The dead hands tightened their grip and there was the sharp pain of a bite on his shoulder.
Cahz screamed, but the sound was lost to the downwash from above.
The constant heavy beating of rotor blades and the drone of a turbine encased him in noise. He closed his eyes and listened to the din from the helicopter’s engine. He pulled his arms in and flicked the detonator on the claymore.
Epilogue
Ali slowly surfaced from his sleep. He swallowed deep in his parched throat, trying to move the sticky mucus from his mouth.
“Time to get up, Ali,” he said to himself as he tentatively peeked out from behind his eyelids. He placed a hand against his brow to fend off the worst of the light.
He unzipped the sleeping bag and tussled with its embrace to get his feet free. As he kicked it loose he glanced around.
The sky was clear and bright. A few puffy white clouds floated in the azure blue, but it looked like it would be a fine day.
He heaved himself upright, his body giving a disparaging array of clicks and pops as he stretched out.
He looked down at his bare feet. His toenails were getting long and needing a trim. As he looked at his hairy toes he wiggled them, feeling the plastic groundsheet stick and cling to his soles.
He had been sleeping in his vest and threadbare underpants and he knew the garments, like himself, could do with a wash. He knew his long black beard was wild and unruly, his hair just as untamed. He knew he looked a sight.
The light wind whistling through the eaves made the rooftop strangely silent.
As he pulled his thick and well-worn shirt on, Ali listened for the moans of the zombies. He focused carefully and there it was, like an unending incantation. The incessant droning of a thousand coarse voices were conveyed in the air only as background noise to him. Like the constant drone of traffic outside the old apartment where he used to live. When the world was alive.
The drone of the dead were what he was used to ignoring now.
His head pounded. He knew he should be drinking more water, but had no idea when he would get some. The storm had passed and the puddles of rainwater long since dried up. His stomach growled, eager for some breakfast. But the food in the backpack had run out a couple of days ago.
Stiffly he walked to the edge of the roof. With each step his rigid joints eased off. It was even harder for him to get going in the morning these days. He would shuffle around this confined space until his ligaments and muscles had eased off.
He stepped up to the edge of the roof. Before him lay the dead city. Hundreds of abandoned buildings, thousands of rusting cars and what seemed to be millions of dead inhabitants.
He looked down at the seething mass of undead flesh below. The street was packed with cadavers, all calling their baleful lament.
Ali sniffed back hard, then hocked up the phlegm from the back of his throat and spat it at the baying swarm.
The undead milled around, jostling with each other for position, arms outstretched as if in worship.
Ali cleared his lungs with a sharp cough and pulled the crotch of his underwear to one side. A torrent of thick yellow urine streamed off over the lip of the smashed rooftop. As the urine fell the long way to the ground, the wind caught it and dispersed it into a thin mist. The piss drizzled down onto the upturned faces of the reverent zombies filling the street.
“That why you moan so much, eh?!” Ali shouted out at the mass of undead. “‘Cause I still piss on you?!”
THE END
Table of Contents
Foreword
Chapter One
All the Towns’ Folk
Chapter Two
Head Count
Chapter Three
Barrel
Chapter Four
Des-Res
Chapter Five
Lock
Chapter Six
Balcony
Chapter Seven
Chamber
Chapter Eight
Purchase
Chapter Nine
Stock
Chapter Ten
Apartment
Chapter Eleven
Catch
Chapter Twelve
Fishing
Chapter Thirteen
Fire
Chapter Fourteen
Avenue
Chapter Fifteen
Bolt
Chapter Sixteen
Neighbourhood
Chapter Seventeen
Rail
Chapter Eighteen
Residents
Chapter Nineteen
Trigger
Chapter Twenty
Shroud
Chapter Twenty-One
Safety
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dwelling
Chapter Twenty-Three
Breach
Epilogue
Remains of the Dead Page 26
