly, it took me a moment or two, but then he was firing at the petrol tank of the overturned truck with his Glock. Of course! The bullets hit the tank, but it didn’t explode at first, but petrol began to pour out.

  My hand went into my bag, the cans of lighter fluid from the service station. I threw them at the petrol tank, one after the other and then a bullet caught one, a spark flickered and it was enough. The petrol tank exploded in a massive mushroom of yellow and red flames. Black smoke mingled with the flames, but the explosion was so fierce the smoke died away almost instantly and before us was a raging inferno. We had unexpectedly given ourselves extra time in the land of the living.

  We staggered backwards, all of us sliding down the slope behind us, metal, plastic, leather seats, and burning cloth soared into the sky, before landing on the carpet of the Twice Dead moving forward.

  “Holy fuck!” Bubba screamed, “Holy, holy fuck!”

  Metal cut through dead flesh, severing limbs and heads from several bodies, rubber tires, shredded by the force of the explosion landed like giant confetti and several Twice Dead were knocked down by chunks of melting and burning rubber.

  The extreme heat from the explosion made me gasp, my skin sizzled and I smelt the wild garlic on me sizzle too. Great, I was going to be a Garlic flambé before I got eaten. Well at least the Twice Dead who finally pulled me to the ground would choke on my flesh and melt into goo from the inside out. It was a small consolation.

  The flames were fanned by a wind that had suddenly picked up, it had been a breezy day, but none of us had really noticed it, but now it was increasing and luckily for us it was blowing in the direction of the Twice Dead. I saw many Twice Dead get caught in the flames, their clothes quickly catching light. They didn’t scream as they burned they just ran about, the flames getting brighter and brighter until they fell, red hot carbon, burning from the outside in.

  Eden suddenly broke ranks. I screamed at her to get back, but then I saw the glass jar flying through the air from her hand with her diving for cover seconds later. It exploded, and added to the inferno before us, and then the shrieking started, the rumble of moving feet had been like thunder, but now there was real noise, screaming, and the wonderful stench of burning wild garlic. Of course, we still had wild garlic bombs to use! I dropped one of my swords and fumbled in my bag for my bombs.

  The others with the wild garlic petrol bombs followed suit. The Colonel was ramming another magazine into his clip and was firing at another truck’s petrol tank and when it exploded it caused another domino effect with the remaining trucks, the flames poured out, upwards, sideways, every bloody way and the front runners in the carpet of Twice Dead burst into flames and the flames spread from them to others.

  We exhausted our supply of bombs swiftly and the fire was glorious in its intensity as it roared through the carpet coming down at us in a steady wave of transformed human beings. It was only a matter of time before the Twice Dead finally overwhelmed us.

  It would be over soon.

  Some of the Twice Dead who evaded the flames came for us, they fell beneath our swords whilst others started the melting process as the wild garlic petrol bombs spread across a large swathe of them, but as they fell, others climbed over their melting bodies, reaching out for us, eager to sate their contagion created hunger for human flesh.

  I saw Eden stumble, a Twice Dead moved toward her, teeth bared, Stevie grabbed her arm and pulled her to his side whilst swinging his sword in an arch across the Twice Dead’s exposed stomach and effectively disemboweled him.

  Black slippery entrails gushed out as the flesh was split wide open, the Twice Dead male lurched forward, still moving, his eyes on the potential feast before him, but he got his feet tangled up in his guts that were hanging out of his belly, and he fell flat on his face. He tried to get up, but all he succeeded in doing was pulling out even more of his guts.

  Percy then tripped on the uneven ground, but was saved by Rodriquez. They went back to back, Percy with his sword, the soldier with his Glock.

  Wolf grabbed my arm and pulled me to his side. Eden and Stevie were now back to back.

  “Save a bullet for me!” I gasped at Wolf. It felt good to have him behind me. Mitch was with Bubba, we would each die trying to protect the other. It was fitting I thought.

  “Make a circle!” Mitch shouted suddenly and we surged toward each other. We would go down together.

  And it was then we heard the siren. It ripped through the air, cutting through the roar of fire and shrieks.

  I saw the Land Rover seconds later. Thorncroft’s Land Rover. It was flying across the field at top speed, bouncing over the land, not stopping, not pausing, just driving. What was going on? Who was driving it?

  A blast of flames from one of the burning trucks caused the Twice Dead heading our way to veer off momentarily. A Twice Dead lunged at me, my good leg struck out, hard, catching him in the gut, making him stagger backwards. He lurched forward again and then his face was melting because I rammed a handful of wild garlic into his wide open mouth. We were almost surrounded now; any avenue of escape was cut off, but then we had never expected to escape with our lives.

  “Enjoy the salad!" I screamed as the Twice Dead’s face began to melt. He staggered backwards, hands clawing at his face, tearing off chunks of gray flesh as the plant began to dissolve his skin into a black river of goo.

  I heard Bubba scream in pain, a Twice Dead had sunk his teeth into his arm, tearing it open, but before he could bite out a chunk, Percy pushed his sword hard into its throat, he wasn’t able to totally take its head off its shoulders, but his blow was powerful enough to sever the head so it was only held on by a chunk of muscle and skin.

  The Twice Dead staggered backwards, black goo oozing out of its neck stump. Its head was now hanging down its back, but was upside down, its mouth still moving, trying to snap at Bubba again, but having an upside-down head put pay to that.

  Bubba’s arm was bleeding, but not so much that he couldn’t ram his Glock into the Twice Dead’s upside-down mouth and fire several shots.

  “Fuck off you mother fucker!” he screamed and the head and body of the Twice Dead exploded outwards. Stevie was swinging his sword and cricket bat back and forth, he seemed to be getting stronger rather than weaker.

  Before anyone else could be attacked and bitten there was a blur of brown metal and the Land Rover smashed into the group of Twice Dead that were the nearest to us. Bodies flew high up in the air and we all had to duck and jump out of the way to avoid flying body and body parts.

  The world went into slow motion again, time seemed to stop as I fell to my knees, but I got a glimpse of Paul’s face in the passenger seat of the Land Rover, at the wheel was, oh God…Adag!

  Paul was smiling at me as the vehicle swept passed us and he raised his hand in a salute and at the same time with his other hand he let me see what he was holding.

  An M67 grenade. The Grenades! Oh shit! I had put them into the Land Rover! I had forgotten about them! Sixty M67 grenades packed into the Land Rover with two people.

  And I knew in that moment what Adag was going to do and so did Wolf for he saw what I saw in that brief instant of time slowing down, hei
ghtening our already heightened senses to the point of impossibility.

  “No!” I wailed, she was leaving me behind! Adag drove onward, her foot hard on the accelerator, right into the mouth of the apocalypse itself, into the swaying mass of the Twice Dead surging down the hill. She plowed through them, until the sheer magnitude of bodies forced the Land Rover to finally grind to a stop.

  The vehicle tilted slightly, rocking back and forth, a cradle on a heaving branch of deadly bodies and the engine was revving violently.

  I heard Wolf screaming at everyone to get down, I tried to run, to follow her, if she was leaving, I was going with her like we had agreed.

  Wolf though had hold of me and he was pulling me down to the ground, forcing his body on top of mine. I fought him, tearing at his face, begging him to let me follow them. I had to go with them, I had to!

  “No!” he spat into my ear, as he crushed me under him, holding me down by the sheer weight of his body, “No!” I forced my eyes to look, to watch what happened next, my fingers moved spasmodically in the mud, my heart was fit to burst.

  In the distance the Land Rover was swiftly covered with the Twice Dead, trying to rip the roof off the vehicle to get at what was inside. My throat was raw from screaming out Paul and Adag’s names.

  The Twice Dead ripped the roof off the Land Rover and I expected to see Adag and Paul being pulled out and devoured, but there were two explosions. The first one was as soft as silk, no noise at all. White garlic flowers flew upwards into the sky, like a giant pale rain cloud, the wind catching the buds and blossoms, spreading them out and then they fluttered downwards and onto the heaving mass of bodies below.

  There was a volcanic eruption of blackened melting and liquefying flesh of those bodies closest to the biggest fall out of the flowers. It poured like a waterfall, spreading out to others. There was a sickening sound of skin tearing, muscles stretching and brains once again popping out of split open skulls like bloated blackberries.

  This was swiftly followed by a collective rumbling, followed by screeching, high pitched and ear splitting and then the Land Rover truly exploded. One minute it was there; the next minute it was gone.

  Sixty grenades all detonated at the same time combined with a tankful of petrol and a shit load more of wild garlic made sure that it disintegrated almost instantly.

  I can honestly say it was a red gold and blue mushroom cloud moment and we all felt the rush and force of the explosion, followed by heat so intense it was painful, but because we were all so close to the ground, all it did was crisp up some of our clothes off our bodies and give some of us some nasty scorch marks.

  It also saved the life of Bubba because the extreme heat from the blast mixed with the wild garlic cauterized his arm which had been bitten. It stopped the bleeding and we worked out later that because it was such a fresh bite the contagion had no time to properly get into his blood stream and the heat and the wild garlic basically burned most of it out of his system, but it left him with interesting side effects which were to prove very useful in the time to come.

  We didn’t get up straight away which was really very lucky because the force of the explosion had a secondary and decidedly unexpected side effect that no one had anticipated.

  It caused the whole of the hill that the Twice Dead were sweeping down from to collapse completely inwards, creating a knock on effect that I can only describe as producing the biggest cascading sinkhole since the earth’s continental plates decided it was time to separate during the formation of the world as we now know it.

  Of course we weren't aware of that right then, along with the fact that the hill in the distance was false, a camouflage in the landscape, a green and glorious hill on the surface but below was actually part of the Brocklease Bunker. The bunker spread underground for over 80 or so miles in several different directions. Not only that, but Brocklease wasn’t as disused as we all thought it was. Some of the tunnels had old ammunition from the Cold War stored in them. Old and quite unstable ammunition.

  It sounded and felt like one of those earthquakes you watch on YouTube or on TV, only on this occasion we were all smack bang in the middle of it and the noise was magnified so we could feel it as well as see it. All the rumbling, the shaking, it seemed to go on and on and on. I heard and felt the earth crack beneath my prostrate body. There was a wet musky smell in the air, it was old earth being forced from the depths of the planet to the surface for the first time in a millennium.

  The cracking and shifting earth around us then caused the nearby river to break its man-made banks. I heard a rushing sound, almost like a heavy tide rushing over pebbles on a beach. Oh shit, it was a mini tsunami without the salt, and a second later it hit us.

  We barely had enough time to take a breath before we were all engulfed by freezing cold water and then we were a mass of tumbling bodies, rolling, sliding, slipping in mud, water and grass, a landslide of people waiting to be attacked by the surviving Twice Dead for at that moment we had no idea that the hill had collapsed inward and pretty much saved our water logged asses.

  My water filled ears, heard swearing, shouting, screaming, I felt the pain of being scraped by sharp debris that was swept along with us. I choked on water that forced its way into my nostrils and mouth.

  Was this how it was going to end? Drowning? Well at least we wouldn’t know we were being eaten by the Twice Dead I thought dizzily as I rolled, slipped, skidded, tumbled through the water, my body entwined with Wolf’s. He hadn’t let go of me, I could feel him holding me as we careered down our very own bomb made waterslide.

  We finally came to a stop in some kind of ditch, more than likely created by the man-made earthquake. The water slowly subsided and I lay where I had been deposited, actually where all of us had been pretty much deposited; a mess of tangled arms, limbs and torsos waiting for death in the guise of teeth tearing and ripping into our flesh, but nothing happened.

  Yes, you heard me, absolutely fucking nothing happened.

  I was numb with cold, shock and unspoken grief. I lay where I had been set down by the subsiding river, still under Wolf, my face pressed into the cold, wet dark earth.

  We lay there for an age, until finally, I heard Percy’s muffled voice.

  “If I am going to be eaten alive, can it be done whilst I am standing up please? I’ve got terrible cramp in both my legs…”

  I heard Eden giggle and then Bubba said in an equally muffled voice, “I really, really need a shit,” And he then farted, a long loud fart.

  “Fucking hell Bubba!” Rodriquez shouted from somewhere in the mass of tangled bodies, “You are one ass nasty son of a bitch!”

  “Jesus Christ!” Mitch’s voice rang out, outraged, “The fucking military hasn’t changed since I was a fucking soldier, it’s all shit and fucking wind!”

  “That stinks!” Eden yelled from where she was lying on the ground and she gagged violently.

  “Private Declan,” Wolf roared from where he was lying, “Control your arse!”

  “Sorry Sir,” Private Declan aka Bubba said sheepishly from his place in the dog pile of people, “But I think the Zombie bite might be affecting me…”

  “Mira que cabron! Don’t use that as an excuse you dirty bastard! I can’t take you anywhere!” Bubba’s friend bellowed, “You’d lower the tone in a fucking toilet!”

  “Oh my God,” Percy started to cough and splutter as the fetid stench reached his nostrils, “Private Declan your backside is a lethal weapon!”

  “And yours isn’t?” Bubba retorted, “Whose foot is that? Get it out of my face!” The leg turned out to belong to no one in our group, it was one of the body parts of the Twice Dead that had washed down river with us.

  “At least my sweet arse wouldn’t stop the Twice Dead in their tracks! We should have used yours to kill the bastards before now!” Percy yelled and there was an explosion of laughter from Rodriquez and others in our human mountain.

  “Just aim and fire!” Mitch yelled, “But stick a
cork up it afterwards! Jesus Christ!”

  “OW! Fuck me!” Bubba yelped in pain suddenly, he swiftly rolled away from our stack of bodies and sat up rubbing the side of his thigh.

  Stevie’s voice followed the man’s yell of pain, “You farted in my face,” he then sat up and coughed, spat out some mud and wiped his mouth before glaring malevolently at Bubba.

  “Sorry,” Bubba had the decency to look contrite. He was still holding the severed leg in his good hand. He wasn't perturbed by the fact he was holding a human limb by its ankle. He looked at it in interest for a further moment and then tossed it to one side.

  “Stink bottom,” Stevie said to Bubba.

  Mitch sat up next. He crawled over to where a surprisingly intact leather seat from one of the army trucks had been washed down river with us. He set it upright, then pulled himself up onto it and pulled out his cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He looked at the sodden mass and sighed unhappily.

  Eden, eased herself onto all fours, made a face and turned to Stevie and said crossly, “I want a bath.”

  Stevie responded in a reflective voice, “I think we all have just had one,” and he started to squeeze the water out of his jacket. Eden gave this some thought, sighed and began to squeeze out her clothes too.

  Wolf pushed himself upwards, standing up slowly. His uniform was stuck to his body, you couldn’t tell where camouflage began and mud and dirt ended. He had a cut above his left eye which was already clotting.

  Percy got to his knees, looked around and then exhaled. Rodriquez rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky.

  Bubba was looking at his wound which had stopped bleeding. Part of the sleeve of his combats was torn open. The round bite, the size of a large apple had a crispy black scab over it and he looked down at it and sighed, resigned for the moment to what he thought was his fate in the days to come. “I fucking hate Zombies,” he said in a sour voice.

  I sat up last of all. My face was muddy, wet and cold. I wiped some of the mud away with my hands, smearing it unintentionally across my face, trying to focus my thoughts and orientate myself and work out what had happened that had allowed us all too somehow survive.