by Glynn James
It cocked its head to one side and made a snorting noise that almost sounded like "Oops".
DogThing.
If I could have given DogThing a hug at that moment, I would have done, but I don't think he would have appreciated it. There were no visible signs of any wounds that he might have taken during the fight in the street, but I was certain he was missing a few bits of fur. Not that it appeared to have made any difference. He seemed his usual self.
Rudy did his best to try to persuade me not to go into the fire, but what does he understand? He is already dead. He doesn't have any attachment to material things any more. He seems to have forgotten that he once depended on them. Well, apart from the compasses; he was fidgety until I showed him that I still had those tucked away on the chain, under my shirt. God forbid I lost them.
I almost backed out anyway; even though the flames were nowhere near as bad as they had been the day before, it was still damn hot walking along the trail. Fires still burned on either side of the path as I made my way along it, and I had to dodge from side to side a few times to avoid them. Every step I took along the path left me increasingly paranoid about one of those damn geyser things exploding a few feet away from me, but nothing happened. I got to the remains of my kit without getting roasted.
It was almost a write-off, almost. ZombieBane was charred but thankfully still useable. I rummaged through the smouldering remains of my supplies with one of my knives. Most of the food and anything flammable, which meant pretty much everything, had burned, including the pack itself, but two tins were still intact. There was some plastic sheeting still useable, and the screwdriver, the saw, the spanner. One of the petrol lamps was also salvageable. I used the bits of plastic sheeting as a bag and dumped everything in it. How typical; just after I've got myself sorted with kit, I lose nearly all of it.
Underneath the blackened remains were CutterJack's two long blades. They were still pristine. Not even a speck of the ash clung to the blades. Of course, the cloth that I had wrapped them in was gone.
Incredibly, one of the zombies was still going. It was armless, legless, and burnt to a crisp, flapping around on the floor. Hissing and spitting at me, desperate to sink its teeth in. I jumped when it first made a noise, my nerves tingling. It was only about five feet away and had lain perfectly still, smoking and stinking, the whole time I was sifting through my gear.
It felt so good to cave the damn thing's head in. One satisfying crunch later and it stopped moving. Am I becoming heartless? Yes, I think so. I don't have any sympathy for these creatures, and deep inside I know I should. Am I putting them out of their misery? Are they even in misery? I don't know, but it feels better to keep telling myself that.
My joy was short lived. That one smack on the zombie's head and ZombieBane fell apart in my hands. I nearly took myself out in the process, as a sharp piece of it sprang off and bounced off my leg.
Lucky this time.
I picked up the two blades that still lay on the floor and weighed them up. I didn't know if I was going to be able to use both of them at once, as CutterJack had. I guessed I would find out.
I actually walked up out of the swamp with a smile on my face. It was daft. After the disaster of the previous day, there was I, grinning from ear to ear. I was still alive after taking on a gargant and a bunch of zombies, I had DogThing back, and I still had some remnants of my kit to keep me going, not much, but enough. I kept telling myself that I'd done this once already, crawled out of the darkness with nothing and still lived, so I could do it all over again.
The first fight happened roughly an hour after that. We had set off immediately. Rudy tried to get me to rest up more. I was still coughing up crap, but I was determined to move on. It had only been an hour or so since I'd woken up, and although I was feeling knackered again already, I was not staying by the swamp, breathing in more fumes.
DogThing sensed them first, four of them, and we saw them long before they were anywhere near us. They lumbered slowly out of the darkness, mist swirling around them like some cheap effect in a low-budget horror film. No messing about this time, I was ready for them, well sort of, if I managed to fight with CutterJack's blades.
We took down two each, though DogThing did make the first kill, I'll happily give him that. Less than twenty seconds I would say, and they were in bits all over the ground. I was getting better at this.
CutterJack's blades rock.
I can't believe I just wrote that.
Idiot.
For most of the day we stayed a reasonable distance from the shore of the swamp. Is the edge of a swamp called a shore? I didn't want to stay too close. The fire was kicking up fumes that made me feel sick, so we used it as a distant guide to keep direction, only moving away when a gargant came into view. I was surprised to see some of them still moving slowly among the flames. I guess I hadn't wiped out a whole ecosystem after all.
Should I be pleased by that?
The good news was that after roughly half an hour of walking, the fire in the swamp dwindled, revealing a vast expanse of smelly gunk once more. We found a pool of clear water trapped in a small crevasse between some rocks. I was dubious at first about drinking it, but DogThing didn't hesitate. Strange, back home I would never have dreamed of sharing a drink from a pool of water with a creature as mucky as DogThing. I guess you get used to things.
We met three other groups of zombies that day. Fortunately there were only three or four of them each time, all ambling along the same route. They moved slowly, so most of the time it was us catching up with them. It didn't matter that I'd fought these creatures a number of times now, I'd still nearly wet myself every time we closed in on them. I was getting better at fighting them though, and quite proud that I was actually able to fight with both blades, sort of. In truth I only swung one at a time. I was too scared I'd slice my own foot off.
Day 33
A second day travelling along the edge of the swamp.
The area on the zombie-trail side of the swamp was similar to near the shack – barely a few hundred feet of rocks and dirt, and it gave way to tall cliffs that rose up into darkness, though the rocks weren't quite so large and warren-like.
Pods grew in abundance along the edge of the swamp; much more so than near the shack. Rudy pointed out that there were few gargants along the trail to eat the pods. Maybe the gargants liked to avoid the zombies. It didn't matter. It meant I had a re-supply of food.
My geography was completely thrown by now. All I could go on was that the swamp would eventually lead us back to the shack, which is where we decided we needed to head. There was at least some replacement equipment there, probably not much, but even some torches and something to make a decent bag out of would help. There was of course the cave in the rocks, and the door. I had to go there again, just in case I'd missed something the first time. That was the plan, at least.
I wish I still had my push cart.
No zombie groups today. I wonder where they have gone.
Day 34
No more zombies again today. I managed to collect some more water and a few more pods.
We reached the shack finally. I think we kept going for close to ten hours before eventually sighting the waterfall. It must have been that long. I was exhausted, hungry, and cold. My chest wasn't so bad today though, not so much coughing.
I watched DogThing run off up towards the rocks at the edge of the plateau before I closed and blocked up the front door.
A minute later and I collapsed on the bed.
There were no zombie bodies around the shack anymore. I didn't notice that until I was drifting off to sleep.
Day 35
After I awoke, I spent a few hours going through my stuff and replacing what I could from the shack. There were plastic bottles, and wood to make torches from. I took a blanket from the bed and made a rough sack out of one of the sheets.
DogThing came back and was wandering around the valley for most of the day. He followed us up to the cave i
n the rock face and sat there waiting as I climbed up the rope.
Nothing had changed up there. Not that I had expected it to. I searched around, glancing often at the rocks along one wall. Unlike the rest of the rock fall, which seemed as though it had come from the hole in the ceiling, maybe some kind of cave-in, the rocks there looked like they had been piled up carefully. I hadn't noticed it on our first visit.
Rudy sat watching the rock pile the whole time we were up there.
I found a long piece of stick covered with mud lying on the ground near the refrigerator. It was thin and it looked like someone had whittled the end away into a small hook shape.
"No more clues here, then," said Rudy.
"No. Only this stick, which Adler may have used to get the compass."
"And that pile of rocks."
"Yes, the rocks."
"We're not going to disturb the grave are we?"
"No."
"Why come here, then?"
"I just needed to know that what Adler wrote was true, I guess."
"I see. So where now?"
"Well, Adler found the last compass here. So I presume he had to have been carrying it. He would have had to come back to the shack to look for the one he gave you. Of course we know he never found that one."
"So he must have either gone on to get the ones in the junkyard, or gone somewhere else."
"Somewhere we missed."
"Ok, well we have to go for what we do know, and hope we find out where he went."
"Well, there is always The Warrens," said Rudy.
"The Warrens?"
"They run along the side of the plateau. You remember I said that the zombies don't go over the plateau? Instead they go round. Well, that is where they go. The professor and I went that way once, following the footprint trail in the dirt that the zombies left behind. It led us all the way through and out, not too far from the mushroom fields. There are a lot of different paths in the rocks and Adler did keep going back that way. I only went with him the once, and we stuck to the footprints. That doesn't mean he always did."
We headed back to the shack.
All quiet. No zombies today. I walked down to the swamp to see if there was any sign of the fire.
Nothing.
Even the gargants are not around.
Day 36
We set off back towards the junkyard soon after I awoke, but rather than heading back over the plateau I took Rudy's suggestion and we made our way across the river, following the foot of the slope. I would rather have gone back across the plateau, but I couldn't ignore the possibility that The Warrens might be hiding something.
Rudy was cheerful today and talkative.
"If you stand on the plateau and look down into The Warrens it's a sheer drop, too high to clearly see any of the paths that run through the rocks. It's the way that the zombies go when they are on their way to the junkyard, but they seem to stick to one particular path, and there are hundreds of different ways."
"So we can avoid the zombies by using another path?"
"Hmm, I'm not sure we should. It would be quite easy for us to get lost down there, but saying that, I'm still curious as to what Adler was searching for down there, and he went there a lot."
We travelled past the spot where Rudy had died, and were both a bit disturbed to find that it had been messed with. Some of the ground had been churned up and bones had moved, and I don't mean the bit that I had disturbed to get the compass.
"Maybe I should bury you?"
"What?" He looked shocked at that. I have to admit that it was a strange comment to make, considering he was standing right next to me, well, his ghost was.
"Your...remains. You're kind of just... Maybe I should bury you?"
I pointed at the bones that were scattered along the riverbank, overgrown with the bright, glowing grass.
"No. It's ok."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. I don't want you to. It would be like admitting I'm dead, and I'm still here. I don't believe I'm dead yet."
That was that. Decided.
Over the river bank the ground sloped downwards past the rocks and then flattened out into a rough, open plain littered with small stones and debris. The grass gradually thinned out and was replaced by hard, cracked ground that was covered in a kind of salty sand. It reminded me of some pictures I'd once seen in National Geographic, of the Gobi desert.
DogThing was waiting for us where the rocks ended and plains began. I like to think that somehow he knew where we were heading.
We stayed along the edge of the plain, near to where the plateau rose up, higher and higher, in a sheer wall of marble until I could no longer see the top.
Across the barren ground, in long trailing lines, were sets of footprints. Rudy said that not even the storm and the rain managed to touch anything here, so the footprints were still there from the times that he and Adler had travelled through The Warrens, all those years ago. It was eerie seeing a small, thin bicycle track, cutting into the ground. I was excited about it at first, thinking that maybe it was a clue of some sort, but Rudy pointed out that Adler had always taken the bike with him, so the tyre tracks could well have been quite old.
Littered across the ground here and there were bones and junk. I didn't examine any of it long enough to figure out what kind of creature the bones belonged to, but they looked like they had been there for a long time.
We got to The Warrens a lot quicker than I expected. I would say about an hour across the plain, so only a few miles. They came into view through the mist and were so eerie that I almost stopped and turned back. I don't know how they were formed, but they didn't look natural. Sheer walls, maybe forty feet high, lined a dozen entrances. The rock arched at the top, almost like it had been cut from the stone by a machine. The paths were all roughly twenty feet across, and the same thin, salty sand lay on the ground. The mist, that covered everywhere, made the entrances even more foreboding.
I saw where the zombie trail continued into The Warrens before we even reached it. It wasn't hard to spot. A path that was maybe ten feet across, which looked like it had been worn away, over many years, by thousands of pairs of feet, stretched across the plain and entered the tunnel nearest to us. There were no zombies in sight, but I didn't like how deeply cut into the ground the trail was.
"I'm hoping that we won't be using that path?" I said, pointing at the trail.
"Unfortunately we will. We have to follow the same path at least most of the way. I think we might get lost, otherwise."
But something we both noticed almost at the same time changed that.
A short distance from the entrance, a bicycle track crossed the zombie trail, and led into the third tunnel. I looked closer. The track seemed as though it had been used a lot of times.
"We never went that way," said Rudy.
"Do you think Adler found another route?" I asked.
"He must have, but he never mentioned it."
I was still nervous going in there. No open ground and not a lot of choices when it came to escaping if we came across anything, but DogThing wasn't growling and didn't seem disturbed, so I followed Rudy into the third entrance.
I was expecting hours of wandering around, lost, but about an hour later, after following the bicycle trail, we were looking down into a gulley that ended in a sheer wall. The tracks led down to the very bottom, where another metal door was built into the rock.
A door that was open.
We looked at each other, puzzled.
Leaning against the rock only a few feet away from the open door was an old, rusty bicycle.
"The professor's bicycle," said Rudy, as we approached the door.
There was no light coming from inside, just pitch darkness. Rudy knelt down next to the bicycle and tried to wipe away some of the dust and sand that had gathered on it. His hand went straight through.
"Well I guess that answers where he went."
"Yes, I suppose it does, almost."
"He
must have come here a lot if all these footprints are anything to go by," I replied, indicating all of the different footprint trails coming to and from the entrance. Most of them came from the path opposite the one we had arrived by.
Why so many visits?
I moved the bicycle away from the wall. Years of gathered dust and sand fell from it. It had been here so long that both the chain and the steering column had seized up. The bicycle may have been ancient even back when the professor had used it, so the cracked paint and rust weren't much of a gauge to go by.
Rudy stood there, peering at the doorway. I could see he was reluctant to go inside.
"I don't know whether I want to see what's in there."
I nodded my understanding. "It's ok. I'll go."
"No. No. I'll go first, safety and all that. It makes sense. Just give me a moment."
I took my time lighting up one of my newly made chair leg torches and waited quietly by the door. I knew the torch wouldn't last as long as the others. I'd had no cloth to wrap round the top, and no petrol to soak it in; ironic really, since I'd probably burned thousands of gallons of fuel in the swamp fire. It didn't matter though; this was Rudy's friend we were expecting to find dead inside the door, unless it led somewhere else. I was hoping it did.
After a minute or so, Rudy stepped through the doorway; his own glow filled the corridor that was revealed, casting dim shadows over the broken furniture that littered the ground and the cobwebs that hung from the ceiling. I thought that was a bit odd, having not seen a single spider the entire time I had been here.
DogThing didn't follow us in, but he also didn't seem on edge.
There were three doors along the left side of the corridor, all of which were open, and then a dead end with another door in it that was shut. The door at the end looked almost identical to the door in the cave near the shack.
Rudy was standing in the corridor, not moving, so I decided it was down to me to look after all.
