Dark and Deadly Land

by Richard Murray

  “Hssst,” Pat gestured for my attention when I turned to him at the sound. He pointed down into the warehouse and I padded over to him silently and peered through the doorway. A young man, barely in his twenties with floppy hair badly in need of a cut, was walking to the back door while muttering to himself.

  “Looking for the others,” I said.

  “Yeah but look, by the door.” He pointed and I saw it, movement in the shadows. The undead were rising.

  “Ten minutes,” I said with a grin. “Not bad at all.”

  The floppy haired man came abreast with them and had the barest moment to scream as hands reached for him. His scream cut off as teeth tore out his throat. I resisted the urge to giggle as fresh blood sprayed the back door and cries of alarm came from the factory floor.

  To my surprise, the zombies left the body where it lay and disappeared from view amongst the stacks of pallets and bales of material. My body shook with silent mirth as I realised what they were doing and Pat looked at me as though I were insane.

  “They’re setting an ambush,” I whispered with a low chuckle. “They’ve come back as Ferals.”

  Chapter 22 - Lily

  I’m not a killer, not a warrior. I don’t fight, won’t fight for the thrill of it. But I will fight to save the life of another. That’s what I kept telling myself as I crept through the house. A brief survey of the ground floor rooms showed them to be empty. Just the kitchen then.

  A hallway led from the back door to the living room, a set of stairs to the left of that back door and on the right, the kitchen. I pressed myself back against the wall in the living room beside the door and counted my breaths.

  One, two, three, four… I rapped on the wall once with my fist. Five, six, seven… the kitchen door opened and a voice called out.

  “Dan, that you?”

  I stayed silent and raised my club. Eight, nine, ten… I rapped once more against the wall. Eleven, twelve…

  “You in here?” the male voice asked as it moved closer to the living room. “Dan?”

  My club caught him in the face just below the eye and he yelped in pain and shock. Thirteen, Fourteen… I followed up with an overhead strike, then another, and another then he was still. Sixteen, seventeen… movement from the kitchen.

  The door opened and the woman came through just as I reached the door. Her eyes widened in surprise as I thrust my club into her stomach. She doubled over, gasping for breath and I screwed my eyes shut as I brought the club down on the back of her head with all of my strength.

  Twenty, Twenty-one… I stopped counting. I’d killed two more people and the world spun around me. Focus on the present, on the real world. His words came back to me and I grasped at them as a drowning woman reaching for a line that would pull her to safety.

  But no one would be pulling me out of this nightmare. I’d killed two people again. I wanted to weep, to yell, to curl up in a little ball and let the darkness take me for good.

  I couldn’t though. Not yet. Too many depended on me. There was at least one other person out there in the darkness that would need to die to ensure my friend's safety. I pushed myself away from the wall where I was leaning and went into the kitchen.

  The man was still slumped in the chair, his back to me. I circled him cautiously. His eyes were shut and his breathing shallow. More fingers of his left hand had been broken and the deep stain on his shirt had spread since I’d last looked through the window.

  He was a handsome man and I chided myself for that being the first thing I noticed. Dark wavy hair and well-defined jaw. He was the kind of guy I might have gone for once, in a past life. I shook him gently and eyes of deep and incredibly clear blue stared out at me.

  “Who’re you?” he asked. His voice was roughened by pain and I focused on what they had done to him. It made it easier to justify killing them.

  “Just passing through,” I said. “How many more are there?”

  “More?”

  “The people who were hurting you?”

  “Just one,” he said. “I think.”

  “Okay, can you walk?” I asked and he nodded. “We need to get you patched up and away from here.”

  “I’m fine,” he said when he clearly wasn’t. “Don’t trouble yourself with me.”

  “No trouble,” I said with a guilty look at the dead woman lying in the doorway.

  “Hey!” a voice called from the back of the house. “You were supposed to come and… what the hell?”

  A rain soaked man crouched beside the dead woman and looked up just as I swung the club at his head. “I’m sorry,” I whispered as he collapsed atop the other body. He twitched and groaned, one arm moving to the blood seeping from his skull. I wept silently as I hit him again, and again. Until he stopped moving.

  I leant against the doorframe as I desperately willed the tears to stop. A hand touched my shoulder, gentle pressure used to turn me to face the man I had just killed for. Despite his obvious pain, he pulled me to him and held me while I cried great wracking sobs against his chest.

  For too long I stayed there, taking what comfort I could from that stranger. A man who had just seen me kill someone yet hadn’t issued one word of condemnation. I looked up through tear blurred vision and he smiled down at me.

  “If it helps, they were really unpleasant people,” he said and a laugh burst free from me. “I’m sorry you had to do that, but really, I am grateful.”

  “We should go,” I said with a gesture to his stained shirt. “You need that looking at.”

  “A flesh wound dear lady,” he said with a grin. “Nothing a few hours of not being tortured won’t help, I’m sure.”

  “Why were they doing that?”

  “Long story,” he said with a nod towards the dead bodies. “For perhaps another time.”

  “I have some friends nearby,” I said as I pulled away from his embrace.

  As much as I’d needed it, I did feel a little guilty that I’d needed to take that comfort from someone else, someone not Ryan. It was stupid, I know. But still.

  With shaking hands, I wiped at my eyes and led the way back to the van. He stumbled several times and I had to put one arm around his waist and let him rest some of his weight on me as we walked. At least it had stopped raining.

  Cass saw us coming as soon as we squeezed around the trailer and she started the van, bringing it to us. It stopped and both the women climbed out. Becky reached for the man to take his weight as Cass took one look at me and folded me into an embrace. The tears came again.

  ****

  It took an hour. An hour to get the stranger patched up and the trailer moved out of the way. We took shelter in one of the houses while some improvised bandages were applied and the few belongings those other people had, were rooted through for anything that might be useful.

  He passed out on us as he was being bandaged so we had no chance to question him. I was all too aware of how long a delay we’d had and how quickly the day seemed to be wearing on. The guys would be expecting us at any time and I only hoped we wouldn’t be too late.

  Cass offered to be a sounding board for me, but I had no desire to talk about the terrible things I’d done. To speak of the lives I’d taken when I’d promised myself I’d never do that again. It felt like something had broken inside of me and I longed to be able to take back those things, those murders, and be the person I’d been before the end of the world happened.

  “Oh, that really hurts,” the strange man said as his eyes fluttered open. He looked down at his left hand that we’d splinted as best we could and wrapped tightly in bandages.

  “It’s ok,” Becky said with a bright smile as she moved to sit beside him on the sofa. She was pretty obviously smitten with the handsome man already. I shared a look with Cass and felt my first genuine smile form.

  “Well now, look at this,” he said as he looked at each of us. “Rescued by three beautiful women. My day’s certainly become better than
it started.”

  I rolled my eyes at his obvious flirtation. Time and a place, come on. Becky seemed not to mind it though and even Cass’s lips turned upwards in a smile for him.

  “Who were they and why were they torturing you?” I asked.

  “Bad people miss, really unpleasant in fact,” he said. “I was part of a group searching the area and they ambushed us. Most of my people got away but they caught me. Seemed to think that with a bit of torture I’d tell them where I was from.”

  “Searching the area?” Cass asked with a worried frown.

  “Oh aye,” he said and held up his hands as he noticed her look of concern. “Not for any nefarious reasons now. I can assure you, we were looking for survivors and supplies. That’s all.”

  “Why survivors?”

  “To offer them a place at our sanctuary,” he said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Where would that be then?” I asked and he grinned boyishly as he shook his head.

  “Now, now. They couldn’t get it from me with torture, I’m not just going to tell you because you’re all so pretty.”

  “Okay,” I said as I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I didn’t need this, we’d spent far too much time on him as it was. “We’ll let you go your own way then. We have things to do.”

  “Hold on now,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet with a wince of pain. He wobbled as though his legs weren’t quite up to holding him upright and Becky almost leapt to her feet to support him. “You ladies look to be just the type of folk we’d be happy to have join us.”

  “I’m sure you would,” I said with a little more acid in my tone than I intended. “More women for your harem. Let me guess, you’ll need to keep us safe to help rebuild civilisation. No thanks. We’ve met your kind before.”

  “Now wait just a minute,” the stranger said. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

  “Really.”

  “Yes, really,” he insisted. “I just meant that you wee ladies were the sort who would stop to help a stranger in need, who would do what was needed and are clearly survivors.”

  “Wee ladies?” Cass asked with a faint smile.

  “Oh now, that’s just an expression,” he said. “No offence meant like.”

  “So you aren’t wanting us to be your sex slaves then?” Becky asked with a flutter of her eyelids that almost made me groan out loud.

  “Well now, if you’se are offering,” he said with a wink at her. “But no, my mum would kill me if I brought you home thinking that.”

  “You live with your mother?” Cass said with a snort of laughter at his hurt expression.

  “My mum and dad aye,” he said. “Our sanctuary is full of families and the like.”

  “That is a good indication,” Cass said in a low voice to me.

  “Maybe, but we still have things we need to do. Friends waiting for us.”

  “More ladies?” he asked with a wide grin that just oozed charm.

  “Sorry, they’re all men,” I said in a too sweet tone. I had to admit he was a pleasant distraction from what I’d had to do. “And we really do need to join them.”

  “If they’re as useful as you lovely ladies, then I’m sure they’d be welcome too,” he said. “Let me meet them and decide.”

  “What about your friends?” Cass asked.

  “Standard protocol, they’ll be at our rendezvous point for another day to see if I turn up and then they’ll head home.”

  “They won’t look for you?”

  “No,” he said. “We know the risks when we come out on these missions. We can’t risk everyone for one person.”

  “Seems harsh,” I said as doubts surfaced.

  “Necessary,” he replied. “You might not have noticed but this new worlds full of absolute nutters.”

  I smiled and nodded. I couldn’t really argue with that.

  “Our sanctuary is filled with families. Our families. We aren’t soldiers or fighters. We survive by being careful. We cross the bay in search of others so that if something like this happens… well if the captured person does say where we live, it will be damned hard for them to get to us.”

  “You live across the bay, in Scotland?” I said. “You don’t sound Scottish.”

  “Aye well, I’m not. Was up there visiting when the brown stuff hit the fan,” he sighed and looked at each of us in turn. “Look I know it sounds bad, but really. If my friends came after me what could they do? It’s not like we’re killers. No offence pet.”

  His eyes seemed to bore into mine as he said that and I flinched. He’d seen what I’d done to help him.

  “We’re not strong like you,” he said in a voice that was almost gentle and bore no recriminations. “We’ve had it fairly easy but we could use fighters like you. Things are getting worse these days.”

  “Getting worse?” I asked.

  “Aye, it’s not just the dead coming back to life, they’re faster now and the people we meet are just as vicious.”

  “Ferals,” I said and Cass nodded. “Look it sounds great and everything but we need to do the job we started. Our friends are waiting and we have to head a lot further north before we’re done.”

  “How about I come with you,” he said. “My friends will be long gone by the time I reach them. If I can reach them in my condition. Then if nothing else, when you get across the bay, you can have a place to stay for a little while before you continue north.”

  I looked at each of my friends. Becky smiled and nodded while Cass shrugged. I sighed, it wouldn’t hurt to take him with us and somewhere we could spend a night across the bay would be useful.

  “Fine, I’m Lily,” I said as I held out my hand. “This is Cass and Becky.”

  “Believe me, the pleasure is all mine,” he said as he shook my hand vigorously. “Name’s Gabriel but my friends call me Gabe.”

  Chapter 23 - Ryan

  Screams sounded as the Ferals struck and another three people died in quick succession. The zombies took a moment to tear some of the flesh from their kills and devour it in quick bites. I nodded for Pat to follow me and descended the stairs as silently as I could.

  More voices were raised beyond the plastic strips and blurred colour could be seen as people milled about. The man and woman we’d killed remained where they were, hidden amongst the stacks of pallets, unperturbed by the noise.

  A moan came from the floppy hair man they’d killed and I caught sight of his body twitching before I ducked behind a stack of pallets. I led the way towards the front of the warehouse and the plastic covered entranceway.

  Pat grabbed my arm and made a few gestures that I assumed were supposed to mean something but I had no idea what. I just shrugged and turned back. He grabbed me again and leant in close to whisper.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “When they come in to fight the Ferals,” I replied in the same whisper. “We’ll slip through into the factory.”

  I shrugged off his hand and carried on, weaving through the stacks and piled goods that filled the warehouse. The people in the factory were gathering numbers, weapons and their courage before attacking while the Ferals were clearly waiting for their own numbers to increase.

  We hid just behind a stack of bales and waited, weapons to hand. The sound of rain hitting the roof had faded and all I could hear were the moans of the undead as the two newest ones rose to join the others.

  That made five. Three Shamblers and two Ferals against maybe a dozen armed people. It wouldn’t be a long fight but it would be a distraction at least. I just wondered what they were waiting for. Then I realised and I smiled.

  They came through the back door at the same time as they burst through those plastic strips that separated the warehouse from the factory. Caught in between them, the zombies fought and no doubt died bloodily. We didn’t hang around to see.

  As soon as the battle was joined we slipped around the corner, through th
e plastic, and into the factory proper. No one was watching or waiting, so I offered thanks to a deity I didn’t believe in and headed for the offices as cries sounded from the warehouse.

  I had no idea what the large machines did in their previous incarnation but now, they were used for hanging washing and as somewhere to stack things. I bypassed them all and went through the door into the offices.

  It only took a moment to realise that there was a whole bunch of offices connected with a series of corridors. The first one was, I guessed, a communal area.

  Cushions and reams of fabric had been piled up for people to lean against. Books and magazines lay scattered about and a pack of playing cards had been laid out on a desk with four chairs around it.

  We passed through into the corridor and moved from office to office. Most had been converted into personal spaces while one that had a window that led outside held a large barbeque grill with a hood over it and a pipe that had been fed through the open window.

  The charcoal glowed a deep red and bloody strips of meat had been set to one side ready to cook. From the look of disgust on Pats face, he realised what type of meat it was just as I had.

  When I reached for the door to the next office, it was locked and I could hear movement within. I guessed it to be where they were keeping the prisoners that they were going to eat next. I glanced at Pat and tilted my head towards the door. He nodded and I moved aside.

  He hit the door with his shoulder and all of his strength. It burst open easily, the fairly basic lock not being designed for much more than maintaining privacy. Pat fell into the room and I followed only to stop in the doorway.

  Pat was on hands and knees, eyes wide with horror as he stared at the three huddled forms. I couldn’t blame him.

  All three of them were naked and covered in bruises. The woman held her two children close to her body as best she could as she cowered away from us. The youngest child, a boy, had bloody bandages on his shoulders where his arms should have been.

  His sister, missing legs, stared at us with eyes that could no longer see. She opened her mouth but no words came out, just sounds reminiscent of those made by an animal in pain. The mother, I guessed to be this Mary the woman I killed had mentioned, looked at me with eyes full of despair. She had neither hands nor feet and the smell of rot was thick in the air.