The Fall Series (Book 3): The Fence Walker

by Cross, Stephen

  Orange, red, yellow. Wrapped around the Fence like a ribbon. A festival.

  “Sir! Behind us!”

  Chris turned. Some zeds were approaching from the sand dunes. “Come on men,” said Chris. Leading them around the Fence, towards the entrance to Unity, about half a mile away.

  The trees nearest the Fence had caught already. They waved like strange cartoon characters with flaming hair, spitting smoke and black into the early grey morning light.

  “Shit,” said Grace. “This is going to tear right through the woods.”

  “Straight to the Chalets. They’ll go up like matchboxes,” said Jack. “Come on!”

  Ahead of them, trees appeared doused in a yellow and red liquid, like one of those lava lamps he used to have when he was a student. It didn’t seem real. Hellish. Unworldly. Deadly. And fast. The fire leaped with freedom and apparent joy from one tree to the next. Like a deadly game of tag. You’re next. Spread the word, my brother.

  Jack and Grace ran back through the woods, the sweet fresh smell of burning pine smoke following them. A few minutes later and they were back at the chalet. The sun was making its slow crawl above the horizon, and long shadows trailed them as they crossed the road to the chalet. Jack burst in.

  “Wake up, everyone get up!” he shouted as he ran through to the bedroom. Annie was awake, her wide eyes frightened.

  “What’s happening, Daddy?”

  “We have to go. Don’t worry, it’s ok.” He picked her up in his arms and ran to the lounge where Grace was corralling the rest of the group, quickly filling them in on the approaching terror.

  They were all out of the chalet in under a minute. Ready-to-go bags and weapons all they had. In spite of the urgency, everyone had to stop for a moment and look.

  The fire was over halfway through the woods. The early grey sky painted with dark smoke and a magical orange and red glow. The heat shimmered in the air around them. The crackle and rumble of the fire sounded like a falling mountain.

  “Oh my,” said Harriet, staring blankly at the spectacle.

  Then, from the woods, merged a magical creature. Amber and orange, glowing like a red Christmas sprite. Flapping its arms like a penguin.

  And moaning.

  “Where to?” said Andy.

  Jack stared at the approaching zombie, all a-flame. Others moved behind it.

  “To the entrance,” said Jack.

  “What about the others?” said Dean.

  Jack, picking up Annie and getting ready to run, paused. Around them in the early morning light, stood all the chalets, long shadows growing from them, stretching across the road. Silent, quiet, unknowing of the impending doom.

  Dean was right.

  “Fire your guns, make some noise. Andy, Harriet, you don't have guns - knock on the doors. But keep moving, don’t let the zeds catch up with us.”

  Andy and Harriet nodded and darted off to the nearest chalets. Grace, Jack, and Dean raised their guns and fired into the air. They all shouted as they made their way through the holiday camp.

  “Fire! Zeds! Fire!”

  They walked quickly. Jack glanced behind to ensure the zeds weren’t getting too close. It was a delicate balancing act. Lights in the chalets turned on. People appeared at the windows, looked out for a second, then disappeared. A few doors opened, and half dressed people with bags ran out. Bug-out bags, everyone had one now.

  A group of figures ran out into the road ahead of them. Jack shouted at them, “Fire!” But they paid no attention. They had guns. They raised them. Jack stared dumbly at the weapons.

  The burst of machine gun fire. Jack jumped, he nearly dropped Annie. He waited for the pain, for Annie to fall from his arms.

  Instead, the men fell. The sound of gunfire had come from behind him. He turned. Dean lowered his gun. “Gotta be quicker than that, Jack.”

  Jack nodded at Dean.

  They continued.

  Allen held up his hand, and Crowe stopped. “You hear that?”

  “Gunfire.”

  They were in a deep dip in the sand dunes, in-between two medium sized hills. Allen ran up the nearest one and looked back over the dunes towards the holiday camp. Thick black smoke rose from the woods. A deep orange glow hummed in the middle of the trees.

  “You see this?”

  Crowe, now standing beside him, nodded. “Dalby?”

  “I guess so.”

  The gunfire had come from the direction of the chalets. Any exit through the woods and the west side of the holiday camp was now blocked off.

  “What now? We keep looking?” said Crowe.

  Allen thought through the options. His son was here, somewhere, wasn’t he? Could he feel it? He told himself he could, but maybe that was all a load of bollocks. You couldn’t feel things like that, not really. He didn’t know where Adam was.

  He didn’t know what to do. He realized he was paralyzed with indecision and fear. So close, how could he stop now?

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t know what to do, Crowe. I’m too close to make an objective decision.”

  Crowe’s expression didn’t change. He merely nodded and said, “We have to assume the holiday park is compromised, sir. We need to leave. I suggest we go to the entrance.”

  “You don’t need to suggest, Crowe. I’m ceding command to you.”

  “Whatever. Come on,” said Crowe, leading the run down the hill and back towards the chalet.

  Allen paused. The chalet nearest to the woods was alight. Thick, acrid smoke tumbled into the sky. This whole place was going to go up like bonfire night.

  He ran after Crowe.

  When Chris and his small troop reached the entrance to the park, the early morning light was faltering against thick black smoke. The rumble of the fire filled the air, the smell of burning tinged Chris’s nostrils.

  The guards at the entrance ran towards Chris. Dumb fucks. They weren’t meant to leave their post.

  “Sir, there’s a fire!”

  “Yes, there is. Keep to your fucking posts. No one leaves.”

  “Sir?”

  “No one leaves the fucking camp! Shoot anyone who tries!” shouted Chris, not sure where the words were coming from. They just flowed from him, from deep inside. Anger and frustration becoming his words and deeds. He was going to burn it all.

  The petrol reserves were in a pair of large tankers Dalby had found a few months ago. They had been kept topped up with regular finds from the Runners. They sat in the car park next to the line of Runner’s trucks. Next to that was the reception, the sports hall, the old gym. All ringed by chalets; wood and nothing much else. Dry tinder, ready to burst into flame.

  “Get those tanks burning!” shouted Chris.

  His Nan was trying to say something, but he couldn’t hear her. Her voice was muffled like it was behind a bag of cotton wool. He didn’t want to listen. He knew what she was going to say.

  The men took aim and fired at the first tanker.

  The clink clank of bullets against metal. The dull whump as they penetrated the shell of the tankers. There was a pause in everything; in sounds, in motion, in light. The air around him sucked in a vacuum towards the tanker.

  The explosion knocked him off his feet, and then the world started again, except now it was a hell of fire and light and sound. His ears hurt, a shrill ringing buzzed in his brain. Seconds later and another sound as the second tanker went up. Chris was still on the ground, he didn’t want to get up. To the left one of his men was on the ground, yelling and screaming, a piece of metal sticking through his neck. He gurgled and then stopped.

  Another man nearby was covered in fire, like a yellow vapor clinging to his gravity of life. He rolled uselessly along the floor. He screamed.

  Chris got to his feet. More explosions as the Runner’s trucks took light. Whump, whump, whump. The reception and the sports hall was on fire. A chalet nearby was already lit. A man ran from it, in his boxer shorts, a young boy clinging to him, crying and shouting.

>   What have you done Chris? Oh my, what have you done?

  Jack led the run to the entrance. The flames followed them, as did the dead. Two horsemen, each equally terrible, hot on their heels, an apocalypse of black smoke, raging fires, burning zeds. As well as those behind them, zeds poured from the side alleys, from the dunes; Jack suspected the Fence had given away and the pyrotechnics of the burning camp was sending out a beacon to all nearby dead.

  Confused and terrified people emerged from their chalets, some just out in time, some already on fire, some into crowds of zeds.

  A firefight down one of the side avenues - a group of Dalby’s soldiers against a large group of zeds. Their shots went wild, no doubt the confusion shaking their already loose discipline. A woman and a man emerged from a chalet. The man was immediately shot by one of the soldiers. The woman screamed and charged straight into a group of zeds.

  Jack pulled his daughter close into his chest. “Close your eyes darling, we’ll be out of here soon.” Jack nearly tripped but managed somehow to regain his footing. His daughter let out a small cry. The sky ahead was black; a column of smoke as thick as a skyscraper climbed high, tumbling and turning through a million evolutions.

  A series of smaller explosions erupted. The reception, the sports hall, the car park.

  “Come on!” A heavy hand hit him on the back. It was Grace. “We have to move.”

  Jack realized he had stopped still.

  “Where now?” said Grace as he restarted his run.

  “The docks,” shouted Andy. “We can get a boat. This place is lost. We have to get out to sea.”

  “What about the Sergeant?” said Harriet as Jack took them off the main road, heading towards the small jetty in the northeast corner of the holiday park.

  “He’ll be able to look after himself,” said Jack, hoping he was right, and not just absolving himself of responsibility.

  Annie screamed. Jack swerved as a zombie lurched from a nearby hidden pathway.

  “How far is this jetty?” said Grace.

  “Two minutes away,” said Jack, his eyes now peeled to the movement around him. Fires bursting, smoke firing. They were on a thinner path, and they suddenly seemed close to everything. Flaming zeds spotted a few yards away, down side roads, behind them. People walking, stunned and half awake, unable to comprehend what was happening to their world; again. Or were they zombies? Jack couldn’t tell anymore.

  Nor could he tell which scream was an exploding gas canister, which was a dying zed, which was a burning person, which was a collapsing chalet.

  Dean opened fire down a side path. A soldier fell to the ground.

  “Let’s get moving,” said Jack. Everything was going to shit.

  Chris and his men held back from the entrance, on the outside of the camp. Before them, the entrance gate, two tall pillars of faux marble, framed the flames of the park like a macabre renaissance painting of hell. Smoke belched like a spluttering demonic engine.

  Behind him the fields were dotted with tiny moving figures, each becoming that little bit bigger by the second. Their lurching and wobbling movement revealing their lives to be of the dead kind. They loved sound and light, didn’t they? Dumb as fuck.

  A group of three people ran from the gate. Two men and one woman. That was all Chris saw of them before one of his men raised his machine gun and opened fire. The hapless trio fell to the ground. How old had they been? Did Chris know them?

  You need to stop this, Chris.

  Stop what? What the fuck was even happening? More machine-gun fire. A teenage boy climbing the Fence fell down, his back splattered with red. Who’d given the order to shot them all? Was it him? Had he told them to fire? What the fuck had he said? He couldn’t fucking remember. His mind was like one of them Alzheimer fucks. All empty and felt like cheese.

  Chris, they’re all innocent, this isn’t you, you’re not a bad lad, not a real baddun.

  What the fuck did Nan know? Another explosion from Unity. A new column of turgid black smoke joined the many gloomy chimney stacks towering into the sky. Screams raged from within the grounds.

  More gunfire, another family fell on their way to freedom.

  Chris looked at his soldiers. Their eyes wide open, their skin pale. Tense, nervous hands gripping their weapons like they were life vests. Staccato bursts of gunfire extinguishing any attempt to leave Unity

  Stop Firing.

  “Stop firing,” he said quietly. No one listened to him. He tried again, but couldn’t raise his voice above a whisper.

  Where was Dalby? Where the fuck was Dalby? What were Chris’ orders, what the fuck should he be doing? It wasn’t his fault. Dalby should be here.

  “Chris! Chris!”

  Chris looked up and saw three figures he recognized, running from the flaming world. Amy. Terry. And the little boy, Nate. Chris stared at Nate as the terrified ten-year-old, his face stained with black ash and tears, ran next to his dad.

  The world slowed, almost to a stop and memories flooded Chris’s mind. Like an opened spigot, something left his mind and let it all flow in. The pain, the fear. The terrible wringing of his heart; all traced to one moment, when his Nan had died. That day of the Fall, the very beginning. He hadn’t been able to save her.

  You tried son, you really tried.

  She had been lying on the floor, the car park of their tower block. Flames around them as cars erupted. Like now, always the same, flames. He and Terry had got themselves a vehicle, they were going to get everyone out and get the fuck to Wales.

  It was a good plan Chris, I knew you’d think of something smart.

  It was her hip. She couldn’t move, her hip was gone. She lay on the floor, like some cripple. Nan. Me Nan. Another memory hit him, this one like a tanker. So hard and beautiful and painful. Sitting on the couch in Nan’s fourteenth floor flat, watching some cartoon. Some cheesy fucking film, all cuddled up with her. He must have only been ten. Nestled in her arm, all warm and safe and loved. Loved, that was it. She was the only one who’d ever loved him. And she was gone because he was so fucking stupid.

  I told you to save the boy, Chris. It’s better you saved him, you know it. It’s what I wanted you to do.

  Laying in the floor, next to a burnt out Merc, her hip all mangled, the zombie only a few feet away. And there, in the other direction, was Nate. Terry’s son. That little boy, also on the floor, unable to move, his leg done in. Zombies on him too.

  Remember Chris. I told you to save the boy. And you did. It made me proud, Chris. I’m so proud of you, still proud of you. You’re a good man.

  The world was back. Like the cinema screen had been turned on, full surround sound and all that bollocks.

  Chris looked to his right, A soldier had raised his gun, aiming at Terry, Amy, and Nate. The boy he had saved, the boy who his Nan had sacrificed herself for.

  Chris raised his gun and shot the soldier down. He quickly turned his gun to the other soldiers. Open mouthed, stunned, they stared at him

  “Cease fucking fire!”

  Chris held his breath, ready for the mutiny of shots, but they didn’t come. Instead, the men lowered their guns, still staring at Chris, every now and again a glance at the dead soldier.

  “You,” said Chris pointing to a group of soldiers, “Cover our backs, make sure them zeds from the field don’t get on us. You lot,” pointing to another group, “get in there and lay down covering fire for anyone escaping. Make sure they have a clear run, no fucking zeds. You got that?”

  The soldiers nodded and ran to take up their positions.

  Terry was standing still, Nate holding his hand. “Cheers, Chris.”

  Chris nodded. “Yeah, don’t worry about it, nobhead. Get yourselves out of here. Get Nate out of here.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ve got stuff to sort out, haven’t I?”

  Terry shook Chris’ Hand. Amy hugged him. Chris locked eyes with Nate and winked. “You take care of your dad.”

  “We’ll
find you again,” said Terry.

  “Sure you will. Now fucking scarper,” said Chris, eyeing the group of zeds emerging from the fire behind them.

  He didn’t watch as Terry, Amy, and Nate ran into the Wilds again.

  When Allen and Crowe reached the chalet, it was moments away from being on fire. A nearby tree, it’s fiery branches waving in the wind shuddered under a sudden blast of wind, and the lowest branches lurched, dripping a weight of burning wood and sparks onto the chalet’s roof. The fire took hold.

  The door to the chalet hung open. There was no-one to be seen.

  “Wait here,” said Allen.

  He ran into the chalet. The fire was already growing, the ceiling glowing a deep red. Smoke pumped into the room. No one was there. He ran back to Crowe.

  “They’ve gone,” said Allen.

  “Course they have. What now?”

  “I told you, you make the decisions.”

  All he wanted to do was find his son. That would get them both killed, and then he wouldn’t be any use to anyone. He had to trust that Adam could look after himself. It’s what he had taught him to do, wasn’t it?

  “You know we can’t look for Adam, right?” said Crowe.

  Allen nodded.

  “He could be anywhere, we don’t have time to-” Crowe raised his gun and let off a volley of shots.

  Allen span around to look behind him. Three zeds on the ground, one of the still twitching. More were walking from the flames.

  “Fuck’s sake Crowe, let’s just get out of here.”

  Crowe gave Allen a wry smile. “Come on then.”

  The two men ran back the way they had come, towards the sand dunes and away from the approaching zeds.

  As they neared the Fence at the edge of the park, they climbed a last high ridge of sand dunes. It afforded them a full view of the holiday park. It looked like the end of the world.

  Half of the chalets, all the ones near the road and the woods were aflame. Reds and yellows and oranges peered out from in between belching pillows of black smoke, so dark that the morning was stalled. Allen looked at his watch. Seven am, it should be full light by now, but they were still shrouded in the half-blue of early dawn. The sky was dashed with smoke, thick particulates visible as they floated on the rising heat waves.