Ridgetown: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel

by Philip Radford

  Sickness overwhelmed Helen, feeling like she had ordered the young man, around her age, to his death. Determined not to be responsible for anyone else coming to harm, she dropped down and dashed towards the corpse of Tom, scooping up the rifle that lay not far from where he had landed.

  The Leaper had turned its attention back to the beams. It pushed the first one aside with only mild resistance and pushed the second causing it to budge slightly. Helen saw the gate begin to warp and realised the horde must have reached the gates, she glanced to the people firing over the wall and saw they were aiming directly below, corroborating her fears. She shouldered the rifle and fired, instantly hearing the empty click.

  Despite the quietness of the sound, the Leaper abruptly spun and faced her as if recognising the sound as a danger. The thought of facing the Leaper face to face with only a bladed weapon terrified Helen but she reached for her axe anyway. The Leaper took a step forward, its dead eyes locked on hers.

  Before it took a second step, someone barreled into it and let out a scream of pain and anger combined. The Leaper stumbled and Ishaq took the opportunity to swing a large axe that he carried. It struck the Leaper in its thigh and its left leg gave way from the impact. Ishaq tried to pull the axe free but it was buried in too deeply. As the Leaper tried to stand, Ishaq kicked the kneecap of its uninjured leg as hard as he could causing it to lose balance completely and fall to its knees.

  Helen took the opportunity of its distraction to take the spare bullet from her pocket and reload the rifle. As before, she fumbled as she rushed and had to force herself to slow down in order to do it properly. In the few seconds it had taken her to mess with the rifle, the Leaper had struggled to its feet. Ishaq kicked its head as hard as he could in an effort to damage the brain but only succeeded in delaying it standing shakily to its feet by an extra second.

  Seeing Ishaq unarmed and faced with the deadly Leaper, Helen hastily raised the rifle, aimed at its head and fired. The bullet struck the Leaper on the side of its face, ripping most of its cheek and nose from its face and removing half of its shattered teeth but not killing it. The Leaper growled as it slowly turned its disfigured face towards Helen.

  Ishaq dived towards the axe embedded in its leg and grabbed the handle with both hands. Helen instinctively dropped the rifle and grabbed her own axe, rushing forward. Ishaq pulled his axe downwards to disrupt the Leaper's balance, it worked and the Leaper turned its attention to him as if sick of his constant annoyance. It pinned Ishaq down between his shoulder blades with one of its large hands, the other raised over its head like a claw.

  Helen swung at the raised hand as hard as she could and was rewarded by the sight of the hand being sliced in half across the palm. It's four fingers separated from the hand and the creature let out a howl.

  Helen followed the weight of the axe and span around, allowing it to bring her back around and facing the Leaper, still howling. She continued the swing, this time aiming for its head but it held its injured arm up to defend itself. The axe buried itself in the Leapers arm near the bullet hole left by Tom.

  As if in slow motion, Helen saw the creature lower its injured arm and scream at her, held back by Ishaq refusing to let go of the axe in its leg who was bleeding profusely and spitting blood but holding on with every ounce of strength that he still had. Helen watched the Leaper let go of Ishaq and bring its hand towards her. She wanted to move but couldn't, her body refused to listen to the commands her brain screamed at it.

  As she stared at the Leaper's face, its forehead exploded and its whole body relaxed. It collapsed forward like a puppet that had suddenly had its strings cut. It crashed heavily to the ground revealing Liz standing behind it, her arms held out in front of her and protruding from underneath each forearm, a jagged and deadly sharp blade covered in the blood and brain tissue of the Leaper.

  "What the hell are those?"

  Helen looked closer at the straps around Liz's arms and could see that she was holding handles in her hands with her thumbs pressing down on buttons. Liz took her thumbs off the buttons and the blades sprang back against her forearms. She opened her hands and the handles, which were attached to cables, sprang back against the flat of her hands. It all hid away neatly and could easily be accessed again by simply rotating her hands, grabbing the handles and pressing the buttons. They didn't look heavy but looked like they had enough weight to them to cause some damage, Helen had seen first hand how powerfully Liz had fired it through the Leaper's skull.

  "Ryan made them."

  She didn't say anything more, Helen sensed she didn't want to but felt that she didn't need to either. Ishaq groaned and both of them rushed to help him to his feet. He looked horrific, he was sweating and breathing erratically as if each breath hurt. The blood around his torso was spreading at an alarming rate and Helen worried about the extent of his internal injuries. He had fought the Leaper as if he wasn't hurt and was paying for it now. He stumbled but Liz caught him.

  "We need to reinforce those gates." His words sounded strained.

  "You need to get somewhere safe. Liz, can you get him to your house?"

  "Yeah, I'll get him upstairs and..."

  Before she could finish, an unmistakable breaking sound came from the gates and the other beam slid to the ground. The barricades left in place quickly buckled under the strain of the horde, the mechanism that opened and closed them began to come away from the wall, taking bricks with it. The people stood closet to the gates backed away, horror strewn across everyone's faces. Then the gates fell.

  The first thought that Helen had was the realisation that they had barely made a dent in the horde's numbers by shooting at them from the wall. She shouted to Ishaq and Liz, yelling at them to run.

  Ishaq gripped his side with one arm and held onto Liz with the other, together they awkwardly stumbled off to the relative safety of Liz's house.

  The second thought that Helen had, as she looked at the horde, was that she was going to die. She looked at the mutilated faces and bodies surging inside the estate right in front of her, arms outstretched and mouths open or snapping. Even though all the faces were soulless, there was a rage behind each of them. Each one looked like it wanted to rip her apart and would stop at nothing to eviscerate her.

  Despite the spectacle of annihilation, Helen wasn't scared. She felt calm. As Ishaq and Liz retreated behind her, she felt a duty to defend them. She would protect them for as long as she physically could, just as Tom had tried to protect her. Tom hadn't owed her anything and Helen didn't feel like she owed Liz or Ishaq anything anymore, she felt free of the guilt she had been feeling before. She stood in front of the horde because she wanted to protect them, they were her friends and she wanted to stop them getting hurt.

  Helen held her axe in her right hand and unsheathed her knife with her left. The Ridgetown residents that had been firing over the wall continued their barrage as their targets now poured inside their estate. More residents ran over from deeper into the estate, brandishing all kinds of improvised weapons, lead by Mark who was in his armour and brandishing his signature two pick axes. There was another armoured figure behind him but Helen couldn't tell if they were male or female. They charged past Helen and immediately started hacking at the skulls of the undead, Helen followed and began tactically taking out any lone zombies.

  She registered she wasn't alone and wasn't necessarily going to die, she wanted to live and she wanted everyone else to live as well. She hacked at a female zombie, catching it in the neck and dragging it forward, instantly driving the knife deep into its skull and holding tight as the corpse slid to the ground, freeing the knife.

  Helen fought with an energy she didn't know she had, no fear or hesitation, just a determination to kill the invaders and protect the community. She used new skills that she wasn't conscious of, kicking at zombie's knees to cripple or at least slow them before she followed it up with a strike to their head. She would allow them to get close before dodging to the side and watching the
m stumble into where she had been standing, taking advantage of their predictability.

  She glanced at the mayhem around her, people still firing guns, although noticeably less now. Most used a variety of improvised weapons, ranging from garden spades and baseball bats to more inventive contraptions similar to Liz's arm blades. One man held a handle in each hand that wrapped around the hand and had numerous knives and blades welded to it like claws, he waved them ferociously at anything that came near him which may have been why he was further away than anyone else and driving deeper into the horde towards the gates.

  Something grabbed Helen's shoulder from behind and she instinctively span around and dug her knife into the temple of the rotting skull that confronted her. She kicked the body away from her, suddenly thankful that it had been a zombie and she hadn't stabbed the knife into a Ridgetown resident.

  Behind the zombie's falling body, she saw a man being overpowered by two zombies. A cricket bat lay on the floor beside him and he tried to keep both zombies at bay using a single arm for each, they clawed at his body and forced themselves closer to him. He called for help and Helen dashed towards him, she swung her axe into the neck of the closest zombie and tore it free. Despite nearly severing its head from its body, it reached out for her and tried to grab her. She struck again, this time completely removing the head, which fell to the ground. She stamped on it repeatedly until the jaw stopped clicking open and closed.

  The victory was short lived as Helen looked up to find the second zombie tearing at the man's neck. With each bite it wrenched its head back, ripping flesh and causing blood to pump out of the wound at an alarming rate. It bit again, this time pulling tendons out from underneath the skin. Horrified, Helen bent over and charged at the zombie's side to separate it as quickly as possible.

  The man made gurgling sounds behind her as she quickly dispatched the second zombie, kicking the inside of both knees as hard as she could, dropping the knife and using both hands to brandish the axe above her head and swing it down as hard as she could. The top of the skull caved with a lot less resistance than she was expecting, resulting in the axe to going through the skull and deep into its neck.

  Helen spun around to attend to the man she had saved, finding him lay on his back and looking at her without moving his head. His eyes were wide and his breathing was quick and shallow, getting quicker with each second. He looked terrified and Helen didn't want him to suffer. She resolved to spare a moment from the fight to comfort him. She knelt quickly and removed her jacket, pushing it against the hole in his neck causing him to whimper. Instantly, it stained darker in colour with blood but she held it in place as a token gesture. The man's breathing continued to get more shallow and quicker, Helen knew he didn't have long left so she spoke softly.

  "Try to calm down. I'll get you somewhere safe."

  He tried to speak, taking a deep breath between each attempt. "Thank...... Tha..........Thank....."

  He abruptly exhaled slowly and for a final time, his eyes rolled back and he was gone.

  Helen released the jacket and stood up again, quickly surveying the immediate area for any threats. A legless female zombie crawled towards her with an arm outstretched and behind it, a one armed zombie nearly tripped over it as it charged forward.

  A fresh wave of anger swept over Helen and she retrieved her axe and knife, determined not to let anyone else get hurt.

  She attacked the two zombies, one with the knife and one with the axe. Hacking and stabbing as hard as she could, she glanced up to see more zombies pouring in through hole where the gates had been. She and a couple of others drove forward into the horde but more were forced back by the sheer numbers coming in.

  The zombies clawed at the wooden platform that some of the survivors had been firing from and Helen watched one side begin to buckle. The female archers began firing at a blistering speed while the male leaned forward stabbing at the closest zombies with an improvised spear. A zombie grabbed the spear and pulled him forward, another zombie grabbed the man's foot causing him to put more weight onto his spear which was pulled again by another zombie. The man fell face first into the reaching arms like a musician stage diving during a concert, unlike crowd surfing however, he was immediately absorbed by the mob and the closest zombie's heads disappeared as they followed him to the ground instantly biting and tearing.

  The younger woman screamed in hysteria whilst the man screamed in agony. She nearly followed him to her doom but was stopped by the older woman holding her back and shouting at her. She looked like she was trying to reason with the younger woman when suddenly the platform gave way and they both collapsed with it.

  "We need to lure them out." Mark's voice could be heard over the sounds of the invasion.

  Helen fatally wounded another zombie, this time slicing its head with the axe and then following the blow with her knife. She looked up and saw him clamber over the wall and drop down to the other side.

  Helen was in shock at what had just happened. She wasn't sure if Mark had just jumped to his death on the other side of the wall. She saw Liz do the same thing slightly further down from Mark. Helen worried that she was watching these people kill themselves but couldn't imagine those two people specifically giving up in the face of adversity.

  It was only as she noticed the incoming flood of zombies beginning to wane that Mark's words sunk in and she surmised they were still alive outside and drawing the creatures back out of the estate.

  Helen felt like she could help and fought her way over to where they had jumped over. As she got near the platform, she kicked a zombie in the thigh and it dropped to its knee. Using it as a stepping stone, she trod on its back and lifted herself onto the platform, sliding her weapons in front of her to free up her hands to lift herself up. She felt something grab at her leg so she kicked out as hard as she could and pulled it back in. She scrambled to her feet and picked up her weapons.

  "Helen!"

  Helen looked in the direction of the voice and saw Luke jogging down the platform. He was carrying a short saw in each hand, both himself and his weapons covered in gore. He looked exhausted but Helen was just glad to see he was still okay.

  "Are you okay? Have you seen Mark?" He seemed genuinely concerned as he waited for an answer.

  "I'm fine, a few people haven't been as lucky though. Mark and Liz have just gone over the wall, they're trying to draw some of the zombies outside."

  Luke looked over the wall scouring the road for them, following the branching trails of zombies. Helen watched him searching frantically for his friends and hesitated before she spoke again. She could see he was struggling with the situation and worried that it would be too much in the firing line for him. She had seen how much he had been eager to help face zombies and join the fight back but a part of her knew that it was partly bravado. She wasn't naive, she knew that he liked her and he had been trying to impress her but she also believed that the fake bravery had given him some real bravery.

  When he had excitedly told her about the encounter with the Leaper, he had been proud of the part he played. She saw a belief in himself that he was discovering through taking risks but she wondered whether the sheer size of the horde was too much for him.

  "We need to help. Until those gates are sealed again, we're fighting a losing battle and these things are gonna keep coming in."

  Luke looked at her, wide eyed but nodding.

  "The pub entrance." He replied. "If we lead them over there, we can climb to safety and we'll have options."

  Helen couldn't fault his logic. They could lead a huge chunk of the horde to the old playhouse and attack from above as they had been doing at Ridgetown before the zombies had breached the wall. If things got too risky, they could hold up in the pub using the supplies in there or dash over to the church.

  "Sounds good, but how are we going to get across this?"

  She gestured to the crowd below, shambling towards the entrance or reaching up towards them with mangled arms.

&
nbsp; "How are you at climbing trees?" Luke grinned.

  Helen looked at the tree closest to the wall and could see that the closest branch to the wall had a plank screwed into the trunk, creating a landing platform out of the branch for anyone who wanted to jump for it. Paying closer attention, she could see that the trees were grouped together so closely that it would be possible to go from tree to tree until they reached open ground further down the road, further if they needed to.

  "You heard about me on that climbing wall, how do you think I am?"

  "Try not to make me slow down for you too much."

  Helen liked that he could still smile. The fear was still evident on his face but the smile helped visibly relax his whole body slightly.

  Without saying anything else, Luke headed for the tree. He hoped it made him look fearless but, in reality, he moved before the rational part of his brain changed his mind. He ran a few steps, discarding one of his saws and holding the other tightly and launched himself into the air, he hit the platform with more speed than he expected and crashed into the thick trunk. He hoped his landing hadn't looked too clumsy to Helen, he could live with a bruised shoulder and ego better than holding back and falling short into the waiting clutches of the swarm below.

  He checked that Helen was following and when he saw her readying herself for the run up, he started negotiating his way across the branches to the next tree. It was inevitable that some of the creatures would notice them in the trees above and begin to follow them so Luke knew how important it was to keep moving, they needed to get to a clear area to drop down.

  When he reached the second tree's platform he looked back to Helen again, seeing her land on the first platform elegantly having judged the jump perfectly. He was still in awe of everything she did, he had known from the moment she had threatened him that she didn't need anyone to protect her but Luke felt an overwhelming sense that he wanted to keep her safe from anything that would hurt her. She was so strong and independent that Luke was struggling to keep up with her level of bravery, never mind stand in the way of anything that could harm her. She was definitely more likely to save him but the last thing he wanted was for her to pity or feel sorry for him, he figured he'd never be able to impress her if she started to see him as someone who needed her protection.