The Words of Their Roaring

by Matthew Smith

  "Right at the end, in a little square offset from the main street."

  "Shit." He looked anxiously again through the binoculars.

  Gabe tried to stop the smile that creased his lips, but nothing could prevent it. He turned his head away so the kid wouldn't catch sight of it. "I think we can take 'em. Four-man team shouldn't have any trouble."

  "What about the way back? We're gonna be weighed down—"

  "I'll keep you covered, don't worry," Gabe said, admonishing himself for the patronising tone that had snuck in. He glanced at the man and woman silently crouched against one of the car park's concrete pillars behind them. "Ali, Davis - there's no other way round, so we'll be going straight through. Stay sharp. Standard routine; pick your targets and don't panic, okay?"

  "Can't we use the motor?" the man - Davis - asked.

  "Road's fucked," Hewitt interjected.

  "What he said," Gabe continued. "It's blocked with debris, and we can't risk cracking an axle. We'll drive up as far as we can go, then we'll have to be quick on our toes. Ali, you'll have to stay with the vehicle. Keep the engine running; let us know if the situation develops. I don't want to come out of there and find someone's stolen our ride."

  The woman nodded. "You think there's others like us in the area?"

  "Not in the immediate vicinity - deadheads are too concentrated - but our gunshots are gonna be heard by pockets of survivors, no question of that. Anything pops up that ain't maggoty, you give us a squawk."

  Davis clicked the safety off on his snubnose. "This had better be worth it."

  "Michaelson's info hasn't let us down yet," Gabe said, swinging his rifle onto his shoulder as he stood. "Come on, let's hop to it."

  They scampered through the heavy silence of the abandoned car park, their feet tapping quietly against the cold grey ground. Lights still burned in fluorescent tubes positioned on the ceiling, powered by a forgotten generator left rumbling untended in the bowels of the building, giving the vast open space surrounding them a stark, flat glare. A few vehicles were dotted around this level, some of them with their doors hanging wide as if the occupants had fled in a great hurry. Rancid bags of food bulged from the open hatchback of a nearby Fiat, a black cloud of flies rising from it as they passed, settling in their wake. Tyre marks and oil splatters streaked the floor, and something darker and textured was sprayed up against a ticket machine. A fading crimson handprint neatly filled one of the reinforced glass panels of a door that led to the stairwell, the wood beneath it splintered as if repeatedly kicked.

  Gabe led the others through the concrete expanse, gluing themselves to the walls where they could, avoiding the impenetrable shadows of the stairs or the lift shaft till they came in sight of his armoured Escort. He tossed the keys to Ali and motioned for her to start it up, then scanned the pools of fluorescent light diminishing into the distance. The emptiness was unnerving. If he concentrated, beyond the silence he could hear the moans drifting on the still air. In truth, they were always there, a white-noise hum you tried to tune out. It was a permanent aural backdrop, like mordant birdsong.

  But all the birds are gone, he thought not for the first time, cocking his head and looking out at the starless night, and the skies and treetops and roofs of the city will never echo with their sound again.

  The vehicle barked into life, the roar of Ali revving the accelerator rebounding off the concrete walls. The noise would undoubtedly attract some attention, but the stiffs were going to know they were amongst them soon enough anyway. Davis yanked open the rear door behind the driver's seat and folded himself in; Hewitt sparked up a cigarette and clambered in the other side, positioning his shotgun through the window. Gabe stood for a moment beside the rumbling car, listening to its timbre, holding a palm against the vibrating roof, confident that the engine was turning over smoothly, careful to discern there were no wheezy splutters emerging from the exhaust pipe. He'd briefly and inexpertly serviced the car himself only a few days before, but he had to make sure they could rely on their ride. London was no longer a town that you wanted to travel by foot if you could help it.

  Satisfied, he swung into the bucket seat beside Ali and strapped himself in. The interior was refitted to provide the maximum protection, the tubular bars of a roll cage strengthening the shell if the Escort were to flip. Outside, front and rear windscreens were covered with a thick wire mesh that didn't particularly aid visibility but were a lifesaver when it came to force of numbers attempting entry. Similarly, the side panelling and roof were reinforced with steel plates capable of withstanding a high-speed impact. It meant the vehicle had the rather undignified appearance of a hammered-together metal box, but previous excursions had proved both its reliability and durability; many a time Gabe had ploughed it through a dozen-strong crowd of stiffs with barely a dent on the bodywork, their grasping fingers unable to find purchase, grave-brittle bones snapping when struck. It wasn't quite a tank - though Hewitt had badgered him often enough (not entirely jokingly) for some kind of mortar cannon to be operated through the sunroof - but it suited its purpose.

  Ali guided the car past the raised exit barriers, the attendant booths long deserted, and onto the slip road. Gabe repeated the route to her, noting a handful of shambling figures detaching themselves from the twilight. The vehicle was like a beacon to them, its sound and movement awakening their interest - the only living thing, in all likelihood, for a radius of a couple of miles. He heard Hewitt working the slide on the shotgun behind him, and glanced in the wing-mirror to see him lean out slightly, flicking the dog-end of his cigarette at the nearest zombs.

  "I don't want you taking any unnecessary potshots, Hewitt," Gabe warned him. "Conserve your ammo."

  "Yeah, yeah," Hewitt murmured in reply, resting the barrel on the window frame.

  Gabe turned in his seat to face the kid, but the younger man refused to meet his gaze, instead concentrating furiously on the darkened buildings passing by. Davis clearly caught the tension between the two, though said nothing.

  "I'm serious," Gabe remarked. "There are far, far too many of the things for us to gun down every one indiscriminately, and it's just a waste of resources we can't afford to squander. This isn't a duck-shoot. You choose your targets and you make them count, understand?"

  "I said I heard you, O'Connell," the kid answered, glaring at Gabe finally. "I have done this once or twice before, you know. Christ, I can handle it."

  "I know you've done it before." Gabe softened his tone, returning to face the front. "I'm just saying: don't leave yourself open."

  "Main street's coming up on the left," Ali said quietly.

  "OK, we'll only be able to get a couple of hundred yards down it before we'll have to bail out."

  The dead were emerging in increasing numbers, their hungered, soul-black groans growing in volume. They staggered from shadowy shopfronts and doorways, stumbling off the pavement and onto the road, what little senses still chiming in their grey-green skulls alerting them to the proximity of warm flesh. They made half-hearted attempts at reaching out to the car as it sped past them, their cries developing a note of angry disappointment. Gabe watched them in the mirror attempt a stiff-legged pursuit, arms held out in front of them, pushing past one another with an eagerness that seemed at odds with their barely functioning bodies. They only come alive at the prospect of food, he thought, and right now we're their movable feast.

  "Fuckers," Hewitt murmured from the back, grimacing at the throng with an unconcealed hatred.

  Ali slowed the Escort slightly to take the turn onto the main road, wrenching hard on the steering wheel. The tyres span on something on the tarmac and lost their purchase, the vehicle's rear fishtailing, and for a moment the car was skidding, the sharp screech of rubber drowning out the cries of the dead. The woman pumped the brake and steered into the slide, bringing the car to a juddering halt; thrusting it into gear, she stomped on the accelerator and the vehicle lunged forward, powering down the high street. Watching her from the corne
r of his eye, Gabe noticed that Ali hadn't even broken a sweat, her face a mask of grim determination. A small, morose woman in her forties, an ex-wife of one of Flowers' button men, she was one of the best drivers in the boss man's predictably male-dominated outfit and had characteristically proven her worth with little flamboyance or showy technique. Even Hewitt held his tongue when piloted by her, confident in her hands.

  "What was it?" Gabe asked over his shoulder.

  "Roadkill, I think," Davis answered, peering out of the back window at a red pulpy residue the car had just skidded through. "Something splattered across the highway."

  "Remains of the day," Hewitt remarked, snorting back a laugh. "Somebody ended up zombie supper."

  "Enough of that," Gabe snapped, trying to keep the tension from his voice. "Concentrate on the job in hand."

  The hordes of dead were becoming more clotted as they sped forward, a clawing, mewling mass that shambled towards the Escort as one. The longest deceased were merely desiccated skeletons clothed in a tissue-thin brown veil of rank flesh, their eyes shrivelled back into their sockets, their crooked limbs flapping independently of the torso as if the muscle and bone within had perished; the freshest corpses had recognisable features, the skin grey and taut, their fatal wounds often readily apparent. They were young and old, male and female, of all races, from every level of the social strata. Death was the great leveller, no question of that, Gabe mused. There was no distinction between them anymore, nothing to separate this mob into individual entities: a paunchy bald man in a torn business suit lurched beside a teenager in motorcycle leathers with a scarlet-raw face, and a grandmother still clothed in her burial shroud and caked in the undertaker's make-up. They paid no heed to each other, each seemingly oblivious to their neighbour and indeed the numbers of their kin surrounding them; locked inside their own private resurrection, all they wanted, all they hungered for, was the living, driven by an insatiable craving their brains could not possibly fathom.

  The car shuddered as a ghoul bounced off its wing, Ali tightening her grip on the wheel in a bid to keep the vehicle under control. She made little effort to avoid the deadheads - indeed, it was impossible to slalom between them, so dense was the crowd becoming - and concerned herself with ensuring the car stayed central on the road. The stiffs merely shuffled into its path like bugs collecting on the windscreen, utterly ignorant of the velocity the vehicle was moving at. The front end ploughed through a skinny naked man, who exploded like a dandelion in a strong wind, fragments washing back in the Escort's slipstream.

  Hewitt was right Gabe thought. Damn things are falling apart.

  "Don't think I can go much further," Ali yelled above the thump-thump-thump of the dead rebounding off the bodywork or fists slamming down on the steel panelling. The car's suspension started to bounce as it rolled over cadavers and rubble. Several blackened vehicles lay on their sides on the pavement ahead, or poking half out of shattered shop windows. A bus leaned precariously against a wall, displaying its undercarriage.

  "OK, this is the end of the line, guys," Gabe shouted, tearing free his seat belt. "Hewitt, Davis - create a circumference, then follow me." He turned to the woman. "Ali, once they start following us, that'll take the heat off you. Turn the car around, keep her running. We're not back in ten minutes, get out of here."

  "Good luck."

  Gabe smiled. "Piece of cake."

  Hewitt was the first out, simultaneously throwing open the door and discharging his shotgun at the nearest knot of ghouls; the blast punched through them as if he had hurled a grenade, flinging a handful backwards and, in one case, bisecting another at the waist. He worked the slide and fired again, popping a number of heads with a single shell, then used the butt to club the skull of a zombie in a stained traffic warden's uniform that dared to venture too close. Goddamn, he thought, that felt satisfying.

  Davis appeared on the other side of the Escort and sprayed the dead with a burst from his sub-machine gun, raking them with bullets that tore through their empty, papery carcasses. They folded like wheat before a thresher. He pulled his snubnose from the waistband of his jeans with his left hand and snapped off half a dozen deft, accurate headshots, silencing the prone, moaning zombies forever.

  Gabe clambered from the car, put his rifle to his shoulder and marched forward, firing with each step, taking down a ghoul at a time. He didn't break his stride but swung his gun smoothly from left to right, choosing each target quickly and calmly. His breathing was shallow and composed, his actions clinical, unhurried; he simply switched off that part of his brain that whispered just how close he was to being eaten alive, a hair's breadth away from having his entrails devoured before his very eyes.

  It was a tightrope-walk act, a death-defying (undeath-defying?) feat, acknowledging the physical danger he was in but reaching an inner equilibrium that would not surrender to it. He had lived and fought in this land of the dead for long enough to adapt to it and meet its challenges accordingly. Nothing would faze him, he didn't think, not ever again; not even the bizarre sight of two undead schoolgirls - little more than fifteen, he guessed, when they had resurrected - stuttering towards him, white blouses slathered in blood, tights and sneakers shredded, a forearm wound on one of them open to the bone and suppurating, the cheek of the other swollen with blowfly. He felt an undeniable tingle of sadness as he watched them stagger, groans emerging from their still lungs, their misted eyes fixed unshakably on him; but the pause was only momentary as he dropped both to the ground with a couple of neat holes drilled in their foreheads.

  "Let's go," Gabe shouted, satisfied that they had cleared enough breathing space. "Move."

  "You sure you know the way?" Hewitt demanded.

  "Just follow me."

  The three of them ran. Each man had flares tucked into his belt, and they would light one at regular intervals and drop it to the ground as they progressed, creating a landing strip for them to move through. The ghouls feared fire for some reason - a primeval terror that apparently still functioned in their putrid cerebella - and the burning torches made them pause. Gabe was in the lead, his rifle held against his chest, swatting away any stiffs that came within two feet of him, trying to limit his ammo usage. It didn't take much effort to knock the walking dead to the ground, their reactions and balance dulled by entropy - if you were quick on your feet and kept your wits about you, you could embark on short trips like this with the minimum of hindrance - and right now all he considered them to be was an annoyance to be avoided rather than an enemy that needed destroying. Maybe the day would come when the living would take to the streets and attempt to wipe out the zombies, but there were too many of them at the moment for such an undertaking to be practical. It would require an organised army to perform the necessary cull, and even the government and military had seemingly lost all pretence of containing the situation. All that was left was for guys like Flowers, and no doubt many others, to seize the opportunities that the world now presented them with, and make a killing.

  He cast an eye over his shoulder to check his colleagues were still behind him. Davis followed, arms outstretched, his snubnose in one hand and his machine-gun in the other, turning his head left and right as he made sure the ghouls were kept at bay, occasionally firing a short burst into the throng. He was a big man, over six foot and wide around the midriff, his physique made even bulkier by the body armour he wore over his chest. It was supposedly one more layer of defence for the dead to tear through if you ever found yourself compromised, but Gabe considered such garments restricting when speed was of the essence. He presumed Davis had purloined the vest from his former occupation as a cop - along with what seemed half his station's armoury - and the skills he brought to Flowers' organisation made him a valuable member of the team. It took Harry a while to trust having an ex-policeman in the outfit, Gabe remembered, but these days notions of law and criminality were redundant, brushed aside by a common foe to be united against. Davis kept himself to himself mostly, no doubt ruminat
ing on the strange path fate had chosen for him, and perhaps a touch ashamed too.

  Hewitt was bringing up the rear, keeping watch on the ragged bunches of the dead that were regrouping in the trio's wake and starting to lurch after them. So far the kid's notoriously itchy trigger-finger seemed to be under control, but Gabe didn't expect it to last long. Hewitt had too much to prove, a wild and unpredictable element that could put them all in danger if it wasn't stamped on soon. He thought following orders was somehow beneath him, and that being a loose cannon was an endearing quality. Barely in his twenties, he was a youngster that had graduated from teenage gangs and petty thievery to armed robbery overnight, and hadn't had the time to mature. He had a ruthless streak, which admittedly to some was an asset, and appeared to genuinely loathe the deadheads, though Gabe wondered if he truly saw much distinction between them and the living. Certainly, he knew the kid disliked and resented him and would supplant his command any chance he could.

  The street they ran down had once been a busy retail area, alive even at the twilight hours with taxis and shoppers, light flooding across the paving stones from glittery window displays. Now, it was like a smudgy stain, bereft of all colour; the stores that lined the thoroughfare were dark, gutted holes that merged with the night. From the glow cast by the flares, Gabe could see the outlines of mannequins slumped against the spiderwebbed glass, the grey flicker of TVs tuned to long-dead channels broadcasting static twenty-four hours a day, the liquefying mass of fruit and vegetables left to rot from discarded crates.

  He spotted the turning for the square they needed, and turned to Davis. "Over there," he said, pointing with the barrel of his rifle. The road came to an abrupt end, giving way to a pedestrianised section, and a gap opened in the shopfronts. Gabe motioned with his head for them to follow and doubled his speed towards it.

  Upon entering the cul-de-sac, he saw their destination immediately, tucked away in the corner of the narrow faux-Elizabethan square with its dark-beamed boutiques and coffee outlets. How Michaelson had managed to find it was a mystery - unless you knew it was here, it could easily evade the attention of the casual passer-by. Running his eyes over the exterior of the building, Gabe guessed that it hadn't been touched since its owners had fled, which was a minor miracle.