by Craig Jones
I took my chance and pulled up to Nick’s door. His mouth was still wide open so I cranked my arm, encouraging him to hurry up, to get the kids in the car. Robbie snapped his father out of his state by pulling open the back door of the car and ushering the girls in, slamming the door once he had clambered in after them.
‘Nick!’ I implored at the same time.
He blinked rapidly, tugging open the passenger door and getting in beside me. Without a word he pulled me into a hug.
‘Matt, I… I…’
‘It’s okay. Nick, it’s—’
‘It’s not okay,’ said Robbie, leaning forward between the front seats and pointing towards the end of the road. ‘Look!’
I raised my eyes and felt my shoulders slump. In the middle of the road, blocking our exit, was the zombie that had taken control on the bridge in Usk, the leader of the infected prisoners. Blood had dried across his pectorals and run down his face from a fresh gash on his bald head. The bite mark on his forearm was now simply a black, oozing hole.
He bared his teeth and let out a prehistoric roar.
‘This guy’s getting on my nerves,’ I said. ‘Buckle up.’
The Range Rover bolted forward and I veered the car to the left of the monster ahead. He bent his knees, preparing to throw himself towards us and I could see that he was lining up me as his target; he was going to leap at my side window as we passed him.
An instant before he could react, I swung the car to the right, directly into him, and I heard the headlight shatter as we ploughed through him. It was like I had driven into a brick wall and I almost lost control, the steering wheel spinning in my hands for a second until I pulled it back. Something bounced on the black bonnet and then the prisoner’s head, detached at the neck, slid across the windscreen and up and over the roof.
I hit the wipers, and as the blood was washed away I watched in the mirror as the headless body twitched and finally died in the road.
35
I drove across the flyover, weaving slowly to avoid the cars and trucks that had either been abandoned or had smashed into each other. There were no people. There were no strewn bodies. The children remained quiet in the back seat. Robbie occasionally leant forward and pointed out something terrible, some evidence of carnage on the road side. The girls, Sally and Jayne, did not make a noise all of the way down to Cardiff but simply sat with their arms around each other.
I’d hoped they would fall asleep, that they would not see the desolation all around them, but so far they had not. For the duration of the journey we had not seen another moving car, which was heartbreaking, but we hadn’t run into any zombies either, which gave me hope that we could reach the stadium safely, that it may in fact remain a sanctuary.
Nick had briefly filled me in on what had happened. After the first epidemic he had become worried that he had not done enough to protect his family. After Jenny left, he developed a deep-rooted paranoia. He had soundproofed the attic, providing it with its own electricity source and a store of food. As soon as he’d heard the undead start to attack his neighbours, he evacuated the family upstairs and, despite a clear awareness from the creatures that fresh meat was close by, they had remained undiscovered.
He’d fallen silent after a while and it played on my mind that he was mulling over the last time we had been together and the fact that he’d punched me. If he mentioned it, I had every intention of telling him I deserved it and that we were never to speak of it again.
Now, the road ahead was clearing and I was preparing to increase our speed when Nick, from his comatose state, suddenly yelled out.
‘Stop!’
I jammed on the brakes and was relieved that the children were properly belted in. Nick was out of the Range Rover in a second, crossing in front of the bonnet and running over to the railings on my side of the flyover. Both girls let out a little whine and Robbie immediately began fiddling with the release button on his belt so he could follow his father.
‘Robbie, no,’ I said softly, turning to face the children. ‘You stay here and look after the girls, okay?’
He nodded bravely but his eyes told me that he was more filled with fear than at any other time in his short life.
‘Nice one, buddy,’ I said as I opened my door and slid from the seat.
I left the engine running.
‘Nick,’ I called in nothing more than a whisper. ‘What are you playing at?’
‘Look,’ he replied, pointing off perpendicular to the direction my car was facing.
I walked over to where he stood, my eyes everywhere at once. I looked where he was pointing, along the road that ran beneath the flyover we had stopped on. It was a four lane dual carriageway that, about half a mile away, opened up into a shopping complex. The building at the front was a massive superstore, and in its car park hundreds of people were massed.
‘Look,’ Nick said again, finally lowering his finger. ‘Maybe we don’t need to go to the stadium. It looks safe over there.’
I rested my elbows on the top rail and squinted off into the distance. Nick was right. There were hundreds of people over there, but something was off. It appeared that two huge queues had formed, one leading into the store and one leading away. It was just too far out of sight for us to make out properly what was going on.
‘Wait a second,’ I said, surprising myself as much as Nick.
I ran back to the car and climbed across my seat, popping open the glove box.
‘Is everything okay?’ Robbie asked. He had positioned himself between his two sisters and held their hands in his.
‘Everything’s fine.’ I smiled, snagging the binoculars and running back to Nick.
I trained the lenses on the car park, scanned from left to right, and then felt as if all of my energy had seeped from my body.
‘No,’ I breathed, and passed the binoculars to Nick.
He took longer than me, surveying from side to side, up and down. I knew the outcome would be the same and he slumped to the pavement, his back against the railings.
‘It’s over, isn’t it?’ he asked.
I took the binoculars from him and shook my head.
‘It’s not over until those guys are safe,’ I said, gesturing towards the car.
But inside I knew Nick was right. What we had both seen in that car park told us more about how things were going to end than anything else we had previously seen. I didn’t want to look again but I could not help myself.
The entire car park was surrounded by zombies. There were hundreds of them, five rows deep, creating an inhuman fence. They had a tidal life as they rocked back and forth in unison. Nothing was getting in or out of their cordon.
Two lines of unharmed humans were organised within the perimeter. One was made up of women, children and the elderly, and they were being funnelled to the entrance of the supermarket. The other line held just men, and they were being herded around the corner, out of our sight. I remembered how the zombies had pinned down the woman from the crashed car on the motorway and how they had bitten her to convert her to one of their own.
Dozens of zombies milled around across the car park, maintaining order with snapping teeth and snarls. Slowly the line of humans being taken inside thinned and then was gone as the last one was forced inside. I couldn’t hear the crying but I had seen one child, a young girl, as she was shoved to the floor, blubbering as the woman with her tried to pull her to her feet. I watched as the zombies set a guard on the door and those not needed began to head towards the line of men.
‘What are they doing?’ asked Nick.
‘They’ve put most of the people inside the shop,’ I replied.
‘Why? Why would they do that?’
The answer was out of my mouth before I had time to check it.
‘Where do we go for our food, Nick?’
He let out an anguished moan, and Robbie called out to his father from the car.
‘It’s okay,’ Nick responded. ‘We’ll be on our way in a second.
’
Nick climbed to his feet and took the binoculars from me. A second later he handed them back and, with a shake of his head, walked back to the Range Rover. I brought the glasses back up to the bridge of my nose and watched as the zombie perimeter began to close in around the men, slowly but surely boxing them in tight. The humans started turning in circles, looking, searching and praying for a way out. One of the infected stepped forward and bit a tall, blonde man on the shoulder. I heard him scream. I watched him fall to his knees. Some of the others went to him and then backed off as he rose to his feet, already changed.
I’d been right. Feeding was inside, but out here they were swelling their ranks. I watched it all. It seemed like the entire sequence happened in slow motion as the first of the men threw a punch, and then another and more joined in, and although the zombies were knocked to the ground, one, two, three more were always there to replace them. The men fought hard but as each of their side fell, another joined the undead masses.
I thought I had been watching for minutes but it was mere seconds and it was evident that the creatures were organised, that they knew not just what they wanted to achieve, but how to do it.
‘Matt,’ Nick called. ‘Please, we’ve seen enough.’
And then someone broke free.
He punched a zombie and the beast fell over, knocking several of the unbalanced undead to the ground. A group of the men, no more than ten of them, leapt through the space that had been created and sprinted away along the road. I tracked their path, already thinking about how I could get our vehicle ahead of them and assist their escape. I had all of five seconds to consider this course of action before they were each cut down.
The infected were not only fast and powerful but were also getting smart. As the men ran, stealing looks over their shoulders at their pursuers, another gang of zombies stepped into the road ahead of them.
I watched as the first man was taken to the ground and realised that, for these men, there was going to be no second life. The binoculars shook in my hand as they tore his head from his neck, and then the binoculars fell to the ground and cracked, but I did not care. Unless we got to the stadium, there was no hope for us.
* * *
I no longer drove with caution. There may not have been a single creature on the streets but that was not to say they weren’t there. They had gotten clever. They could have set all kinds of traps, and as I piloted the Range Rover around the walls of Cardiff Castle I had already made up my mind that speed was our best option.
Nick was silent, the girls were weeping and all I could hear, even over the whine of the engine, was Robbie telling his sisters that everything was going to be okay, that Matt was going to save them. I only hoped I could.
Since the flyover, my only thought had been of Danny, how I had failed to save him, and that now I had another chance and I would die before I let this family be harmed. I slowed, getting ready to swing the car to the left, knowing it was only a few hundred metres to the manhole cover and the safety of the stadium. I changed from third gear to second, touched the brake once more, gripped the steering wheel a little tighter and then the police car sped around the corner on the wrong side of the road, smashing into the front of the Range Rover and bringing both cars to a dead halt.
36
I don’t know how long I sat there with my chin on my chest but when I opened my eyes and the world around me swam back into focus, it was through the shattered front windscreen of the Range Rover that I could see the broken remains of the police car. Its horn was blaring, jammed on, and I could see the driver slumped over the steering wheel.
I considered trying to re-start my car, to reverse and get us out of there, but steam hissed from the engine and the front suspension must have snapped as it sat sagged forward. I felt a sticky sensation on my chin, which I gently probed with my fingertips, and when I brought them up to my eyes they were smeared with blood. My clothes were drenched in it; the airbag had not deployed and my nose had impacted the steering wheel. I ran my hand along the bridge of my nose and could feel the crack as well as the laceration.
I unbuckled my seatbelt and slumped forward. Nick was breathing heavily in the passenger seat next to me. I turned my head to him.
‘Are you okay?’ I rasped.
He looked okay, but when he turned to face me I could see that the left side of his face was plastered in blood and that he continued to bleed from his ear.
‘I’m…’ he began, and then froze. ‘The kids!’
We both turned at once. Robbie, Jayne and Sally were sitting stock still, their eyes wide and staring. I could see no blood and let out a sigh of relief. They had all kept their seatbelts on so had been protected from the impact. The boot of the car had popped open and a breeze blew through into my face.
A slap on the driver’s side window drew my attention, and with a short scream I turned to face the infected man who pawed at me through the glass. His head gyrated from side to side, his tongue flicking across his blood encrusted lips. His hand continued to play across the window, leaving a thick, red trail. His dark grey eyes met my own and I felt my entire body recoil.
Slowly he brought his hand down the window, and then he smiled at me.
I suddenly realised he was moving his fingers towards the door handle. I swivelled in my seat, and as he pulled I kicked the door as hard as I could to send the zombie tumbling backwards onto the road. The children shrieked as one and I reached out and snagged the door, pulling it closed with a heavy thump. Before I had a chance to snap the lock down, both of the back doors of the Range Rover were wrenched open.
Hands, decaying, wretched hands stretched in for the girls. Sally yelled. Jayne was struck dumb. Rancid fingers wrapped themselves around their wrists, in their hair, and after a brief moment of hope when their legs snagged in their seatbelts, they were gone.
‘NO!’
Nick shouted and was out of the car in a moment. As soon as his feet touched the floor something hit him in the midriff and he was launched to my right and crashed across the bonnet of the police car, wrestling with a huge zombie specimen. The noise of crumpled metal filled the air and I knew I had less than no time to react.
I twisted so I was facing the back of the Range Rover and I stepped over the gear stick and handbrake, flicking loose Robbie’s seatbelt and bundling him into my arms. He was frozen, his eyes and mouth wide. I struggled over the back seats and out of the car via the wide hatchback. I jumped to the floor and the extra weight in my arms made me stumble forward, dropping Robbie onto the gutter as I glanced over my shoulder.
Over a dozen of the infected were descending upon our position. The girls and the zombies that had taken them were nowhere to be seen and Nick continued to struggle with his assailant. For a moment I considered rushing to his aid, and then a geyser of blood spurted up from his neck as the infected being finally claimed victory. I sucked in a burning breath, picked Robbie up again and ran as fast as I could.
It was then that I realised I was charging in the wrong direction, taking Robbie away from safety, away from the stadium.
The castle wall was on my left and I stayed in as close to the shops on the opposite side of the road as I could, hoping it would be less likely that I would be spotted. As I ran, leaving a trail of blood along the pavement, I saw that one of the shop doors up ahead was open, so I slowed with the intention of jinking inside. What I saw in the doorway brought me to a complete halt; the remains of a woman wedged the door open.
One of her legs was missing and her ribs had been peeled open, revealing a bloody cavern where her organs should have been. Her face was virtually untouched but her nose had been snipped off with what I could only assume to have been a single bite.
Covering Robbie’s eyes, I stepped over the corpse and glanced back out into the street. One of the zombies was running a finger along the ground near my vehicle. It brought the digit first up to its nose and then into its mouth. It was like a bloodhound being given a fresh scent.
I ducked my head back inside the building as it looked my way but could not resist peering back out. It was male and stood in the middle of the street, the denim jeans it wore filthy and bloody. It had no shirt or shoes. And then it sniffed the air and stared up the road, looking directly at me. I stepped out of its sight.
I pulled Robbie closer to me, trying to muffle his crying against my chest.
‘It’s okay. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.’
‘Dad! Dad!’ he cried. ‘My sisters.’
I turned and realised for the first time that we were in a huge pub. The bar ran along the left-hand wall, the rest of the area taken up by seating booths and tables with the chairs stacked on top. What was a pub doing open this early in the morning?
I looked back at the dead woman in the doorway and wondered if she had been the early morning cleaner. Her mop bucket lay just to the side of the door. A shadow fell over her prone body and I flinched as a lone zombie launched itself onto her, devouring what was left of her in ravenous gulps.
I had been frozen to the spot, but now I quickly and quietly manoeuvred behind the bar and ducked low. I could hear more footsteps, louder even than the feeding frenzy taking place, as something else entered the bar and paced around, sniffing the air for us.
My nose had stopped bleeding but I was still covered in blood; that must have been like a beacon for the zombies. Internally cursing my bad luck, I held my palm over Robbie’s mouth and placed a finger to my lips. His body was shaking, but the brave little kid tried his best to nod his head.
There was a single, open door behind the bar and I decided that once the zombie had advanced far enough into the pub, we would make a break for it. I glanced around, looking for some sort of weapon, but apart from empty, clean beer glasses, there was nothing. I briefly considered trying to get to the overturned bucket and use the mop itself against the creature. It was a gamble that I decided was one step too far, especially considering the speed I had seen those things move. I could not arm myself and still make sure Robbie was protected.
