Search for Safety: Killing the Dead Book Two

by Richard Murray

  Several bodies lay on the floor but these appeared to be zombies and not Lily. Other than that I found just the usual stains that were left whenever the undead were wandering through and leaking their fluids. I approached the door that led into the back rooms.

  It opened easily into a store room. Another door sat at the end of the room with a sign that indicated it was a bathroom, though the door was open enough that I could see the room beyond was empty.

  Another door marked ‘exit’ was partially open and had a bloody handprint by the handle that looked fresh. I had a look through the shelves as I walked towards the door in the hopes of finding something useful. The majority of food items had been removed but I did find a box of the disposable Polythene gloves that were available for people to wear when pumping their fuel.

  I happily pulled a pair on as I really didn’t want to get anything nasty in the cuts on my hands, then pocketed a few more as spares. I would need to find some more suitable gloves before long, but in the short term if these prevented my being infected with the zombie virus or whatever the hell it was, I was happy.

  The exit door opened easily and I stepped out to find myself behind the petrol station. A few large wheeled metal bins sat against the back wall and blood on the floor led off towards the houses. With little else to go on, I followed the blood trail.

  A six foot timber fence surrounded the back garden of the house. Another bloody handprint stood out against the light finish of the wood, along with several splashes of blood that were smeared on one panel and led over the fence. I grasped the top of the fence and pulled myself up and over.

  Some inconsiderate soul had placed rose bushes along the edge of their lawn and I landed firmly atop one. I cursed as the thorns snagged my clothing once more. I would need some new clothes before long.

  My cursing caught the attention of the elderly couple who were standing across from me at the opposite side of the garden. In life they would likely have spent their days in their garden looking after the rose bushes and many other varieties of flowers it held.

  In death, they snarled and scratched at the fence as they trampled the flowers. When they saw me they dashed across the garden with a surprising amount of speed in their desire for my flesh. I leapt to the side as the elderly male zombie approached and lashed out with the hatchet, catching it just below the ribs.

  The damage went unnoticed and it turned towards me, its gnarled fingers taking a firm grip on my wrist. I kicked out and felt the male zombies left knee shatter, a second kick connected with its chest as it fell and its grip loosened on my wrist. I chopped down with the hatchet and felt the now familiar crunch of bone as the skull broke.

  I was knocked to the side as the female zombie collided with me. I swung wildly with the hatchet and missed the target completely as my hatchet slipped from my hand. The elderly female zombie bit down on my arm and I laughed as I realised I was about to die because of the lack of grip provided by some petrol station Polythene gloves.

  It took a moment for me to realise that I felt no pain in my arm, despite the frenzied biting of the zombie. I pushed her head away from my arm and saw that she had no teeth. I couldn’t help the laughter that came and I pushed her further away from me.

  In life she would have likely been frail and quite short, so in death she was still no match for me. I easily pushed her over and then retrieved my hatchet from where it lay in the damp grass of the lawn. One good swing of the hatchet and the elderly female zombie was no longer moving.

  The back door of their home was wide open and I considered going inside before realising that they had been standing at the opposite fence because that was the last place they had seen some prey go.

  As I approached the trampled earth beside the fence, where they had been standing as I arrived, I saw some more blood on the fence. I decided to look before climbing over this time and climbed high enough to see over.

  Nothing was moving in the garden beyond and so I pulled myself over and landed once more in a flower bed. I crossed immediately to the fence opposite and was disappointed when I saw no blood marring the wood.

  The garden was enclosed by the fence on three sides and the house on the fourth. Since the house was the obvious place to check I went there first. I found a small amount of blood on the door frame and the door itself fell open quietly and easily. I stepped inside.

  A number of cupboards and appliances filled the kitchen. The floor was tiled and covered in water from the overflowing sink. I reached across and turned the tap off. A bowl was sat in the basin on top of the plug hole, so someone had been filling the bowl and been distracted. I tightened my grip on my hatchet.

  I checked the living room and found nothing of note which left the upstairs to check. As I moved down the hallway to the stairs I could hear some thumping from above. Something was up there.

  My heart was beating faster as I climbed the stairs slowly and careful to put my weight on the edges of each stair, to eliminate any noise from a creaky step. I paused at the top and peered around the corner of the wall.

  A short hallway with a door set into the wall on either side, ended with three undead banging against a third door. The three of them were obviously the family that had lived in this house before one or more of them had turned and then infected the others.

  In my head I named them ‘Father,’ ‘Mother’ and ‘Son’ before I crept along the hallway, hatchet raised and ready to strike.

  Son fell to a blow to the back of the skull. He was smaller than the others and had been forced to stand behind them in the narrow hallway. Father received the second blow, this time to the temple as he turned towards me.

  Mother was quicker and more agile than the others. She lashed out at me with her hands twisted into claws, the ends of her fingers bloody and raw from scraping against the door. I stepped back away from her, and then had to duck another swing.

  I moved back towards the stairs with Mother following, snarling and flailing her limbs. She seemed to have more motor control than the other zombies I had so far encountered. It was perhaps a result of how long ago she had turned or her level of fitness in life.

  It was immensely irritating to have so many questions without answers and I decided once again, that as soon as I found a place of safety I would start searching for some of those answers.

  Another wild swing from Mother almost hit me and I countered with a swift strike against her ribs with my hatchet. I heard at least one crack, though it didn’t seem to perturb her. I was at the top of the stairs and running out of options.

  I ducked below her arms and struck her in the side and then watched with amusement as she toppled off balance down the stairs. I followed her down and struck her once against the back of the skull as she struggled to rise.

  Satisfied that the threat was done with, I quickly climbed the stairs and went to the door they had been so intent on getting through.

  When I reached the door I realised that pushing against it would be pointless, something was obviously blocking the door or the three zombies would have made it inside. Instead I raised my hand and knocked on the door.

  Someone or something was moving behind the door and after a moment, I knocked again. A quick staccato that should indicate to the person within, that I was not a zombie. Some more noise from behind the door as something heavy was moved and then a crack of light appeared as the door opened slightly.

  With no obvious threat other than my own murderous self, the door opened further and revealed a pretty lady holding a knife.

  “Hello Lily” I said with a wide grin.

  Chapter 16

  “Well you certainly took your time” Lily said with a wry smile.

  “Yes, well things are quite unpleasant out there these days.”

  “I know” she said with a glance over her shoulder. I followed her gaze and saw John seemingly unconscious on a bed. He was pale and judging by the shredded cloth that had been wrapped around his arm in place of a bandage, it had been his
blood trail I had followed.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “I’ll explain later. For now we need to get him back to the club house. Is Louise with you?”

  “No. It’s just me I’m afraid.”

  “What! Where are the others?” Lily asked.

  “Back at the club house probably. We had a busy night of our own last night and they wanted to sit there and wait for you to turn up.” I told Lily and filled her in as best I could about the previous nights events.

  “Ah no, poor Cass” Lily said with tears forming.

  “Yes, well we need to leave before it gets dark.” I said before Lily became too emotional.

  “Have you got a car?”

  “No I walked here.”

  “John may struggle to walk. He lost a lot of blood.”

  “Well we aren’t going anywhere very soon then.” I told her as I glanced through the bedroom window. “We may as well stay here till its dark. That may give us a chance to get past all the zombies out there. “

  “Is it really that bad?” she said as she sat beside John on the bed to check his makeshift bandage.

  “It’s probably worse. The whole countryside is teeming with them.” I pulled the bottle of water from my jacket pocket and tossed it to Lily who smiled gratefully before drinking.

  “Oh I really needed that. We have been in here all day.” She said wiping the excess water from her lips with the back of her hand.

  “You may appreciate these too then” I said as I passed over the biscuits I had brought along.

  “Oh wow, you really do know the best presents to bring a girl don’t you” Lily said with a bright smile.

  “Since we have to wait a bit, you may as well tell me what happened to you.”

  “Well everything was going fine” she began, “John and I drove along the roads and saw a couple of zombies that seemed to be wandering aimlessly, nothing major until we met the main group as we expected.” She paused for a moment and had another swig of water.

  “The problem was the amount of zombies. Eric and Pat went one way and John and I went another. We hit a few with the car as we passed, they weren’t all in a neat and orderly line. They were everywhere and we were fast becoming trapped.

  John had to accelerate and take a couple of detours down side roads just to get us clear. I think that’s when we lost some of them. We still had plenty following us though and we slowed a little so they could keep chasing us away from the club house.

  It didn’t take us long to reach the petrol station and that was when we found another group heading towards us. John tried to drive through them but there were just too many. The car ground to a stop and we had to jump out and run for the station entrance to try and escape them.

  The door was locked and so john used the hammer he was carrying, to smash the glass. I mean this was some old petrol station in the Yorkshire countryside, we didn’t expect it to be the most state of the art security glass, but this stuff was cheap. The glass shattered and he was off balance, his arm went straight through the glass and he followed.

  All I knew was that he was on the floor and screaming and then I saw the blood. He had caught himself on the glass and sliced deeply into his arm. I helped him to his feet and we ran for the back door. I heard more glass breaking as we went through the exit.”

  She paused and I told her that the zombies must have just run straight through the glass windows as they were all broken. She continued, “We were outside the back of the petrol station and all the zombies were at the front. We saw a fence and John insisted he could climb over so we thought it would be the safest chance.

  I made sure John climbed over first and had to help him because of his arm, then I followed. I must have scratched myself in a dozen places from the rose bushes.” She laughed and I did too. It was a pleasant feeling to laugh with her.

  “We would have gone into the house but the door was open and I could hear moaning from inside. We went to climb the fence into the next garden and John was just climbing over the top when a couple of zombies came out and headed straight for us.

  You won’t believe how fast I was up and over that fence.” Lily laughed again and drank the last of the water. “This house seemed ok, so we came in and I started to fill a bowl of water to wash Johns cut when some of the undead came at us.

  We ran to the front door but that was locked so we came upstairs and barricaded ourselves in here. This is where we have been since then, with those damn things banging on the door.”

  “Well you don’t need to worry about them anymore” I told her.

  “Yes. Thank you for that.” She said with a smile and a gentle touch on my hand. “I’m glad you came but we do need to get John to Louise so she can treat his cut. I did the best I could, but I was limited.”

  “The house is clear and we have maybe an hour to wait till its dark” I said, “It may be worth a look through the house to see if there’s anything we can use.”

  “Do we really need to wait till it’s darker? Can’t we just go now?” Lily asked with a concerned look at John.

  “There’s too many of them out there now. At least if it’s dark, we can try and avoid being noticed.”

  “Ok I will check up here if you don’t mind checking downstairs.” Lily said.

  “Sure” I agreed and headed back down the stairs, taking a moment to drag the corpse of Mother away from the bottom the stairwell so that we wouldn’t trip over her later.

  The living room held little of use, just the usual magazines and ornaments that people filled their living rooms with. In the hallway I did find a new thick jacket that fit me quite well so I removed my battered and blood spattered coat and pulled on the new one.

  My search through the cupboards in the kitchen revealed nothing that would be immediately useful. A few carving knives in need of sharpening, a number of pots, pans and plenty of machinery to aid in the production of beautiful meals. All of which required electricity.

  I pulled a carrier bag from out of a drawer beside the sink and filled it with as much snack food as I could find. It wouldn’t be great to be eating that stuff long term but as an energy boost for the trek back to the clubhouse, it would do fine.

  In a tool box beneath the stairs I found a number of tools. I discarded most as being impractical for fighting zombies but I did find a large and heavy wrench which would be very useful for crushing skulls if necessary.

  Lily was sitting beside John once again by the time I had finished. I handed her the bag full of junk food and she picked a couple of items to snack on while we waited.

  “How is he doing?” I asked with a nod at the sleeping form.

  “Do you care?” Lily snapped.

  “Sure. He will be a heavy load if I have to carry him back.” I replied with a touch of irritation entering my tone.

  “Sorry, I’m just tired.” Lily said with a half hearted attempt at a smile.

  “That’s understandable I suppose. Why don’t you have a nap? A couple of hours sleep will do you good.”

  “Would you mind?”

  “Not really. I can lock you in the house and have a look for a car I guess.” I told her as I moved across to the window. “Or maybe not...”

  Moving along the road beneath the bedroom window was a seemingly endless stream of undead. They moved listlessly as though conserving their energy for when they sighted their prey.

  Lily swore as she joined me and gazed out of the window at the march of the damned beneath us.

  “Where have they come from?” she asked.

  “We are about even with Halifax so they could have come from there.” I said absently as I looked over the zombies. They were a good number without any apparent injuries and they definitely seemed a lot spryer than their damaged brethren.

  “Possibly from a hospital, was there a hospital just outside of the main town do you know?” I asked Lily.

  “Yes why?”

  “Most of those zombies down there look like they d
idn’t die from being attacked by the undead; most of them look fairly fresh. I think they were some of the ones who were sick and at a hospital for treatment when they turned.” I told her thoughtfully.

  “What’s going on?” asked John from behind us before Lily could answer.

  I waited impatiently as Lily explained what had happened while he was out of things and concluded with the zombies marching past our window.

  John struggled to push himself to his feet and with a quick glare from Lily as motivation; I went across to help him. He moved – with my aid – to stand beside the window.

  “This isn’t good” John said quietly.

  “When they go past we can slip out after them.” Lily told him soothingly.

  “It’s not that, if they follow the road they will eventually end up at the golf course.” John said in alarm.

  I pulled out the map that Eric had given me and stared at it intently as I traced the route from the petrol station that Eric had marked and the club house. “It’s possible” I said to Lily, “This road will lead them in the general direction and if they don’t get distracted then they could well end up there.”

  “We need to warn them. We need to get back and get everyone out of there.” Lily said.

  “How do you propose to do that?” I asked, “We won’t be able to race along the road and get ahead of them.” I pointed at the roads marked on the map.

  “One road leads between here and there. If we can’t take the road then it is a long walk cross country in the dark.” I told her firmly.

  “It’s not the only way” Lily said after a quiet moment looking over the map.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “We can go back the way they came and into Halifax, from there we can swing around and reach the golf course from the other side.”

  I stared at her and asked “Are you insane?”

  “We could do it if we had a car.” John added.