by Lex Sinclair
Diana blinked once, fascinated.
The road ahead curved to the left sheltered by the dense foliage on either side of the road.
‘Mum,’ Tulisa whispered.
Diana glanced at Tulisa, not wanting to take her eyes off the wrought-iron fencing of the school yard to her immediate right. The building was no more than thirty yards ahead. ‘What?’
‘Jack says whatever happens from here on in he’ll be with you every step of the way.’
‘Okay. Thanks,’ Diana said, absent-mindedly.
Jack advised Tulisa not to make a sound, never mind speak again.
The entrance gates stood ajar. The padlock and chain had been unfastened and left on the floor. Diana couldn’t enter by simply ambling in she had to sidle in sideways, watching she didn’t step on the chain and alert anyone inside she was intruding.
Tulisa exchanged a single nod of approval and then watched her mum crouch and hurry on tiptoes to entrance.
Diana spilled petrol on the doors and step. Then she righted the bottle and hurried around the side of the building pouring more fluid. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the rear entrance doors standing open. Telling herself, to be strong and brave, Diana splashed the hallway and the rug and then poured more petrol on the step outside.
From somewhere deep inside the confines of the school, she heard distinct grunts and groans. She stood transfixed by the opening, ice-cold fear rushing through her veins. More grunts and groans and then... footfalls. Faint at first, then growing louder as they neared, echoing the sound of frantic heart.
Shuddering, Diana whirled around and ran around the other side of the building splashing the rest of the liquid contents around the building. Without stopping or slowing down she hurled the empty can overhead in the direction of the school and fumbled in her pocket.
The box of matches fell from her grasp only for Diana to snatch them out of the air with her left hand. She yanked them open instead of sliding the cover off and four sprung out and onto the floor. Walking backwards blindingly, she ran a matchstick across the coarse strip. The matchstick snapped. In her haste she’d been took forceful. She glanced over head and moved to the right so she was heading towards the gates that now stood wide open. Tulisa had pulled them open seeing her mother running full pelt.
Then a sudden, anomalous calm overcame Diana when she would have at least expected it. Her hands stopped trembling, as though another invisible hand steadied her. She withdrew a match, struck it across the coarse strip which felt like sandpaper. Then she ran forward and tossed the flaming matchstick on the spillage at the front of the school building.
In the seconds before the school building caught into a conflagration, the chasing mass of footfalls that belonged to the infected revealed themselves. Two children and two adults. Devastated at the arsenic deed, Diana gasped and started trembling again. Had it not been for the sound of her little girl’s voice screaming over the raging inferno, Diana would have remained that way until she besieged by the bodies of seething beasts.
‘MUM! RUN! GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE! NOW!’ Tulisa’s throat burned. She had been on the verge of screaming once more before the unthinkable occurred and reduced her to a heartbroken bag of bones, when Diana snapped out of her trancelike state and sprinted for the wrought-iron gate.
Diana slammed the gate shut and bellowed, ‘Tulisa, get on ya bike and ride!’
Tulisa did not hesitate. She pedalled manically like Mark Cavendish seeing the finishing line on the Tour de France. Diana held the gate closed while the infected reached through the gaps and snatched at her hair and face, doing their utmost to seize her or draw blood. Screaming with a concoction of panic and exertion, Diana ducked, bobbed and avoided their assault as long as she could. Then fell to the pavement, arse first and with all her remaining strength, instinctively kicked the gate open. The heavy iron gate slammed into the faces of the infected sending them stumbling backwards, falling clumsily over each other.
Seizing her one opportunity, Diana shot up, pinned her head back and ran. The gentle breeze gusted in her face; billowing her mane of hair. As she was about to round the meandering bend, she glimpsed over her shoulder. The rotted, emaciated things, frames barely held together by sinew and cartilage trundled in her wake.
Grateful that she never knew the people before the infection, Diana stood aghast at the human fireballs wrenching open the wrought-iron gate and pouring out of the school. She kept running, albeit not quite so fast, mesmerised by the hellish scene being played out behind her.
The adrenaline coursing through her engorged veins gave Diana speed and agility she had no idea she possessed. She didn’t. It wasn’t as though she could switch it on and off whenever she felt like. Nevertheless, the concoction of emotions that had overflowed had given her this ability, temporarily. Prudently, Diana chose not to waste it. She set her sights to tunnel vision and sprinted, using Tulisa as her target.
18.
NOW
The hill did appear to be quite steep from the road. However, Eric hadn’t expected the steady ascent to be this arduous. He kept himself in shape. He went to the gym three times a week, weights and stationary bike. Yet this hill seemed to be infinite. He looked down through the gaps in the thicket and cedars. What he saw gave him a boost more than he could have done by sheer will.
Below, he saw Tulisa heading in his direction, crouched over the handlebars pedalling for all she was worth. With much exertion, Eric averted his gaze and took big strides alongside the stream.
At last when he reached the summit, Eric doubled over, hands on hips. His breath exhaled and inhaled explosively and sharply, sucking and expanding. His lungs swallowed the fresh air greedily. Blood rushed around his head. Eric stood erect, slowly. Then he turned in the direction of the valley and the small, grey stone building that was St. Paul’s Church.
What he noticed and was taken aback by more than anything else, was how golden shafts of light from the windows spilled out onto the gravel path and adjacent graveyard.
You didn’t need to have a degree in engineering to know that the electricity was back on.
Regardless, of this unforeseen detail, Eric wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers. Then he picked up the shotgun, checked that he had the two bottles of alcohol that he would use as Molotov cocktails and ambled through the tall grass.
The light slanting down on the graveyard in four vertical rectangles made Eric’s flesh creep. It looked like something from an old Hammer horror film that would no doubt star Peter Cushing. As he peered closer though, the foreboding ambience increased tenfold. Eric’s trepidation could not be helped or abated. As far as he could see, there were at least six graves that had been unearthed. He shone his torchlight on the closest grave and saw soil and then recoiled.
Gouged deep into the soil were five separate miniature trails all linked close together. They disappeared where the soil had been excavated. By torchlight, the finger trails had pulled towards the grave, as opposed to away from it. Away from it, Eric could have reasonably assumed that Gary Williams had used a rake. Towards the grave however, meant only one alternative.
Someone was trying to get out.
***
Cussing inwardly, Eric rose from his knees and stepped onto the overgrown grass so not to make a sound and give away his presence before he was ready to. He composed himself, consciously doing his utmost to delete what he’d just seen that sent invisible spiders crawling down his spine and what was transpiring on the other side of the hill with Tulisa and Diana.
Eric skulked towards the entrance and tried pulling and pushing the two seven foot sturdy timber doors. It wouldn’t budge. He rested his head against the door and listened. At first all he could hear was accelerated drumbeat of his heart. He opened his mouth, feeling the pulse in his throat. This time he could indistinctly make out shuffling. Then a
sharp, ominous hiss.
Intuition informed Eric his presence had been detected. He moved in haste away from the entrance and around the back used the matches to light the petrol-doused rag of his first Molotov cocktail. A dilapidated chunk of stone had broken off a nearby headstone. Not considering the consequences of his actions, Eric grabbed the stone debris and hurled it with his right arm at the mosaic window above.
The scintillating crash threatened to deafen Eric. The translucent, stained glass cascaded in a thousand pieces, exploding off the sill and sprinkled the gravel path Eric stood upon. Fortunately, he reacted splendidly, crouched down, and buried his head in his hands, feel the dagger downpour on his back. Apart from the odd perforation through his clothing, Eric was unscathed.
He launched the flaming rag protruding from the bottle through the jagged hole he’d created. He smiled at the sound of the glass breaking and eruption of the fire spreading and engulfing some of the infected within.
Now he could hear the hundreds of heavy, fast-moving footfalls, like a stampede. The noise although frightening also brought to mind a sense of nostalgia. Eric recalled being a young boy standing in the school assembly hall amidst hundreds of other children watching a play on the big stage. The narrator of the play would say something to effect of, “The big bad wolf is coming to get me. Please help! If you all stand up and stamp you feet really hard it’ll frighten the big bad wolf away because there are so many of us.” And so that is what they’d done.
As he hurried around to the opposite side of the building to where the graveyard was located, Eric envisioned that memory in all its lucid detail. He nearly laughed aloud at the sound of all the infected pouring out of the church and all going in the same direction.
Not a brain between them.
He ran to far side, used the stone wall as cover and checked to see the coast was clear. Then he darted into the brightly lit church and jogged down the aisle, watching his feet pound the thin red carpet. He bounced up the two steps and came to a halt at the communion table. Tears of joy brimmed into his eyes and spilled blood-red down his cheeks in rivulets, like a wounded vampire.
As he lit the second Molotov cocktail, Eric could feel involuntarily twitching of his limbs, veins that had surface on his arms earlier like cables shrinking. His scalp burned ferociously from a heat within. Stomach acids on fire. Synapses in his brain blinking and affecting his concentration. The metamorphosis beginning to reveal its malignant symptoms at an astonishing rate, irrevocably.
Eric Leibert stood erect, arched his head back and fixed his gaze upon the granite effigy affixed the wall to his right of Jesus nailed to the cross. The figurine’s face expressed a profound melancholy. Eric knew that emotion and it cut through him like a thousand knives as the last lucid thought came to him. His dear mum, who would know soon enough what had befallen her only son. Yet had he been able to desert Diana and Tulisa and lived his mother would have seen the blemish on his soul.
Let them make it out this hellhole, God.
As inane as the infected were, they soon realised that there was no one out there to hunt down. The deluge of ruined bodies that should have been left in the ground surged through the entrance doors into the church.
The first one, a youngish looking fellow, whose pallid features had turned to crisp, halted. He sniffed the air, moved forwards, turned and faced the front of the church. His onyx eyes rolled backwards like marbles. Then the rest of the throng did the same. They hissed simultaneously. One great giant pissed off cat. The crowd rushed forward as one and screamed as the figure standing on the altar threw down the brown bottle. It exploded. A whhummpphh noise followed as roiling ball of fire engulfed the first five and sent them reeling backwards into the crowd. Their high-pitched shrieks were dulcet tones in Eric’s ears - an eternal euphony.
The moment Eric Leibert died and something sinister took place happened in a split second. The last thing Eric saw was the conflagration hastily peeling the frayed flesh from the cadavers that still walked long after their owners had died
He remembered nothing thereafter, and for that he would have been extremely grateful.
The conflagration did not consume the entire mass of infected. However, it did enough to dwindle the infected down to single numbers. The remaining few swarmed Eric Leibert and violently savaged his physical form. They had feasted on him, tearing, biting and chewing like the feral beasts they were. After the mutilation of Eric Leibert what remained was a skeleton with only scraps of flesh hanging loosely; innards torn from the snapped ribcage; pried open by inhuman force. Yet even after this macabre desecration of a modern day saviour the dead could not erase the broad smile stretching across his face; an eternal symbol of a victory and fortitude.
19.
NOW
Diana’s arms and legs pumping like pistons were heavy with lactic acid. The good news, though, was she could see the Texaco garage before her. Tulisa would make it first. All Diana had to do was keeping on running and ignore the slamming of her heart. She would make it. Her breath came in short, strangled gasps. Had she kept up her fitness from her younger years, Diana knew she would have made it sooner with a lot more air in her lungs. Yet determination was a potent weapon that exceeded all physical attributes.
Tulisa rode the ramp onto the parking bay, skidded involuntarily on the gravel kicking up a plume of dust. She cycled onto the filling station and leapt from Jack’s bicycle.
Diana gasped as she made it onto the filling station and felt an immense sense of pride at seeing her little girl tilting the petrol can so that the translucent liquid gushed out of the gap. Tulisa back pedalled in the direction of the convenience store. Diana reached her, motioned for her - as she was unable to speak - to open the shop door, and continued dousing the filling station with petrol.
Diana climbed the steps blindly. She swung the petrol can to and fro not leaving a single drop left in the can. Then she dove into her jeans pocket and fished out the box of matches. This time she lit it first time and tossed the tiny flame burning sulphur onto the trail and closed the convenience store entrance door behind her as the trail of fire chased the line of petrol with alacrity.
Tulisa was alarmed by the rosy-red hue of her mum’s face. From the store window she could see the flame rushing along. She listened to Jack and wasted not a second longer staring in amazement at the sight on the filling station. She threw open the wooden gate to the other side of the counter and disappeared into the storeroom. Diana followed, clutching her chest, desperately needing a rest.
Tulisa led the way to the side door, entered the adjacent hallway and picked up the second can of petrol and shoved the door open the door to the MEADOW FISH BAR & RESTAURANT. She soaked the counter and leatherette booths with petrol. Diana grabbed Tulisa by the hood of her sweater and pulled her out of the restaurant, lit a match and closed the door seconds before the flame engulfed her as well as the décor.
Tulisa poured the last few drops into the hallway, dropped the empty can and sprinted towards the neon EMERGENCY EXIT sign. She pushed the lever down and shouldered the heavy door open.
Diana followed, feeling drained and flushed. Nevertheless, the hard work had been done. She envisioned Eric stepping away from her for the last time. It had been in that moment when she studied the young police officer’s face in detail did she see him for the man that he grown to be... and the words he said that would forever echo in the valley of her heart.
‘Amidst all the darkness, I see only the light. Amidst all the death, I see only the life.’
Diana huffed and puffed like an old banger of a car ready to choke itself to a halt. Then she saw a young boy shinning with an ephemeral light, smiling benignly at her.
‘A person is at their best when they are at their worst,’ the young spirit boy said. His name was Jack Zane.
A face she new that shone heavenly white stood next to the boy th
en, too. A face Diana had envisioned and now was real but not of this world any more.
‘Escape this eternal darkness and step into the light,’ a young spirit man said. His name was Eric Leibert.
Diana ran with a renewed source of energy, not at all physical. She caught up with Tulisa, took her hand and ascended the timber steps into the woods.
As they ran, behind them they could hear the infected being assailed by the conflagration and were given an unexpected push from the back draft. The earth-shattering explosion shook the ground, threatening to tear the planet in two. Yet the little girl and her mother kept on running and didn’t stop until they reached the summit.
A monstrous black mushroom cloud billowed upwards, enveloping the entire Texaco garage.
The convenience store and the café/restaurant showered Rhos Meadow in glass, timber, concrete and other debris. Black charcoal embers disintegrated and toppled over the oppressive blaze.
Diana’s deadened legs buckled from underneath her and she fell softly to moss-covered terrain. Tulisa stooped down to see if she was all right. Diana lay unmoving, save tears of euphoria chasing each other down her face, reflecting the orange-red flames below. Tulisa exhaled and rested her head on Diana’s chest. From that position she watched Jack and Eric lose their worldly forms, fade to white apparitions and slowly drift upwards into the eternal blessed light.
‘Goodbye,’ Tulisa whispered.
‘Goodbye,’ Diana echoed.
***
Diana couldn’t tell how long precisely she’d been unconscious for, but it couldn’t have been longer than two hours or so. Her heavy-lidded eyes opened. She saw the grey sky overhead, clouds languidly drifting by. She remembered then where she was and brought to mind everything that had happened.
She gently shook Tulisa awake and reached into the backpack. Alan Willard’s diary was a Bible in regards to what had induced and ensued thereafter the downfall of Rhos Meadow that choked the sky in thick, black smoke.
