The wheels kept spinning, but eventually John got his tractor facing the farm after a nine point turn. There were ditches either side of the road, his windows were obscured with blood and his cab was under constant attack. With two flat tyres it struggled to move, but the engine still had plenty of power in it. The noises it was making showed it wasn’t happy, but the tractor moved forward when commanded.
He rolled slowly forwards, with little of the pace he had started the battle with. Every instinct told him he should get out and check up on his tractor, but it would have been suicide. It needed to wait for the mechanics after the fight was over. Angling the tractor he tried to get a look out of the side windows. Sections of the road were bordered by ditches that he wouldn’t be able to cross, particularly as they got closer to the farm. In the past the fields had been used for livestock. What he managed to see was clear, so he took it on faith that the area he was pointing at was going to be OK as well.
The tractor shook wildly as it moved across the mud with two flat tyres. Without many new bodies hitting the front of the vehicle some of the blood and gore was shaken off the glass, so that he could almost see through some parts of the windscreen. It was enough to see that he was moving in the direction of the wall, but he couldn’t make out what was happening there. His advance was painfully slow when he knew so many people were in danger. From the side windows he eventually saw the other tractor. It had moved to the other side of the road and was approaching the wall on the far side of the gate. The driver was struggling to keep it straight as it dragged on its one flat tyre, but the one still inflated wheel seemed to give him more speed than John could muster.
Jose wrenched the end of a heavy crowbar out of a skull with a spray of blood that had become repetitive. With his left hand he sunk a pick axe into the top of another head. It sunk in deep, and as its target fell backwards he didn’t try to hold onto the weapon. Hanging on would have dragged him in the wrong direction, and weapons were becoming too easy to get hold of. He would pick up another before he lost the crowbar. The mindlessness of the attacks made each little battle easy to win, but there were so many of them. He knew that he’d killed dozens, the guys who’d started with guns had probably taken out far more, but still the fight went on. It wasn’t going to be a long fight. Within an hour one side or the other would be dead. The zombies held nothing back in their onslaught. No fear, no tactics, no mercy. On their side everyone able to fight was there on the wall.
With the moment’s respite that his last two kills had brought him, Jose looked to his left. Immediately he picked out Becky’s blonde hair amongst the carnage. She was in trouble. She was alone as three of the dead mounted the wall. The men either side of her were dead, leaving far too big a gap to the next living person. One of the zombies feeding on the dead man to her left lost interest in its meal, turning its attention to her. Jose abandoned his position and ran to her.
In the time it took him to cover the fifteen meters between them he saw the realization in her face that she was in trouble, alone and outnumbered. Saw her step back and to the right to stagger the distance between the four that now advanced on her. He saw her raise her axe, weary and caked in blood, but defiant, determined to fight for her life. He saw the nearest zombie to her stumble over a corpse and be punished by a blow to the back of its head. He saw her struggle to remove the axe from deep within the skull. He saw her fall back as the next two closed in on her.
Jose reached the zombie furthest from her, the one which had been feeding, and drove his crowbar through the back of its head. Ahead of him he saw Becky hit the ground and roll immediately to the side, somehow keeping hold of her axe. She managed to get it between her and the next zombie, planting the handle into the ground enough to support its weight. With one hand she tried to hold it steady as it wriggled and grabbed at her. From her belt she pulled out a long knife and smashed it through the side of the zombies head. Blood flowed over her hand and down her arm, but she was able to shove the now lifeless corpse off her. Before she had a chance to retrieve either weapon there was another upon her.
It dived for her feet, the closest thing to it. It quickly followed up its first failed attempt to bite through to tip of her shoe with a grab higher up her leg. She kicked at it while desperately grabbing around her for anything to use as a weapon. She found nothing as it tightened its grip on her foot and closed its teeth upon her bared ankle.
Jose got there first, sinking the curved end of his crowbar into its side, sinking deep into the space between its hip and its ribcage. It was knocked off balance, but didn’t relent in its attack, feeling nothing. It kept hold of her foot, but bit into the mud instead of flesh. Jose hauled it to the right before it had a second attempt. The force tore the crowbar free, ripping out a string of intestines with it. Blood sprayed across the ground, but the dead man still didn’t seem to realize that it was under attack, keeping its attention on Becky. She was already getting to her feet as he delivered a smashing blow to its head.
There was no time to even acknowledge his assistance. They had left the wall undefended, and the zombies they had killed were quickly being replaced. She grabbed a sledge hammer off the ground and heaved it over her shoulder to crush the skull of the first of them, but was nearly thrown to the ground by the momentum of it. She let the hammer go, reclaiming her axe instead. Jose was soon at her side, but they were getting heavily outnumbered. He had no idea if any of the rest of their gang was still alive, but he was determined that he would not let Becky die.
The re-enforcements with the chainsaws had saved their lives, and were still cutting a bloody swathe through the dead, but the noise was drawing more and more in their direction. They were soon in as bad a position as before they were saved. They still held their line. More blood soaked into their clothes. The ground grew ever deeper with shredded bodies. It became more and more difficult to raise their weapons to take the next swing at a relentless enemy.
Most of the chainsaws had already changed hands. They were deadly, but drew too much attention to whoever wielded them. Every time one fell it was picked up. They noticed how quickly it cut through the enemy rather than how quickly the person holding it died. Ruth saw Simon still standing strong with his chainsaw against a multitude of dead as she took her turn, killing the zombie which had got the better of the previous holder and picking up the weapon.
She felt the surge of power as it kicked back into life, a surge of adrenaline propelled her forward to the front line to stand beside her friend. She had no idea where Lucy or Hannah stood or lay, but at least one of her friends was there to fight beside. Bloodlust kicked in as the first two heads were split open by her advance. She swung wildly for the next one.
Cooper was sure the end was close as one by one the people around him fell under the crush of the dead attacking them. From the corner of his eye he’d seen Andrews fall and had been able to do nothing to help him as he fought desperately to avoid being overwhelmed himself. In front of him there were dozens of bodies that he had killed permanently, but more kept charging at him. As he raised his arm, hoping for one final kill before he was finally torn apart by hungry mouths, the sound of gunfire raised his spirits.
As the dead focused on the noisiest parts of the wall, other sections were becoming secure. The snipers were able to reload and re-establish themselves, once more picking off huge numbers of the dead who were making no attempt to keep under cover. As Cooper killed one zombie to his right, the one he had exposed himself to too the left dropped dead as a bullet tore through his skull. Alive for another final kill, he prepared himself again.
The dogs were well ahead of him. When he got to the front gate they were all fighting, but they were struggling to make a kill. They could take them out by the legs, knocking them to the floor. They could bite and tear off chunks of flesh. Several throats were torn out by the time Matthew got there, but the dogs could do nothing to break through the layer of bone protecting the brain. By the time he got there the dogs were alr
eady getting nervous, as everything that instinct told them was the way to bring down prey didn’t stop the dead from grabbing at them and trying to fight back. They had slowed the advance, but could stop nothing.
Matthew was out of breath by the time he got there, too old and out of practice for running, but he found he had an easy task when he got there. The dogs had pinned they enemy, and they were reassured as they saw him calmly dispatching the dead one by one. He worked hard keeping up with them as they grew increasingly excited, swarming around him and dragging more and more of the dead to the ground, expecting him to deliver the finishing blow. Soon, growing tired of his limited killing speed, they started to spread along the line, harrying the enemy at every opportunity. They were ignored so long as there were human targets still available, and too fast to be caught when there weren’t.
It had been a painfully slow advance, but finally John got back to their walls. The numbers had thinned massively, but they were concentrated on certain sections, and for the people on the other side it would be no safer at twenty deep than it had been at sixty deep. He didn’t know how many were still alive on the other side, but he was finally in a place to help them again. He got close to the wall and turned as sharply as his battered vehicle would allow.
Even before the first impact he was making a difference. The engine was straining and making far more noise than it should. A lot of attention turned from the wall to him. The tractor trudged forwards. It wasn’t actively killing anymore, just crushing those who threw themselves under it. Once more blood soaked the windscreen, but it was no longer enough to completely obscure his vision. To the sides it was a different story, as his lower speed allowed more and more to climb the side of the tractor and claw at the armour they had welded on. He ignored them and drove on, relying on their stupidity rather than his pace to mount up the causalities.
He ploughed through the first big concentration of the dead and moved on to the second, trying to ignore those still clinging on to the side. As he started crashing through the second big concentration they became impossible to overlook. There was a big imbalance on the side closest to the wall, and it quickly got worse as he hit the next wave. Using those before them as a ladder, more and more mounted the side of the tractor, first making it lurch heavily to the left, before tipping it over onto its side. Many were crushed under its weight, but the soft mud allowed most skulls to stay intact, and their owners scrabbling at the metal pressing down on top of them. On the other side more and more threw themselves at the tractor searching for a weakness in its underbelly. Inside John lay unconscious.
The zombies seemed distracted as they attacked. There were more than enough to overwhelm Jose and Becky, but they didn’t attack in force. As the first two fell to their weapons a couple more fell as bullets cratered their skulls. Other’s seemed inclined to turn back to the other side of the wall as the grumbling of a tractor engine approached. The two of them took advantage of the distraction and hit their attackers with every ounce of strength they could muster. Suddenly they found re-enforcements rallying around them. The dead were crushed by their charge.
Ruth raced forward, sensing victory as she saw the tractors returning to the battle, heard a growing number of guns picking off the dead. Saw the attackers reaching the wall growing more damaged, moving slower than the ones who had reached the wall before them. She swung her chainsaw like a madwoman, cutting open bodies, and stepping ever forward through the resulting spray of blood. She left herself recklessly exposed, and her friends, caught up in their own battles, noticed too late.
Lucy was too pinned down, struggling to survive, but Simon and Hannah spotted her as she drove forward beyond their defensive line to become surrounded. They could hear guns to either side doing what they could to clear a path and they both broke forward trying to reach their friend, but it was all too late. In front of her Ruth saw the results of her wrath. Blood and gore sprayed out over the crowd in front of her. All before her died. She gave no thought about anything that could be behind her until she felt the teeth tearing into her shoulder. Emaciated arms wrapped themselves around her, their thin form masking their strength. She panicked, trying to slash into the man behind her with the chainsaw. It tore into his back, but had no noticeable effect on him. She felt his hands tearing through her cloths and digging into her stomach. More were soon upon her, exposing more of her body, biting chunks out of her, tearing her apart. Even as she looked for help, someone to save her, she knew it was too late. Once bitten the infection was in her. All that was left was the pain of being eaten alive. A bullet to her head ended it all.
The battle had turned in their favour, but there were still plenty of opportunities to get killed. Cooper fought far more cautiously now. The guns had regained supremacy. Survivors rallied around them protecting the shooters, as they were protected in turn. Those attacking now were the ones that hadn’t been able to keep up with the initial charge. Most were slow and awkward, but still deadly. They were supported by people from the farm who had been bitten. They were the most dangerous. Everyone was caked in blood and gore. Lacking the starved look of the long dead, they were hard to pick out until it was too late. One of the tractors still made a slow patrol along the wall and plenty identified themselves as infected by throwing themselves in front of it, but far more had to be picked out and shot or bludgeoned to death. Destroying familiar faces was crushing in a way that destroying strangers hadn’t been, but after all they had seen no-one hesitated.
Epilogue
A year after the battle they held a memorial for all of those that had died at the farm, on that day and every other since the infection first spread across the country. A simple monument had been built, flowers were laid down, and speeches were made. Plenty of people were there who hadn’t been at the farm at the time of the attack, but most had their own tragedies to mourn. There were exceptions. Hannah’s daughter at four months old had missed the end of the world, and her cries during the solemn moment were a sign of hope for the future.
It was the only battle that they faced on the farm that was close to that scale. As they burnt the dead from the battle they estimated the number at twenty thousand. They had lost more than two hundred, and had to spend weeks managing quarantines as the infection kept breaking out. Half of the dogs started showing symptoms of rabies and had to be shot, but the rest seemed immune to the infection. They continued to survive, and rebuild. The dead gradually starved. It was a slow process as the bodies stopped producing heat prolonging their energy reserves. They grew weaker as the living grew stronger.
Through the Winter the number on the farm continued to grow with people who had hidden through the crisis and were now starving. Leaving their hideouts and desperately searching for food stumbled across this safe haven or others that had formed. As the months passed they started establishing contact other communities across the country which had survived. Trade routes started to link up the country, a growing network of survivors. The country started rebuilding from a small farm in the depth of Norfolk.
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