Zombie-dem

by James J. Stubbs

  Chapter 14

  Carnival Carnage

  She must have slept a while on his shoulder. By the time she woke there was a noticeable shift in the levels of light. He had slowed the bike to crawl just as a fuelling station appeared slowly on the crest of a hill. The landscape was similar enough to the rolling hills they had left behind, though was much flatter by now. He must have been running short of fuel. He slowly shortened the revs of the bike to the point it was ready to cut off. He put one boot on the floor to stop it tipping as the bike rolled to a stop.

  'How long was I asleep for?' Lizzie cleared her throat lightly and waited for Logan to stand the bike ajar on its kick stand before trying to jump off. She was a little groggy, and really shouldn't have been considering she had a decent night's sleep while at the campsite. It was Logan who had been up for at least 48 hours by this point. He was showing no signs of ever slowing down either. Sleep never seemed to interest him when it wasn't just a process. Losing it was never something he was too bitter about.

  'Around an hour.' He said softly while scanning the horizon with both eyes squarely open. 'We have about half an hour to go before we make that airfield I was talking about, and then I think, if memory serves...' it always did, 'around another half hour again before reaching the town.' The light was fading fast. It seemed even faster now they stopped.

  'Fuel?' She asked and stepped off the bike. Her hair was a total mess, spiraled into a thick and clotted mess behind her back and neck, but there was nothing that could be done about it. Even Logan's silver, thick but still pretty long, hair was plastered to his face against the harsh wind he had been tirelessly battling against this whole time.

  'Yeah.' He turned off the bike, she hadn't noticed how much noise the engine had been making until it was off. Even though it had just been at idle speed. The silence was a little overpowering at first, but became a little more comforting in time. There was no reason to think there would be anyone at the filling station. Why would there be?

  Logan said he hadn't seen anyone on the roads. Though he had slowed down for a few abandoned cars on the way. The lakes country seemed pretty much desolate and without either forms of life.

  She was oddly surprised when Logan started walking. What difference would a motorbike make to zombies? Then the obvious fact hit her. Logan wasn't worrying about them. He was worrying about people. Someone might want to steal it, or worse, do them harm. It would be good to have the bike further down the road. It went against all instinct to leave it in the middle. But that was another obviously flawed thought.

  He still stroked the but of his gun. He did that when he was nervous sometimes, or when he was almost expecting a fight. The further they walked the more the canopy of the filling station came into view. It was fallen in areas, rusted in others. The bright neon lights had long since faded and in places were hanging loose from the rafters above. There was a separate toilet block and a shop which was firmly closed. There might be supplies inside.

  Luckily the station was on the other side of the road. That meant they could crouch by the central barriers, which were cast in folded steel, to be able to scope the place out before committing. There was a painted blanket hanging from the top of the iron shutter that was closed over the front of the shop. It was blood red but certainly just painted.

  It said simply "No Fuel". There was a surprise, Logan thought almost sarcastically to himself. He only needed a little. It was worth checking. There had been no signs of movement so he decided to go for it.

  He hopped the central divide and whistled lightly for Lizzie to follow. She was almost offended at being beckoned like a dog but thought better of it than to protest. She followed him as ever. As he got closer, he began to peer through the gaps in the shutter to see movement inside the shop. It was slow, but gone before his eyes had the chance to focus. Could have been living. Could have been dead.

  He closed up the rest of the distance and dropped to his knees on the forecourt. It was cold even through his thick trouser legs, and the light was fading to the point it was getting hard to see. A quick check of one of the nozzles of a pump confirmed there was no fuel left in the sumps below. But there had to be a chance of there being some on site somewhere.

  Lizzie tapped him lightly on the shoulder and stood. There was something painted on the ground, in a far less obvious shade of white that provided little contrast to the grey of the concrete, just before the shop shutter. It read "alive inside" and provided a date when the shop had been sealed. That wouldn't have been so odd, nor would it have sent her alarm bells ringing, if there hadn't been for the cable ties between a locking mechanism on the floor and the shutter on the wall. That meant it had been sealed and left.

  'Maybe someone re-sealed it...' Logan just thought out loud but Lizzie was right to be disturbed. The date on the ground, even though no one really was that sure of the date anymore, was a fair time ago. Even around the time he was last in England. There was a chance someone was alive in there. Living on the supplies inside.

  Logan, never one to be subtle in such a circumstance, started hammering on the shutter. It shook violently from side to side and rattled before settling slowly back into place. He mustn't have been in the mood for anything sensitive.

  'Back on your bike there.' A somewhat frail voice came from behind the shutter.

  'I need some fuel.' He said abruptly and clearly.

  'None left... can't you read.' The voice croaked under its own strain.

  'You must have kept a stash for yourself. I only need an hours worth. Twenty four liter tank that's all.'

  'Go away.' The old man said and seemed to slink away. Logan slammed the shutter again.

  'Come on!' He must have been getting wound up. Usually he showed a far more delicate and patient touch.

  'Do something for me?' The old man said, walking back from behind a shelving unit and came up close to the shutter. He took an understandably long look at Lizzie but said nothing untoward.

  'One of them is scraping at the window... around the back.' He sounded genuinely afraid. 'I think it can smell me... It won't go away. It's like it knows I'm in here and it won't let me sleep.' He began to sob.

  'You want us to get rid of it for you?' Logan said understandably cold. The man, in a fit of strength considering his age, slammed a metal shovel against the shutter and started to wail.

  'Then bury it!' He shouted through deepening cries. 'And make a cross from some wood... there's a tree round the back.' He disintegrated into more howling and cries.

  Logan's stomach churned in guilt, but how was he to know after all? 'What's their name?' He asked softly and took hold of one end of the shovel through a gap in the shutter. He threaded it through to the other side, end to end. 'I'll use my knife to carve it into the wood?' The man, wrinkled with age and withered by starvation rations to only a brittle frame, shook his head, cried some more and said simply:

  'No one has a name anymore.' And turned away.

  Logan sighed deeply but traced the building to the rear. He was careful, but not overly so. Lizzie felt guilty for him, but didn't say anything that might make it worse. 'I'll do it?' She offered but Logan said no. He still felt ten tons of guilt for giving that man a match, which he used to kill a lot of people on his behalf. What more would one coffin weigh on Logan's shoulders? Even if it was just a zombie's.

  It was a woman. Same age as the man inside the closed down shop. Total lack of vitality. It was an older zombie. The kind that had become distant, decomposed and grotesque. But had long since lost the ability to run. It was one of those one's who had turned at first, and had been like that ever since. But there was something about them, that desired to continue their lives. Some kind of base instinct that made them want to act out their old lives like their ghosts would have on their behalf.

  A lot of them had started moving in herds. But not this one, which was odd, but not worth obsessing over. Perhaps a herd had never passed by, or perhaps, so Lizzie quietly thought as Logan
plunged the sharp edge of the shovel into her moist flesh, she was just so in love with this man that not even death could turn her away. Perhaps loyalty meant more in death. Her black and dead blood poured out over the soil, and hearing the man sob inside was not hard as Logan began to move the first of the wet sod.

  He dusted her over, making sure not to touch her infected flesh, and marked her shallow grave with a makeshift cross Lizzie had made from two large sticks taken from the autumnal tree and fastened together in the center with a spare boot lace. Logan, almost out of instinct of his own, plunged the shovel into the earth, leaned upon it, and began to say a few final words. Who knows how many times before he had had to do that? Not even he could remember.

  'No one has a name anymore. Not even Death. Death is something we imagined to be far away... that by the time it came for us we would be at peace with it and ready to shake hands with the reaper. In this place, death is constant. We would once have said that some love is so strong, that not even death could tear it apart... Death couldn't tear this love apart. So I had to. What does that make me, if not worse than death? No one has a name. Known unto God.'

  Lizzie said nothing, and fought back any desire to cry. Logan was struggling to come to terms with what he had to do. That much was clear. Either he was struggling with his own demons, or finally realizing that maybe he needed them to survive this world. Only time would tell.

  'Pump 2.' The man said nothing more, and slunk back into the shop, probably to be alone with his grief and his fading memories.

  'Hey.' Lizzie rubbed shoulders with him on their way back to collect the bike. He smiled nervously and it was obviously fake. 'Let's make a promise.' She couldn't help but to think it sounded juvenile, but could think of no better way to phrase it. 'Let's just help people... no matter where they are or what they are, or whatever nightmare they face, let's just help them?' She was trying to make him feel better. But the line could never be that clear cut. Trying to help might make things worse. Logan could have been problematic but decided against it, and just nodded. Years of experience had cast right and wrong into a grey and black mess. That was what he was running from.

  'We can always try.' He replied and picked up the pace.

  'You're not a monster.' She said frankly.

  'Wouldn't matter if I was. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not.' He half laughed as he shuffled back onto the bike and fired the now cold engine back to life. The light had failed them, but luckily the powerful single headlight still worked and cut a track through the all consuming darkness. 'Even if you're born a monster, but live your life doing what's right, or the best and closest version of right that you can find, then what difference does it make.'

  He didn't like it. But there was a dark streak to him. There was a powerfulness to him, and a coldness to him too. He had a dark vein of General John Cygan, his mentor, trainer and friend, running deep in his subconscious mind. But so long as he always, consciously, used those things to do what was right, then what difference would it make in the end?

  He crawled the bike to the station, filled it with gas, and took off like a missile. Nothing better to focus the mind and shake off the cobwebs than a fast motorbike ride. Even though he was very tired, having been awake for two days and having buried a body on no sleep or food.

  The fading light made the journey that bit tougher. All he could see was the area lit by the one lamp mounted to the front of the bike. It was pretty strong, but could only reach so far. With no street lamps, and thickening cloud given the slowly encroaching autumn weather, there wasn't much else to help him see. Lizzie fought the urge to sleep. If she had it might have annoyed Logan that little bit, not that he would say anything. But she needed to stay alert to watch out for him.

  He kept the bike that bit slower. There could be anything in the road. A jam full of abandoned cars, or anything like that. And it would be on top of him before he would have any chance to react if he blasted it.

  But nothing happened. To think about it, England had been hit by the virus before most of the states. Whereas by the time it hit New York, it had already mutated into one of its final stages, here it had been different. Most people were sick with flu so no one was really out and about, off on holiday, or trying to commute to work. Logan must have memorized the route.

  He didn't really pause as he came up to a junction, or was faced with merging lanes and roads. He rounded a few bends, navigated a few abandoned roundabouts and picked his way through to the airfield he had mentioned.

  It was in far worse a condition than he remembered. The hangers were all but burned out, showing little more than their torched shells and skeletal frames. There was no real way to be sure, but it looked abandoned and still. There were no fences up this time and every security gate had been left open. He used the chance to take the bike into the field for a better look. He didn't really want to get off, given that the night air had slowly stiffened up all of his joints.

  He was fighting the urge to try and stop and get some sleep, but if he was going to put his head down, he wanted to be at least half sure they were going to be safe in the night.

  He followed the runways around a little, changing and hopping from one to the other via the small strips of track that the planes would use to navigate to their allotted runways. But there was nothing. The ship idea was looking more and more likely as time went on.

  He suddenly fired the bike into life and screamed down a full length of one of the runways. The engine rippled through the night air and the bike physically shook with a few tank slapping moments but he surely enough slowed it enough to curve around the full width and fire it back. He just wanted to be sure. If there were any planes hidden in the hangers, they were pretty much assured to be half destroyed and there was no way he was getting any of them up and running.

  'Heads up next time!' Lizzie screamed to him as they started back on the connecting roads that would lead them to the town he often spoke of. His chest was heaving again, even though he was going too fast to bother replying, he clearly thought it was all very funny. Just a little something to wake her up.

  He kept the pace moderate and just slowly wound the throttle. He wasn't looking forward to passing the final road. He slowed the bike, as a mark of respect, by the house he had peddled past so many months ago. This was the place where he had let someone die, and didn't try to help when he probably could have. He thought, that if he fired his gun, the bullet might hit the victim and not the dead. So he rode on and let it happen. The vibrations of the engine fell as he slowed to a dead stop.

  The house looked the same. Same sloping roof, same paneled windows and wooden shutters. Though the hedges and trees in front of it had grown in abundance, the view was essentially the same. He peered, through saddened and weighted eyes, into the window beyond. He let the bike fall to one side so the light shone in that direction. Maybe it was his imagination, but he swore there were two silhouette figures behind the still drawn curtain. Two zombies. When he might have left only one.

  'What is it?' Lizzie tapped him on his shoulder. He hesitated, but started to flex his legs.

  'Nothing... just stretching is all.' He lied. No point trying to right the wrongs of the past. He fired the bike back up and just kept riding. Just like he did before. He needed to leave them. He could have taken a few moments to kill those zombies, if indeed they were even there and not just pinned into the eyes of his mind. But he needed them to be there. To remind him that he was supposed to help, first time.

  He remembered the route so much better than he thought he would be able to. Even in the overcast darkness. The last time he had ridden this way it was on a pushbike that he had stolen from outside of the town library, in an escape from the first ever recorded cases of the walking dead.

  The tarmac remained smooth but it was littered with leaves and fallen tree branches. Funny how nature just moved back in like that. The trees didn't seem to care in the slightest at the death of the human race. To think how many species had
come and gone while trees lived on. It was a nice thought, but one that passed quickly as the town Logan had been aiming for came slowly into view. He kept the bike at a moderate speed so as to not risk a crash.

  He was feeling nostalgic, but not in a good way. His stomach churned at the thought of those young people in the library, the ones he had let take his borrowed police car and try to find somewhere safe on their own. He doubted they made it two miles. His stomach ached even more at the vivid memory of the zombie woman biting into her living and terrified daughter. But it all seemed so long ago.

  He remembered the bridge, and the train line that he had to follow to make it into the center. He took the exit ramp that he remembered far too clearly and slowly slid the bike around a tight corner and into the town.

  It was very dark by this point, and the engine on the bike must be drawing every walking zombie from ten miles around. But he kept going nonetheless. The last time he had been on the main street, he had noticed the shops were just lying dormant, shutters down, with no signs of riot or damage to be seen. That wasn't the case anymore.

  Every one of them had been burned out, into a total wreck for the most of them. There was no telling what they even used to be anymore. He followed the same route he had last time, more on instinct than anything else. He remembered the raised cobble pedestrian only section. The part he had torn the bumper of his car that last time he was there. He mounted the curb with the front wheel of his bike and slowly revved the back wheel over the bump. He felt the impact pretty hard. Bikes like this one weren't really designed to take any hits. It was a road racer. Fast enough too. But it wouldn't be worth the mud it got stuck in off the road.

  Rounding a final corner, after following even more burned out shops would lead them to the site of the Library. That was where it had all happened. He wasn't looking forward to seeing it at all. So it was a good thing he couldn't.

  'What the hell?' Lizzie let the sentence and thought trail off as Logan stopped the bike dead. The engine cut out immediately. The tank must have been as dry as a bone. Even a full tank on a bike like that, going the speeds he was going, wasn't going to get them very far.

  But the noise of the engine seemed like very little compared to the ruckus going on by the expansive green space next to the library.

  The fairground had moved in. All of the rides were working too. All powered by their own generators. The lights on the ride cut through the darkness like beacons on a plane's wing. There was laughter, children, and everything seemed very normal.

  Candy floss machines whirled away creating pink clouds of fluffy sugary treats which the children tucked into. Hot dogs and buns in their hands, holding on to one another in the sparse but impressive crowds of people. He just sat low on the bike, totally astonished.

  'I've been to the four corners of this planet, and seen the darkest sides of men's souls...' He half smiled and shook his head in total disbelief. But he was right. He had seen it all. It was like waking up, and finding out that the zombie outbreak had never happened. Like they had died, on that very bike, and this was the distorted version of heaven they were entering. Music played on the speakers. Tracks from family films. Uplifting and sweet melodies that made the children dance.

  As for the rides. There was a Ferris wheel that reached high up into the sky, tea cup rides for the children, and even a dodgems track for the bigger ones.

  'I never thought I'd see so many people ever again. Never mind see them like this... smiling.' Lizzie found it infectious, those smiles, and an unmistakable one of her own slowly but surely stretched across her face. Logan didn't share it. He frowned instead. Because atop the library, since turned into a haunted house, was a sign. One that read "Carnival Carnage".