The Fall Series (Book 3): The Fence Walker

by Cross, Stephen

  “What about Eddy?” said Adam.

  “Don’t worry about Eddy.”

  Adam shook his head, but something else was taking over his body. Fear gripped his very spine. Pulled his muscles in strange spasms. He fought to control his bladder and bowels.

  “I am going to find your Dad, Adam, and we’re going to have it out. If you want to come with me, then walk. Otherwise, I will kill you now.”

  Adam stared at the barrel of the gun. At Eddy lying on the ground, crying, calling for mummy again. He turned over and started to crawl towards Adam.

  Dalby walked passed the baby, ignoring him.

  “Walk,” said Dalby, simply, pointing down the hill.

  Adam turned and walked. He started to cry.

  His feet stumbled down the hill, heavy on the end of his legs, like little lead weights. Every part of him wanting to turn and run back to get Eddy. The sound of his crying fading in the wind as they made their way further down the hill. The fire and burning and screaming and gunshots of Tulloch Bay coming closer.

  Dalby’s gun would prod him in the back if he stalled. As they got closer, Adam noted the zeds around them. Coming from all directions, as if on treadmills that all lead to the holiday park, a relentless and unending drive of the dead.

  Dalby scooped Adam up. This is when Adam should have fought, he realized. He should be kicking and screaming and punching. He could put his fingers in Dalby’s eyes. He could squeeze his throat or hit his Adam's apple really hard. He could have done all these things, but he didn’t. Instead, he stared up the hill, to where Eddy was.

  “Your Dad is in here somewhere, you know that don’t you?” said Dalby.

  “You won’t find him,” said Adam quietly.

  “I don’t have to. He’ll find us.” Dalby was jogging now. They were running through the gates, keeping their distance from the zeds. Gunfire to the left, towards the car park and the burning chalets. Adam glimpsed some soldiers shooting; at what he couldn’t tell. He thought - hoped - it was zeds, but that last person to fall hadn’t seemed like a zed…

  “Only one way out now,” said Dalby. He was running now, ignoring the stares, ignoring the people calling his name. A chalet beside them suddenly burst into flames, a wumph and a bang and red and yellow flames encased the wooden building, pumping darkness into the sky.

  Over Dalby’s shoulder, Adam watched as a group of soldiers arrived at the entrance to the base. They were shooting indiscriminately. Zeds fell, people fell. They were stopping people from leaving. A man with a young girl, waving his arms frantically fell, just like that. The young girl did the same. Adam didn’t see any blood, heard no shot, but he knew they were gone, they were dead. Just like that.

  He closed his eyes, letting the tears flow. He didn’t want to do this anymore. He didn’t want to live anymore, he just wanted to hide somewhere. He didn’t know where, just somewhere black and quiet and warm, curl up in a little ball like his cat used to do when it was scared, and it would hide under the bed for hours. That’s what Adam wanted to do. He wanted his bed back, he wanted his little house back, with his Mum and Dad, like when he was young. He wanted to be tucked in and told he was loved. He didn’t want this life anymore.

  He felt his body being flung down onto something hard, cold and wet. He opened his eyes. They were in a small wooden motorboat. Dalby was staring hard back down the jetty, his eyes thin and focused.

  “Time to go, young man,” said Dalby, throwing the rope of the boat onto the jetty. He tugged at the engine, and it throbbed into life. He pushed the rotor into the water, spraying the boat. They shunted forward and cut into the water. The jetty shrank as they pulled into the harbor, the hum of the engine almost comforting. Adam realized he didn’t really care what was going to happen to him. He didn’t know if it mattered if he found his Dad, whether his Dad would even be able to help anymore. Maybe he was gone, perhaps he had given up. Maybe he was dead, all this time. The world was a lie. Everything was a lie.

  They reached the walls of the harbor, and the boat bounced up and down on the gentle waves of the open sea. A group of people, no larger than mice from this distance, ran onto the jetty. Adam stared at them until they disappeared from view as Dalby took the boat around the corner of the harbor wall. Dalby had been staring at them too. Adam wanted to tell them not to bother. There was nothing anywhere anymore.

  Chapter 28

  Allen, Jack, Grace, and Crowe jumped into the small motorboat. It was red, the paint peeling from years of neglect, its wooden hull pitted with rivets and dips. Writing on the engine said 'Yamaha.' Jack pulled at the starter and the motor hummed into life.

  “Ready?” said Jack.

  Allen and Crowe nodded, securing themselves in the rickety vessel.

  Jack took one last look at this daughter standing on the side of the harbor in-between Andy and Harriet. He smiled at her, she didn’t smile back, but stared at him, her eyes hollow.

  He placed the roaring turbine of the engine into the water and steadied himself against the jolt as the boat dipped back and the rotors bit into the water, overcoming the inertia to drive them forward.

  “Where the fuck is Dalby going?” said Crowe.

  “He’s drawing us in,” said Allen, poised at the prow of the boat, staring into the grey of the open sea that Dalby and Adam had disappeared into a few minutes ago.

  As they cleared the jetty, Jack turned the handle on the engine. The throb increased in pitch, and the boat bounced harder against the water as it picked up speed.

  They cleared the harbor walls, and Jack struggled to keep the boat under control as the waves of the open sea buffeted the speeding vessel.

  “Steady,” shouted Allen. Jack decreased the throttle a little.

  Dalby’s boat was a few hundred yards ahead of them. Two figures, their shocking blonde hair like beacons in the grey monotony of the sea.

  “They’re heading for the island,” said Allen, pointing to the small rise of rock and earth about half a mile away.

  No one spoke as they bounced across the waves, the loud thumps reverberating through the ship’s old hull, Jack grimacing with each thud, imaging the timbers of the boat ready to spring apart and throw them all to the sea.

  A cold and wet hand rested on his. It was Grace. She wasn’t looking at him but staring ahead to the island and Dalby’s boat. Still, she squeezed his hand.

  Minutes passed, it seemed like hours. Jack almost relaxed into the relative peace of the pursuit. Nothing to do but keep going in one direction. Keep going straight, one wave after another, just keep going.

  Dalby’s boat landed on a beach on the island.

  Allen turned to Crowe. “Leave this to me.” He turned to the others. “You hear that? Leave this to me.”

  Jack, for his part, nodded. This was Allen’s battle.

  He slowed the boat as they approached the island. The beach was a small inlet, about fifty yards across. The cliffs rose on each side, cutting off the small cove from the rest of the island; there was no way on or off except by boat. Dalby stood in the middle of the sand. He had one arm around Adam’s neck. His other hand held a gun and was pointing it at Adam’s head. Dalby’s hair fluttered in the wind like an exotic bird stretching its wings.

  The boat thumped as its hull scraped across the sand bottom as they reached the shallows. Jack eased off the engine, and it died to a gentle thump. He let it run.

  The four of them jumped out of the boat and waded through the lapping waves. Dalby and Adam stood beyond a thick band of shingle protecting them from the reaching foam.

  Dalby didn’t move.

  “Dad!” shouted Adam, “Dad!” The young boy was smiling, even with a gun pointing to his head. He repeated the word over and over, his face going red, his voice breaking, his eyes wide open in wonder, and despair.

  “I’m here, son,” said Allen, his voice low, and, breaking? It was unnerving, for a moment, to see a chink in the big Sergeant’s heart. But also, beautiful, thought Jack.


  Crowe, Jack, and Grace pulled the boat up the beach as far as they could so it wouldn’t be dragged back out to sea.

  “Dad, I knew you’d come!” shouted Adam.

  “Shut up,” shouted Dalby, pulling Adam closer, painfully pushing the gun barrel into Adam’s temple. The boy let out a cry.

  The cry struck through Allen’s very being, to the core. Like a sharp white light of pain in his spine. A needle put down the top of his neck, primed to touch every nerve in his body. Hard, cold, electric, like ice.

  Seeing his son, so close, after so long apart, had been a strange and euphoric experience. As he stepped off the boat, the world had slowed down. His boy was taller. His face was harder; he had lost the gentle innocence that use to warm his eyes. Now cold, now determined. A little like his own. His hair was still blonde, but even that looked harder, somehow. More angular, sharper? Not the soft cloud of youthful blossom that Allen remembered.

  It had to be this way, how would he have survived otherwise? Innocence was dead.

  And then the cry. Brought back into the real world with a jolt, like a parachute landing. Floating and then boom, on the ground. Gunfire all around, explosions. The screaming of men with limbs blown off. The dirt and shrapnel in the air. The shrill cry of rockets. The thump of mortar fire.

  His body spasmed; come on, run, come on, get him. Run and fight, this is what you do. Muscles tense and hard, primed through years of battle and training; cold mornings in the rain, hot days in the middle eastern sun; hours behind the sight of the gun. Fingers at home pulling triggers. Death, an easy attainment.

  The gun barrel on his son’s head.

  Allen had to fight the urge to attack. He had to pull his body in, relax his muscles, stop himself from screaming into action like a fighter jet. All rage and no finesse, like he always did.

  “What are you waiting for, Allen?” shouted the man with the gun. Dalby. “Why aren’t you saving your son?”

  Allen took a deep breath. The sound of the waves crashing on the pebbles of the beach. The wind blowing against his skin; but despite the wind, something in his body kept him warm. Something that he didn’t know, or allow, too often, something he hadn’t known for many years. Fear. Warm and striking fear. Boiling his body, boiling his blood.

  And anger.

  It took every part of Allen’s strength to stop himself from running at Dalby, the madman with the gun pointing at his son’s head - his beautiful son.

  “You see, Adam, young man, I told you your Dad was dead. Look at him. Too scared to move, to save you.”

  Allen took one step forward. That was all, that was all he would allow himself. It was enough to make Dalby freeze for a second before he pulled Adam closer again.

  “Hey Adam, how you doing?” said Allen. Trying to keep his voice steady. Imagine you’re speaking to your men. Just keep them calm. Keep everything calm.

  “I’m good, Dad,” said Adam, his voice quiet in the wind, lost and swirling around the small bay, mixed with the calls of the seagulls.

  “I know you are. I’ve missed you,” said Allen. His voice was stronger now. Here he was, talking to his son. That’s all he was doing.

  “I’ve missed you too-” then Adam let out another cry of pain. Dalby was pushing the gun barrel into Adam’s head. Adam was trying to move his head away from the barrel. Dalby grimaced, his brows bent to meet each other, his teeth bared, his face red. Like a weightlifter, thought Allen. Dalby looked like he had three hundred pounds on his back.

  “Shut the fuck up, all of you!” said Dalby. His eyes darted from Allen to the others, standing behind Allen.

  “What do you want?” said Crowe. “Just let the boy go. We can sort this out.”

  Someone shushed Crowe.

  Dalby was shaking, his eyes wide open. Allen had seen those eyes before. In Kandahar. A man with wild eyes and twenty pounds of Semtex strapped to his torso. Ready to go, to leave it all behind. Didn’t give a fuck anymore, because they had nothing left to give. Empty vessels that through circumstance or bad choices had emptied their whole beings of any compassion, love, mercy… and hope. Now just shells.

  What do I do, said a voice in Allen’s head. He was stuck. He didn’t know what to do. The man held a gun at his son’s head, the son he had battled to find and to save, and here he was, only twenty yards away, and unable to do a thing. All for naught. All a waste. Everything wasted.

  Adam had seen it. His lip was quivering. He was going to cry. He was trying his best not to, still his son, still trying to hold it in. But he was losing it, just like his Dad.

  “You lost, Allen,” said Dalby, starting to laugh. “You lost, and everyone can see it. Your little band of followers, your little army. You lost.” He laughed. A sound that cut above the elements, above the sea, above the seagulls.

  And Dalby was right. Allen had lost. Everything.

  Crowe’s fists were curled, the nails pushing into his skin. He knew when he opened them there would be four little marks of blood on each palm. Come on, Allen, do something. That’s your son for fuck’s sake, do something, anything. That mad fucker is going to kill your son.

  A sound behind Crowe caught his attention. Hard as it was to drag his eyes off Dalby and Adam, he turned. It must have been the sound of the waves that had disguised them. No one had heard. Not Jack, standing a few feet in front of him, not Grace standing next to Jack.

  No-one looking behind, no one covering the six. It’s basic field training. Always someone watches your six. When you have no one watching your six, then this is the sort of shit that happens. Fuckers creep up from behind. And in the case of the dead, it can be hundreds of the fuckers, without any warning. They don’t need regular approach patterns. They don’t need paths because plowing through bushes and broken piles of concrete and nettles and barbed wire don’t harm them. They don’t need gentle walks down cliffs because they can just tumble off the top and don’t give a fuck about breaking their legs; they’ll just pull themselves along the floor until their hands are raw to the bone. And in this case, they don’t give a fuck about the sea. They will walk along its bottom, the salt water rotting their skin so that when they do finally emerge, they are covered in a thick half-flesh slime that drips from their skin like they are melting.

  The sound of the boats. He should have guessed, they should have guessed. It had happened before - that assault from the sea. Why couldn’t it happen again? Why shouldn’t it happen again? And here they were.

  A quick calculation, must be at least a hundred. Walking out of the sea like golems, dead to everything except their sense of something warm and alive on the beach. A few seconds was all Crowe had to make his decision on what to do next. They were mainly clustered around this side of the beach. Where the boats were. So now they couldn’t escape. The beach was surrounded by cliffs, there was no way up. The top end of the beach was clear, but Dalby stood in their way; and what would they do then anyway, swim to the mainland?

  Truly fucked.

  Allen was oblivious. Jack and Grace were oblivious. Dalby was oblivious, encased in his own separate world of hate and desire to fuck everything up. Adam, however… His eyes were wide open, his skin pale with fear. He was staring past his Dad, past Crowe, to the sea and the arriving motherfuckers. But he was too scared to do anything, to move even.

  So Crowe did what he always did when things were fucked and beyond hope. He resorted to good old violence. Imagined himself some sort of crazy bastard tiger, surrounded on all sides by dickheads wanting to kill him.

  “Fuck you, Dalby!” The shout didn’t seem to come from him. Nothing came from him when he was in this place. Like a berserker. Those old warriors that went crazy on drugs and lack of sleep and destroyed everything in their path.

  He was running towards Dalby. His hands were full of pebbles he must have scooped up in the past few milliseconds. He was vaguely aware of Grace and Jack and Allen as he ran past them.

  He threw a stone as he ran. He might hit Adam, but that didn’t matter
, it wouldn’t kill him. Distraction was the aim. And he got it. Dalby raised the hand containing the gun away from Adam’s head and pointed it at Crowe. It certainly wasn’t the first time someone had pointed a gun a Crowe, but there was something about this time. Something black and heavy.

  You never hear the bullet that hits you.

  Close enough to see the white of Dalby’s eyes. “You motherfucker,” he shouted. Adam was free and running past Crowe, their eyes met for a second, and all he saw was relief, and something that he immediately identified as love. It as something he had never seen before. The peace, the warmth in those eyes.

  Crowe smiled.

  A striking pain in his chest, like being hit by a train. A punch from a metal fist that routed his ribcage. He was on the ground, spluttering, couldn’t breathe, his chest a gurgling mess. Warm liquid squirting into the air and landing on his face. He stared up at the sky, it was blue - a deep, warm blue. He closed his eyes, the picture of Adam running free playing over in his mind. He never opened his eyes again. Who cares; it’s a shit world anyway.

  There was a shot, and somewhere in the corner of Allen’s vision, he saw Crowe’s figure fall to the ground. Allen knelt down to his knees, he held out his arms. He didn’t know what Dalby was doing, or when the next shot would come, but he hoped it was long enough that he could at least hold Adam again.

  The young boy charged across the shingles; it seemed to take forever. And then, Allen had his arms around him. His little boy, bigger than before, his body more robust, his grip tighter. Allen squeezed his arms tight around Adam’s torso. His face was up fast against his son’s. They were both speaking, but Allen had no idea what he was saying. Then he was crying. He was crying for everything. For the year and a half since the Fall, since the existence of his son had been nothing but hope and faith. And now here he was, in his arms, all his prayers answered.

  “I knew you’d find me,” said Adam.

  “I knew I would too,” said Allen through his tears.

  He jumped. Some heavy thumps echoed around the small bay, shaking him from his reverie. The sound of crossbow bolts. He looked up, Grace was shooting at Dalby as he ran for his boat, moored at the top end of the bay.