Undead at Heart

by Calum Kerr

  She tried again, and then Dan and Sam reached her from one side, and Dave and Daz from the other, between them they hoisted Tony from the floor and placed him on his feet.

  She wondered if they should turn and run again, but no-one made any move to do so.

  This, it would seem, was the place they would stop running. This was where they would take their stand.

  Tony, Dan, and Daz allowed their packs to drop to the floor. Tony passed his whole jacket, with its pockets-full of shotgun shells, to Dave. Then finding himself weaponless, Tony reached into the pack at his feet and found a long screwdriver.

  And so each of them, armed with a range of makeshift weapons – and the one gun which Dave was already loading again – planted their feet in the dirt of an anonymous field, under a blackened sky, and waited for the enemy to attack.

  Forty-five

  There were three soldiers in the Hut, the rest, apart from Alyssa, were villagers who had had the same idea of using the unusually fortified scout hut as a refuge from the madness.

  The newcomers made themselves as comfortable as they could on the wooden floor of the hut and listened while Scott, the solder who had let them in, told them what had happened.

  “We were being transported in by helicopter to engage the hostiles when they got us first. There were twelve of us, including the pilots, but only six of us survived. When the…” he paused, unable to believe what was about to come out of his mouth, “… when the aliens hit us with their beams, they split the helicopter. We were at the back and fell out. We weren’t that high up and landed on soft grass, so we were okay. The rest of the helicopter, with everyone in it, went down and exploded. We were lucky to escape.

  “Our first thought was to head to the LZ on foot, but before we could, there was a blast and everything between us and the target was vaporised. We were blown into a ditch by the blast, and the ditch saved us. The fire-front rolled right over the top of us. Still, only four of us made it. Billy and Gobbo weren’t close enough to be carried as far as the ditch. They burned up right in front of me.”

  He was telling the story in a low, matter of fact voice. It was obvious he had told it already, but it was still affecting him.

  “The trees above the ditch started burning and flaming branches started to drop on us. We had to run for it, through the flames. The other side was the road. We found a burning truck and cars, but no people. They had all been abandoned. We presumed the people had fled into the woods, so we followed, but we didn’t find any.”

  James heard Andy say something to Alan, and then Alan spoke up. “We met some of them. We met people who were there. One saw your helicopter go down and then the truck flew over onto the road. Was it your helicopter crash that sent it over, do you think?”

  Scott nodded. “Probably.”

  “They headed into the woods, but then they got split up. One of them was her mother, I think.” He turned to Alyssa. “Is your mummy called Nicola, honey?” he asked her and she nodded. Alan looked back at Scott. “They went looking for her. In some shed on a hill?”

  Scott nodded. “Yes, that’s where we found her. We rescued her before some of those zombie things could get to her.”

  “What are they?” James was surprised to realise that it was him who had asked the question.

  “They’re zombies, as far as I can tell. You know, the living dead and all that crap? They make them and then it spreads in the bite from creature to creature. They melt in the sun and you can stop them by smashing their heads in or chopping them off. That’s all I know, really.”

  “The aliens made them?” Alan asked, and James saw Scott wince at the word. Something in his rational, army training just seemed to rebel at the idea.

  “Yes, we saw them, we think.

  “After we crossed the road and went through the woods, we came out into fields. We kept going in the hope of seeing a farm or a village. It didn’t take long before we did see a farm, but before we could get there, we saw something else.

  He paused and looked at the newcomers with a fixed stare. “What I’m going to say may sound crazy, but you have to believe me, okay?”

  They all nodded, and James wondered what could be crazier than everything he had seen and heard so far in the last day.

  “The…” Scott still obviously found it hard to say the word ‘aliens’, “…the attackers have ships – spaceships – which drop legs and become giant robot spiders which can walk around the countryside.”

  He waited for the stunned reaction that this comment had brought before, but all he got was nods. “Tell us something we don’t know,” said Bert, softly.

  “Two of them demolished my pub,” Alan filled in.

  “Oh, I see.” Scott even sounded a little disappointed at having his thunder stolen and James could suddenly see this young soldier as an old man, telling this story to wide-eyed grandchildren. If they all survived, that was.

  “Well, one of them came across in front of us. It was headed straight for a man who had come out from the farm. For such big things they’re amazingly quiet and fast. It was on him before we could shout. One of those legs just seemed to scoop him up in to the machine. Seconds later it pulled him back out in a shower of blood and dropped him, from what we could see, near the farmhouse. We ran, but when we got there, no-one was there. There was just a puddle of red on the carpet in the kitchen. We called, and walked around the farm, but we couldn’t see what had happened.

  “We worked out after that the puddle must have been what was left of the man we saw. The aliens had taken him in - bitten him themselves, maybe, we’re not sure – and let him out to spread the infection. We think that’s their plan to get rid of us, let us do it ourselves. Now they’ve blocked the sun it should be easy. Even a short exposure to the sun kills them. He must have gone in and melted in there.”

  “That was my dad,” James said quietly. He then told his story, again, of what had happened to his dad and how he had hidden in the barn. Even as he was saying the words was aware that his voice held the same monotone as he had heard in Scott’s.

  When he finished, everyone was quietfor a moment, then Scott said, “That would explain what we found. When we got to the farm we must have just missed you, and your mum must have moved deeper into the house. After we found the… your father, we didn’t really look further. We just called out and when we got no response we carried on.

  “When night came we were near another farm, and that’s when we saw what it really was we were facing. There were only three of them, all with their necks torn, but one of them was just a kid.” He took a deep breath and shuddered.

  “The kid ripped out Teddy’s throat before we knew what was happening. They turned on us and we shot them. Five minutes later we had to shoot Teddy too.” He stopped talking and everyone was silent for a moment.

  One of the other soldiers picked up the story. James thought his name was Bolly, but he wasn’t sure. Was that even a name? “We didn’t want to carry on after that. It was dark, and we just had no real idea what was going on. They didn’t brief us before they sent us in. Just that there had been an ‘invasion’-” He almost spat the words, his scorn much deeper and more angry than Scott’s bewilderment. “- and that we were being sent in to fight. We’d lost our way and our will. We sat and we talked and we tried to work it out. And then it was full dark. We already knew, from trying at the first farmhouse, that some kind of EMP had knocked out the power to anything useful, but we found some firewood and made a fire. It was a warm night, and it was kind of pleasant.

  “Until they came.”

  “I guess the light and the smell of smoke drew them,” Scott continued with the story. “There must have been forty of them. We shot some, but they kept coming, and we hadn’t expected them. Our clips were in our bags, so we couldn’t reload. We ended up in a barn, barricaded in. It was all we could do.

  “They kept us there for hours, battering on the door, but we had pushed a tractor against it, and there was no way
they were coming in. We just had to wait for them to leave.”

  Bolly continued, “Eventually they did, and when it had been quiet for a little while, we moved the tractor back and looked out. We could see a trail where they had headed out into the fields. We’d reloaded, and stashed our extra clips in our belt, and we thought that if we came up behind them, we could take most of them before they could turn on us.

  “When we caught up with them, they were breaking into a shed and we could hear screaming. They were tearing the door into matchsticks with their hands and didn’t care when they ripped off flesh or fingers. We took aim and shot a few of them in the heads, and the others turned and fled. They ran off the side, away from us. We didn’t know what we had done to scare them so badly. Only hours before they hadn’t seemed to care about our guns or the possibility of being shot. But only ten minutes later the sun came up, and we realised that they had known, somehow, and had run off to hide.”

  “We’d found Alyssa, by then,” Scott carried on with this game of story-tag that he and his comrade had developed. “She’d been the one in the shed. I think if we’d been just one minute later, they would have got her. The door was almost gone: just so much kindling. We barely touched what was left and it collapsed. The girl was cowering in the back, but we eventually calmed her down.”

  “We brought her with us,” – Bolly again – “and headed down the hill away from the farm, in the opposite direction from where the zombies had gone. There didn’t seem to be any point following them, and from the hill we could see nothing but farms in that direction. Deek-” he indicated the third soldier who had said nothing so far, “-had a pair of field glasses in his kit and he said he could see a village over here, so we came this way.

  “We reached the village just a few hours ago. We met all these people.” He waved a hand around at the assembled group, none of whom had engaged in the story-telling, and to James they all looked in shock. “They were just emerging from cellars and garages, where they’d been hiding from their undead friends and loved ones all night. They were all heading here, the place that would be easiest to lock and defend. Some of them had made it here last night, and they let us in. And we’ve been here ever since.”

  With the story told, he fell silent. Scott didn’t have anything else to add, he just looked down between his crossed legs and rolled his rifle along his thighs.

  “So,” asked Alan, “what now?”

  Scott looked up, and James could see in his expression that this was a question that he didn’t want to answer. He took a deep breath. “Well, until the sun went, we were planning on scouting for food, but we can’t do that now, not enough ammunition. So, when our food runs out, we’ll last a while, as long as the water’s still working. But-,” he shrugged, “if nothing happens and no-one stops those things, I’m guessing we either have to try and break out of here and find a stocked shelter, or we simply wait to die in here.”

  The silence following this bald assessment was followed by a loud banging on the metal doors which reverberated through the building.

  “Or maybe we won’t have to wait.”

  Forty-six

  The cautious advance of the zombies didn’t last long once they saw that their prey was no longer running away. As they all reached the flat of the field, they ran, loping over the ground, some even dropping to all fours. The leader of the pack sprang straight at Nicola who was standing in the middle of the group of humans. She stepped back and started to swing her blade, but her foot sank into a depression and her arms went out wide as she struggled to stay upright. Her neck and chest were exposed, offered, to the zombie’s attack.

  Tony didn’t even think, he just raised the hand with the screwdriver clutched in it directly in front of Nicola. The zombie impaled itself on the tool as it entered through the eye-socket. Tony couldn’t stop the creature’s flight. The screwdriver was torn from his hand and the zombie still collided with Nicola, knocking her back.

  The breath flew from her in a whoosh as her back hit the ground, but still she rolled, dislodging the now-still body of the zombie from her, and scrambled to her knees, blade still clutched in her hand, trying to drag air into her lungs. Tony watched this, and wasn’t aware of the creature which had used his distraction to launch itself at his neck. The first thing he knew was when the shotgun discharged close enough to his face for him to feel the singe of the blast on his skin and his right ear to start ringing with deafness. He turned in shock and saw the headless corpse of a zombie flying backwards, seemingly propelled by a cloud of blood and brains. He nodded his thanks to Dave, who took a brief moment only to nod back before turning the second barrel on another approaching attacker.

  Beyond him, Tony could see Dan and Daz swinging with their weapons, knocking zombies to the ground on either side of them. While the attack on Nicola had driven her and Tony backwards, Dan and Daz had advanced into the oncoming crowd, dealing blows to left and right. Some of their blows were enough to kill the creatures, but many only stopped their progress and the undead things lurched back to their feet and resumed their frenzy. Sam was standing behind the two men, and Tony realised for the first time – how could he not have noticed? – that she had no weapon of her own. He hadn’t thought to check when they left the farm, but had been too caught up in what Nicola had been doing with Dave. How could he be so utterly thoughtless? He cursed under his breath, stooped to pull his screwdriver from the dead thing at his feet, and saw Nicola already back on her feet and ready to face the oncoming horde. Dave’s shotgun blasts had caused some of them to pause, and they had turned their attention to the two men and Sam. Finding that they were enclosed in an area of calm, Tony led Nicola and Dave towards the others, to aid them in their fight and their protection of Sam.

  He had only taken the first step when it happened. A zombie broke from the circumference of the undead which had formed just outside the radius of their swing, and flung itself at Daz’s side as the momentum of his sledgehammer left him exposed. The zombie didn’t gain a hold, but its force was enough to knock him off-balance, colliding with Dan, and the two of them tumbled to the floor.

  Sam was frozen, watching as the defence which had kept her safe crumbled. Tony could do nothing but watch as one of the undead monsters launched itself at her and bore her to the ground.

  Forty-seven

  “They’re on the roof!”

  The attack had started at the front door, but it had soon become clear from the noises coming from outside that the entire Hut was surrounded. It seemed that, despite taking their time, the crowd which they had met on the road had followed them and were now determined to break inside their protective shell to find the tasty, soft centre.

  James wondered, even as the noises started to come from above and Alan shouted the obvious conclusion, if Buster was okay. That should have been the last of his worries, he knew, but he couldn’t help but speculate.

  The sounds from above grew louder as more and more of the creatures found that the walls were too sturdy to be broken, but provided sufficient handholds for climbing.

  With the start of the attack, everyone had risen to their feet, and stared around. Scott and the other soldiers had moved from the main room to the vestibule, to repel any zombies which managed to break through the door. The rest had stood, impotently, whatever weapons they had managed to find clutched loosely in their hands, and waited.

  “Anyone know what the roof is made of?” asked Alan, looking around. In the candlelight, James could see all faces upturned, listening to the progress of footsteps across the flat surface above them. No-one looked down, but one or two slowly shook their heads.

  The silence of their response was broken by a loud tearing noise from directly above the group, and one or two of the waiting survivors let out short screams.

  The tearing, like the sound of sellotape being pulled from a dispenser, continued, inexorably, and James had an image of gravel covered tar-paper being ripped and shredded. It stopped to be replaced by thump
ing and banging, and the sound of growling.

  James himself jumped as he felt something touch his hand, and looked down to see Alyssa looking up at him as she slipped her hand into his. She had moved away from Debbie, whom she had attached herself to as soon as the mother had arrived, and for some reason sought comfort from him. He clutched her hand in his and resumed his upwards stare.

  It was hard to make out in the gloom, but James thought he saw the roof start to shudder under the combined blows. Then, with a crack, he knew that they were having success. Dust dropped into his eyes where the plaster on the ceiling had splinted, and he bent his head, blinking away tears.

  When he looked back up, it was in time to see the ceiling start to fall away in chunks. Plaster and concrete were falling into the room, yet still no-one moved. They were frozen, unable to do anything more than wait.

  With another loud bang, a larger part of the ceiling fell away, and James was able to see a small patch of the gloomy sky which lowered above the Hut. It was obscured by grasping, groping hands, then reappeared, larger and stayed visible, steadily growing, as the creatures on the roof tore away the concrete with their bare hands.

  Still no-one moved, they simply watched and waited.

  As soon as the hole was large enough, the rain of concrete and plaster stopped, and instead a body fell through into the Hut, screaming and spitting.

  It hit the floor, its legs buckling under it, and despite the stasis which had seemed to hold them all, Andy didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward and whipped his golf-club up under the jaw of the sprawled zombie, ripping it clean off. Alan, barely a step behind him, clubbed it across the back of the head with his iron bar, collapsing both skull and zombie in one blow.

  Despite their speed of response, in the time it had taken them to despatch the first creature, three more had dropped through the still-widening hole in the roof into the hall of the hut. James could hear the booted feet of the solders running through from their watch of the front door, but he realised they were going to be too late as one of the zombies, turned, fixed its bloody and crazed eyes on him, and prepared to leap. He shoved Alyssa behind him and prepared to do what he could to protect her. He told himself to at least keep his eyes open.