by Perrin Briar
“Those things are going to come in here and get us!” Shane said.
“No, they’re not,” Maisie said.
She went up onto her toes and bunched her hands up into fists. Danny smiled, impressed by her courage.
“Yes,” he said, “we’ll fight our way out. But can I suggest we use something other than our hands? We’re less likely to get infected that way.”
“With what?” Maisie said. “There’s nothing here!”
Danny looked around the room. There was a hole in one wall. Wood chips lay scattered like a rat or family of mice had gnawed a front door to its home. Danny gripped the thin wall panel and pulled. The rotten wood came away in his hands. He pulled again, this time peeling a large swathe of it off, a piece of the wallpaper caught and he tore that off too in one long strip. He grabbed the thick wooden on beams on the inside and pulled them, working them loose until they snapped free. He handed a piece to Maisie, Shane, Tiger and Lily, and finally a piece for himself.
The zombies groaned louder and bumped into the door and walls, causing them to shake. Their hands scratched over the door’s surface on the other side, gripping, seizing and pulling. The door rattled in its frame and began to bulge inward.
“The door’s not going to hold forever,” Danny said. “Fan out into a semi-circle. We’ll attack each one as they come at us. Remember, aim for their heads. Anything else is useless.”
The door frame cracked, the wood splitting. It gave way and flew open. A pair of glimmering eyes like two sparks in the bottom of a well glared at them. Shane’s eyes and mouth grew round with shock and terror, and the wooden pole he carried in his hand tipped forward and fell, clattering against the floor. He backed away.
“Shane!” Danny said. “Pick up your weapon right now! Now!”
But Shane was lost to them, in the throes of terror. He backed into the wall, eyes unblinking and staring at the approaching monster. The zombie shuffled into the muffled sunlight. His suit was torn and sprigs of undergrowth jutted out from his pockets. Tiger and Lily were spooked and began to back away, clutching their weapons like comforters.
“Stay where you are!” Danny said. “If we don’t all fight we’re dead. Do you understand me? Everyone, ready!”
They raised their weapons. Shane gibbered in the corner. The zombie growled in the back of his throat and reached for them, his torn mouth opening impossibly wide.
“Now!” Danny said.
They ran forward and brought their weapons down on the zombie’s head. It was an empty sound like a hollowed-out drum. The zombie lurched back and almost fell over. He was buoyed by the zombies behind him. He caught himself before falling forward, his leg rising up into the air to provide counterbalance. As the zombie corrected himself and leaned forward, Danny brought his weapon down on the pulverised face. His weapon was joined by another and the zombie’s eyes rolled back into his head and he hit the floor.
The twins stood back, aghast. Shane stood in a puddle of his own urine, muttering to himself and staring out the dirty window. Danny and Maisie wrenched their weapons free, the ends caked in blood.
“Again!” Danny bellowed. “The next zombie!”
His shout shook the twins from their fright. They stepped forward. A female zombie with puckered lips joined them in the centre of the room. The children fell on her and smashed her skull in with a dozen angry blows. She fell, revealing two zombies behind her.
“Tiger, Lily!” Danny said. “You take the one on the right! We’ll take the one on the left!”
And so, divided, they fought. Shane still stood staring out the window, his legs bumping against the wall as he pushed himself up against it. Maisie brought her weapon down across the back of the zombie’s knee, as if attempting to push himself through it, knocking him onto his ragged hands. Danny beat at the zombie’s head. It fell silent and lay in a pool of its own blood.
The twins were having trouble with their zombie. Danny joined them, turning and smacking the zombie across the back of the legs. The twins fell on him, beating wildly. More zombies pressed forward toward the doorway.
“There are too many of them!” Maisie said. “We can’t kill them all!”
“We have to try!” Danny said.
The zombies, pressing forward as one, got jammed in the doorway, screeching and reaching out with clawed fingers. They bit at one another for purchase. Danny was the first to rush forward and take advantage. He swung at the heads of the stuck zombies, their arms waving out for him, grasping. Maisie joined him. One zombie head after another drooped down, and when the press of zombies slacked for a moment, the bodies slid to the floor. Three, then another four zombies edged into the room, tripping over the spilled blood of a dozen felled comrades.
“I can’t keep going!” Tiger said, out of breath, her arms shaking.
“Me too,” Lily said. “I’m too tired to carry on.”
“I am too,” Danny said, the sweat running down his face. “But we have to keep going, or we’re all dead.”
The zombies staggered toward them, fleshless fingers outstretched for a tasty morsel. Danny knocked their arms aside and then swung at their heads. The zombies’ bodies reacted like rag dolls, rolling back from the blow, almost falling over, before straightening back up again.
There was a scream.
Tiger dropped her weapon and beat at a zombie with her small fists. The zombie had its teeth buried deep in the crook of her elbow.
“Get it off me!” Tiger cried. “Get it off!”
Danny ran forward and cracked the zombie over the head, bringing its jaws together and tearing a chunk out of Tiger’s arm.
She gripped the gash tight with one hand in an effort to staunch the blood, but it billowed from her body like an angry lava lamp. The other zombies raised their noses into the air, growled, and approached her with renewed vigour.
“She bit her!” Lily said, bracing her sister. “She bit her on the arm! What are we going to do?”
“Tiger!” Danny said. “Get back!”
Tiger whimpered, and backed up into the corner of the room, beside Shane. The zombies groaned louder at the smell of fresh blood and rushed forward in a frenzy of limping limbs. Beyond the zombies were more indiscriminate shuffling shapes. A house full of the undead.
Danny and Maisie exchanged terrified expressions. This was the end. Lily was in shock and didn’t register the exchange.
SMASH!
The windows imploded, showering the children with shards of glass. Maisie and Danny screamed. The others were too terrified to utter much beyond a muffled gasp. A figure reached in, grabbed Shane by the lapels and pulled him bodily outside.
“Shane!” Danny said, running to the window. “Shane!”
Before he could react, arms reached in and seized him too.
1:41pm
Chris, Nathan, and two other men, Georgie boy and Paul, ran through the undergrowth. They slowed and peered around at the quiet forest, and then began moving again. Nathan carried his wrench, Georgie boy and Paul a large knife each. Chris had his axe.
“Well?” Nathan said.
“‘Well’ what?” Chris said.
“Where are they?”
“How should I know? That’s why we’re out looking for them.”
“These are your woods. Where would you go?”
“I’d run as far and as fast as I could.”
“Which direction?”
“Any direction.”
“Wait,” Georgie boy said. “Did you hear that?”
They listened.
“Hear what?” Nathan said.
Georgie boy raised a finger, listened, and then raised his eyebrows at the sound.
“That,” he said.
They all heard it. A snapping, slurping sound like a dog at a bone. Chris and Nathan led the way, following the sound until they came to a pair of zombies knelt over a carcass, blood sprayed over the area like a crop circle. Nathan turned away and was immediately sick.
One zombie wo
rked the top half of the body, another the bottom. The former zombie grabbed snapped a protruding rib and sucked the bone clean. Chris dealt a swift blow to the back of each zombie’s head.
“Who… Who is it?” Nathan said, back turned and unable to look at the victim.
Chris knelt down and appraised the remains. It was hard to distinguish any features. The body had been torn open, the organs spread out in disarray like a pack of unshuffled cards. Then Chris saw something, half obscured by mud and leaves. Chris picked it up. A river of relief flooded through him.
“It’s okay,” Chris said, his voice shaking. “It’s not our kids.”
“It’s not?” Nathan said. “How do you know?”
Chris showed him what he’d found. The same relief Chris felt showed on Nathan’s face. In Chris’s hand was a pig’s trotter.
“And I know where the kids are,” he said.
1:47pm
Angie helped drag Maisie through the window and sat her on her feet. Despite her age she was stronger than Maisie would have believed. The zombies inside the house reached through the broken glass, heedless of the shards cutting into their rotting flesh. Their groans seemed desperate, having lost a tasty meal.
“You had quite a welcome party out here to greet you,” Angie said. “I knew there had to be something in here worthy enough to hold their attention. And lo and behold, there you all were.”
“Where are the others?” Maisie said.
“Out looking for you all, I suspect.”
Angie caught sight of Tiger clutching her arm tight, her hand red with blood. She turned white.
“Tiger, my dear,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Grandma,” Tiger said. “She moved so fast, and she… she…”
“It’s all right,” Angie said, hugging her granddaughter close. “You children should get to the camp as fast as you can. Tiger, dear, you go to bed the moment you get back.”
“Yes, Grandma,” Tiger said.
“Lily, you take good care of her.”
“I will, Grandma.”
A zombie wearing a yellow fisherman’s hat and coat rasped, and a dozen more filed behind it.
“Get out of here!” Angie shouted. “Go! Now!”
Maisie and the others ducked and dived under the low-hanging tree branches and forced their way through the bushes, thorns tearing at their clothes and bare skin.
“Wait,” Maisie said.
They came to a stop, breathing hard.
“We have to go back,” Maisie said. “We can’t leave Angie by herself.”
“Believe me,” Danny said. “She can take care of herself.”
They took off at a run again, but immediately Maisie felt an uneasiness in the pit of her stomach. At their head she saw Danny’s shoulder-length hair, his pace confident and measured. Directly in front of her, Lily supported Tiger as they limped on. Maisie checked over her shoulder but saw no sign of Shane. She slowed, and the twins got farther away.
Maisie looked back the way they had come. Her neck swivelled around, searching for Shane. She checked under bushes and around trees. Then she saw a pair of folded knees poking out from behind a tree. As she rounded it, Shane’s hunched figure appeared. He was sat hugging his knees, his face buried in his jeans.
“Shane?” Maisie said. “What are you doing?”
He gave no sign he heard her. Maisie peered around at their surroundings.
“We have to get out of here,” she said. “It’s not safe.”
He still didn’t reply.
“Shane!” Maisie shouted.
He started, eyes looking up at her. His face was pale, his blood drained clean out of him. Maisie grabbed his arm and began to pull him to his feet.
“Get up!” Maisie said. “We have to go!”
Shane’s body jerked forward. Maisie pulled harder, lost her grip and fell back onto her backside. Shane’s hand flopped into the mud. Maisie sat up, brimming with anger. Then she caught sight of Shane’s lost expression.
“It’s natural to be scared of these things,” Maisie said. “Everyone else is. But you’ll get used to it, and you’ll kill them like the rest of us. To do that we have to. To survive. Now, get up and let’s get out of here.”
Maisie took him by his hand and pulled him up. He got unsteadily to his feet. She pushed him forward, and once his legs started moving, he ran.
“Run!” Maisie said. “Run! Go now! Keep going! Go on! Go!”
Shane moved unnaturally, like a zombie, stumbling forward, catching himself just before he fell. They approached the edge of the forest, the treeline where nature had been cut back and man’s dominion ruled. Shane slowed down, his legs shaking and weak with effort. Maisie got behind him, braced her arms and pushed him forward.
He tripped on a tree root, flew through the air and landed in a heap at the top of the field just beyond the treeline. He sat up, shook his head. He wasn’t hurt. For a moment his stupor broke, and he looked around.
He was in the flat open field with no sign of zombies. He turned and looked back at Maisie, a smile spreading across his face. And then his smile faded, replaced by fear. His eyes went wide and he pointed with a shaking finger at her.
Except he wasn’t pointing at her.
Maisie never heard the low groan until it was too late. She was aware of something warm and wet dribbling down her forearm to the tips of her fingers. The muscles around her arm tensed in rhythmic convulsions. She reached out for Shane with her good arm. He turned and ran. Maisie’s eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed.
1:58pm
Chris was a whirlwind of axe blades. He tore through the zombies like a man possessed. He caught a zombie across the throat, blood spilling from the gash and onto the bungalow floor. Chris brought the axe back and hacked at the zombie’s neck until it was severed and the head, along with the body, flopped to the ground.
“Maisie?” Chris called out. “Maisie? Are you in here?”
Nathan came at him with his wrench. Nathan bellowed and swung it. Chris flinched back, and knew he was a goner. Except he wasn’t. The wrench was buried into the skull of a zombie that had been behind him. Another second and it would have torn his throat out. Chris looked at Nathan and nodded his thanks.
“Don’t get all sentimental,” Nathan said, pulling the wrench free from the zombie’s head. “We need all the hands we can get. Even murdering ones like yours.”
Bodies lay piled up like a mass extermination camp. The men wound down, breaths coming in rags, exhaustion setting in.
“Maisie?” he said, panic colouring his words. Then louder: “Maisie?”
Angie, a little unsteady on her feet, and bloody up to her elbows, wiped her forehead with her arm, leaving a red smudge.
“Angie,” Chris said. “Where’s Maisie?”
“I sent them back to the camp,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“Was she all right?”
“She was fine. Lord Jesus, what I wouldn’t give for a pack of ciggies right now.”
Chris turned and set off at a run into the woods, letting the trees and bushes pull at him, as if they were trying to keep him away from something. He ran faster, leaping over fallen tree trunks. Then he slowed down, coming to a stop, feeling as if he’d been shot through the chest. His breaths came ragged and hoarse in his chair, and something hot gripped his tonsils. Fear rose up inside him, uncoiling like a snake.
“No,” Chris said. “No, no, no, no, no.”
George sat with his back against a tree, and a figure, so small it could have been a doll, lay in his arms. Her dark hair cascaded down through the old man’s hands. George looked up at Chris with bloodshot eyes as he approached.
“I tried to get to her before the zombie…” George said. “I tried but… but I was too slow…”
The zombie laid at George’s feet, it’s head smash in, the thick, almost black blood stagnant. Chris took Maisie off George’s lap. He held her close, so close he could feel her heartbeat. He smelled her blood, t
hick on the collar of her blue dress.
Chris looked at the bite on her arm. It was already turning yellow, a blossoming rose. Her dress absorbed the blood seeping from her neck like filter paper.
“Maisie…”
Chris looked at the bite mark. It wasn’t deep, but then it didn’t need to be. The virus had entered her system. She weighed a feather in his arms.
“My little girl…” Chris said, tears coming to his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” George said. “I tried to get to her as fast as I could…”
“What happened?”
“I was chasing the zombie that was chasing her, so I didn’t have a real good view. But I think he bit her just as I killed him. If I was just a second faster…”
“It’s done,” Chris said.
He carried Maisie toward the barn and farmhouse buildings at the bottom of the field. Angie stepped up beside George, who wiped an arm across his eyes.
“It’s a shame,” Angie said.
“I almost saved her.”
“Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.”
They watched Chris cross the field, the sun high in the sky, it might have been a perfect day.
“What’s he going to do with her, do you think?” Angie said.
“There’s only one thing he can do,” George said.
“Do you think he’ll be able to do it?”
“If he doesn’t, one of us will have to.”
And the old couple descended the slope, following in Chris’s wake.
Z-MINUS: 7 HOURS 42 MINUTES
Nathan stood with his head bowed, staring into space. Lily had her arms around her father’s leg. Danny and Shane stood on Nathan’s other side, with Nathan’s hand on Danny’s shoulder. The Jones family stood around the grave like a protective barrier.
“She didn’t have a long life,” George said to those gathered, “but the life she did have was good. She was an innocent in a world where innocence is a rare commodity. She died before her time, before she really had a chance to live. But still she made a lasting impression on all of us. She will never die for she will live in our hearts and our minds forever. She was an angel and now she goes to rest with her mother up in heaven. I’m sure she’s there now, looking down on us with all our love in her heart. We love you Tiger, and we will be with you soon.”
