by Haywood, RR
‘Got it.’
‘What is the best exit route from this position?’
‘We run back?’ Mo says, turning as he walks to cover his side.
‘It is called a tactical retreat. We do not run back. We withdraw tactically.’
‘Got it.’
‘Yes, the vehicles are our first place of safety if an ambush occurs now. They are armoured and we have a stronger defensive line with the team. If we were attacked now from the front what would the best tactical option be?’
‘How many?’ Mo asks.
‘Two.’
‘We stand our ground and kill them.’
‘There are three.’
‘Same.’
‘Ten.’
‘I think we can deal with ten,’ Mo says, glancing at me, ‘Mr Howie can handle ten on his own.’
‘One hundred.’
‘Run back…er, we tactically withdraw to the vehicles.’
‘And then?’
‘Then we kill them.’
‘There are too many.’
‘Too many? How many is that?’
‘There are too many for us to fight. Our ammunition is depleted.’
‘We’s fuck ‘em up with axes and knives.’
‘We do not have our axes or knives.’
‘I got my knife.’
‘You dropped it.’
‘I went back and got it.’
‘It was taken from you.’
‘I took it back from the fucker that took it.’
‘It was broken.’
‘I take one from you. You got loads of knives.’
‘Mine are broken. We do not have knives now.’
‘We go into the houses and get more knives.’
‘The houses are locked.’
‘Clarence breaks the doors down and we get more knives.’
‘Clarence is busy.’
‘I break a window and get in the house and come out with knives for me and you.’
‘There are no knives in the houses.’
‘I can fight with a stick or a bat or a chain.’
‘There are no sticks or bats or chains.’
‘Forks.’
‘There are no forks.’
‘Bare handed them. Old school.’
‘There are too many.’
He leans forward to look past me to Dave, ‘I dunno, Dave.’
‘We can use the vehicles to punch out and regroup.’
‘Got it.’
‘The vehicles are broken,’ Dave says, continuing the lesson.
‘We run and regroup?’ Mo asks.
‘We cannot run through them. There are too many.’
‘We’s fight through them then.’
‘We do not have weapons.’
‘Mr Howie, the trail leads to a house. The door is open. Blood inside the hallway.’
‘Coming to you, hold position, keep your eyes up, Charlie.’
I start running, feeling somewhat silly with Mo and Dave either side of me. Behind me the vehicles pick up speed to keep pace. Down the road we sprint, heading towards Charlie at the far end sitting on the horse aiming her rifle towards a house. Meredith streaks ahead, zooming down the middle of the road and covering the distance in a matter of seconds.
‘Charlotte,’ Dave, the fit bastard, speaks into his radio as calm as anything as we sprint flat out, ‘when we reach your position you will move further down to cover.’
‘Understood.’
‘I hate you,’ I mutter between breaths and hear Mo snigger at my side.
We reach Charlie and with a flick of the reins she trots away and I notice the axe is now hanging from a big brass loop with the axe head resting against the saddle.
The house is the same as before. The door wide open and what looks like fresh blood on the hallway inside the front door.
I go forward as Dave rests a hand on my arm, ‘we will clear the house.’
‘Go for it,’ I say and hold back for a second as they go inside then promptly follow them in, which earns me a frosty glance from Dave.
The house is detached and nicely done up with bare wooden floors and even from here I can see through to the kitchen and dining room that have been stacked with crates of tinned food. Whoever lived here was in it for the long haul. The floor is covered in blood and looks about the same as the last place.
‘Door’s not damaged,’ Clarence says as gets into the doorway and checks the lock, ‘must have let them in.’
‘Ground floor clear,’ Dave says walking past me with Mo who stops and looks down, ‘there’s another dick there.’
‘Eh?’ I look down at Mo’s feet to see the bloodied pink thing lying in a thick patch of blood, ‘shit.’
‘First floor,’ Dave says, ‘Mohammed, you will go first. Pistol not rifle. Mr Howie, there is blood in the rear garden.’
‘Yep,’ Mo says, moving away from the penis.
‘Yes not…’
‘Yes, sorry Dave,’ Mo says, slinging his rifle to draw his pistol as he leads the way up the stairs.
‘Smaller than the last one,’ Clarence says, peering down at it.
‘Size isn’t everything,’ I say with a look at him, ‘not that I’d know.’
‘No?’
‘Course not,’ I say quickly, ‘mines tiny.’
He snorts a laugh and reaches up to rub the back of his head, ‘this is weird.’
‘Telling me, we got a zombie biting dicks off.’
‘Not a zombie.’
‘What you got?’ Paula says, walking towards the door with Marcy.
‘Another dick,’ Clarence says heavily.
‘You being serious?’ Marcy asks, walking to look down, ‘that’s a small one.’
‘I thought size didn’t matter,’ I say.
‘Noooo, course not,’ she says earnestly, ‘but that is a tiddler.’
‘Zombies biting penises off,’ Paula says.
‘Not zombies,’ Clarence says.
‘Upstairs is clear,’ Dave says coming down the stairs, ‘did you look in the rear garden?’
‘Not yet,’ I say and head through the kitchen to the open back doors and the blood trail that leads to another big patch of blood and stained garden hoe. ‘So the bloke answers the door,’ I say, looking back along the trail to the house, ‘he gets chomped and…’
‘His penis is bitten off,’ Marcy says helpfully.
‘And someone else legs it out here and goes for it with the hoe.’
‘Dicks and hoes,’ Marcy snorts, ‘sorry, bad taste.’
‘Ear,’ Paula says.
‘You what?’ I ask.
‘Ear on the ground and that,’ she says, tilting her head to look down, ‘is a nose by the looks of it.’
Marcy tuts then sighs sadly, ‘Toby and Penny,’ she nods to a wooden love seat set against the fence with the names Toby and Penny carved into the seats. ‘They’ve got names now.’
I nod in response to the dark tone of her voice and any trace of the humour we use to shield ourselves from the horrors we see every five fucking minutes vanishes. It’s one thing to see a dick on the floor but another when you know the name of the bloke the dick belonged to. We’re stood in his garden too with bits of his wife on the grass.
‘We need to move faster,’ Clarence says.
‘Mr Howie, the blood trail leads down to another house. The door is broken in on this one…’
‘Coming, Blowers, you got line of sight on Charlie?’ I ask as we start running back through the house.
‘Negative, I’ll go ahead.’
‘Roy? Can you see Charlie?’
‘Running down now.’
‘I’m fine, Mr Howie,’ she says with a hint of frustration.
‘We stay in line of sight,’ I pant the words out running through the blood in the hallway and out into the road to see Blowers and Roy sprinting side by side down the road. We burst out and the engines lift in pitch as they start coming after us. ‘Too many at the front,’ I shout out, ‘Pau
la, Marcy and Clarence drop back to the bus…Reginald, you hearing me?’
‘Go ahead, Mr Howie.’
‘Body parts in this house again. Another dick bitten off and more in the garden. It’s fresh…’
‘Understood.’
‘Eyes up, mate. Everyone eyes up and scan out.’
I sprint fast, building speed as I charge down the road behind Blowers and Roy who suddenly veers out to vault onto the top of a car and pull his bow up with the arrow ready, ‘Eyes on Charlie,’ he shouts.
She comes into view. Sitting waiting patiently past a junction and a few houses down the next road. Her rifle held with the butt against her thigh while she turns the horse round in a circle. Blowers reaches her first and instantly drops to one knee to aim into the house while waving at her to move on down the street.
‘Dave, Mo, clear the house.’
‘With me,’ Dave streaks on with Mo keeping stride as they reach Blowers to pause for a second as they sling rifles, draw pistols and head inside.
‘Anything?’ I ask Blowers as I finally reach him and look back to see Roy has run closer to get on top of another car to gain height to see up and down the street.
‘Nothing, door’s smashed in,’ he says.
‘With me then,’ I go for the front door with Blowers behind me and enter into a house that stinks of stale food and stale body odour. The décor is grim with a threadbare carpet worn thin and faded. Wallpaper peeling off the walls and clutter everywhere. Blood on the floor and a knife with a blade still wet and glistening from being used.
‘Fuck it,’ I curse staring down.
‘What? Oh,’ Blowers says, ‘another dick…’
‘Ground floor clear, going upstairs.’
‘Okay,’ I step back to let Dave and Mo get past, ‘you checked the garden?’
‘Can’t get in the garden, Mr Howie.’
I look at Blowers who goes ahead of me through the filthy grease coated kitchen and the worktops piled with dirty plates, cups and used pans. Scraps of food stuck to the floor and cupboard doors and the once cream linoleum floor is solid black down the middle from years of foot traffic. We get to the back door and look through the glass to see what Dave meant. The house is cluttered but the garden is worse. Fence panels, ornaments, wheelbarrows, windows in frames, old doors and just about everything including a kitchen sink is piled up and jammed in from side to side.
‘Dick on the floor,’ Marcy says from the hallway behind us.
‘Saw it,’ I call out.
‘Upstairs clear,’ Dave says coming down with Mo.
‘Terence Conway,’ Marcy reads from the front of a high stack of letters left unopened on a side table.
Another name. Another person. A dirty filthy bastard living in abject squalor but a person nonetheless.
‘We push on,’ I say bluntly and go outside, ‘where’s the trail? Charlie, you got the blood trail?’
‘This way.’ I look down the road to see her waving ahead.
‘Marcy, take over driving the Saxon. I want Cookey on the ground from now on. Dave, Mo, drop the bodyguard thing. The focus is that blood trail. Blowers, you’ll keep your team on the bus but we stay fluid. Keep the bus guarded…’
‘I will,’ he says.
‘Roy, you’re free to move as you see fit.’
‘Do you want the loudspeaker thing?’ Marcy asks as she runs to swap with Cookey.
‘Not for the minute, we need to move fast. Everyone ready? Charlie, push on…find the next one. We’re going to catch up with those fuckers.’
Twenty Three
She shifts with a wince. Using someone else’s saddle is like wearing someone else’s shoes. All the creases and folds are in the wrong places.
‘Easy,’ she murmurs, sensing the urge in the great horse to run like they did last night. Competition level polo is intense and exhilarating but what she did last night with Jess was a thousand times more than she has ever done before. It was the relationship between rider and horse having a perfect sense of balance and weight distribution and not being afraid to use that strength and power.
Charlie played competition level polo to a very high standard and hockey to a national standard. She had the world at her feet. Her family were wealthy but cold and chose to give love by the power of their bank balances and as the years went on and Charlie excelled so she became a trophy daughter. Something to show off at dinner parties. Something to boast about at the sailing club.
Now she sits on a horse in the saddle of a dead man in a deserted street somewhere in the south of England while holding an assault rifle and with an axe hanging by her leg. Times change. People change. Everything changes.
She thinks back to the days they hid in Finkton Academy. Staying quiet at night and growing less in number as the girls left to try and find families or those they loved. Blinky didn’t have anywhere else to go and no one to find and Charlie felt a greater allegiance to the other girls than she ever did to her own family. Not that she was spoiled or ungrateful for the chances she was given in life but to see the relationships the other girls had with their families only served to strengthen her own lack of familial closeness.
The world is over but the world has only just begun and now, every second of every minute counts for something.
She feels frustrated at being told to stay so close. Jess is fast and able to outrun anyone. She’s not in danger and besides, she’s got the rifle and the axe. Charlie was the captain of the England hockey team. She is independent, strong and knows her own mind and to be held back from doing something she knows she is capable of is annoying.
Then she saw them all running. Every single one of them sprinting flat out to catch her up. There was no immediate danger but they did it anyway. They ran. They ran for her and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up at seeing Roy vault to get on top of a car to hold his bow and arrow aimed and ready. These are strange days but in the darkest of days there will be light and inside her heart a light shines brighter than it ever has done before.
Her mind flicks back to yesterday and everything that happened until that final fight but everything from that point on is too great and too deep to even start to contemplate. She planned with Reginald. She fought with the lads and Blinky. She gave ideas to Mr Howie and Paula and they listened. Even this morning means something. Being with Paula and Marcy in the bathroom gossiping like normal women. Women never did that with Charlie. She was too well spoken, too polite, too clipped and too…too posh for them to even consider her the type of girl that would like a gossip. But they did. Paula and Marcy took her into their fold and treated her not as a trophy or someone with an expensive education but as a girl that wants to hear about the sex and all the mucky details.
Then that thing with Cookey in the bedroom happened and she smiles to herself in the saddle and quickly looks round as though expecting someone to see her smiling to herself.
Cookey. Never before had she met anyone like any of these people but Cookey? Cookey is something else. Posh people don’t make jokes like that and they certainly don’t show their emotions so clearly and without shame and never before has anyone ever made her laugh like Cookey makes her laugh. Everything he says is funny. His facial expressions, his tone of voice and the downright outrageous comments he makes that he gets away with because of that innocent grin and his blue eyes twinkling.
That thing with Cookey was life and death with blood and fear and sweat. It was dreadful and awful and terrible but it was something else too. It was beautiful in a way nothing should ever be called beautiful. He was naked. She was naked. They were covered in blood and gore but they fought side by side and he covered her with his own body and took the pain in his back. His humour was gone at that point and what remained was a man with an iron core who was prepared to give his life for hers.
She tries to imagine what it would have been like taking someone like Cookey back to meet her family. They would have been appalled. Oh they would have loved him, everyone adores Cooke
y but they would have also done everything possible to block any hint of a relationship with someone like that. It’s hard to remember her family now. She remembers them individually but not with any sense of togetherness. Not the same togetherness she has with these people after only two days. It’s conflicting, contrasting and too difficult to think about so she looks down instead and tracks the spots of blood then grins again as she remembers Blowers throwing the penis at Nick.
She only recognised it as a penis because she saw Cookey’s this morning. It was the angle and the light and…she shakes her head and blinks to stop thinking about Cookey being naked next to her in the room. He has got a nice bum though. Stop it. Focus and follow the blood trail.
Even in the Saxon when he was telling everyone he saw the tattoo on her bottom would have previously made her angry and ashamed but it was funny instead and she liked the way Cookey flinched and laughed as she punched his arm and seeing Blowers and the others all laughing.
She reaches a crossroads and stops. The street behind is a quiet residential road. The one ahead is the same but the road running left to right is a wide main road that must run into the town centre.
The blood was on the right side but crossed over to the left. It’s thinner now too. Whoever was bleeding was congealing or clotting the wound. The infected do that. They heal fast.
She turns Jess in a slow circle and works back to find the last blood spots on the pavement then works slowly back down to the crossroads. Nothing to be seen.
Left, right or ahead? She takes in each direction and urges Jess to go ahead and over the road. Twenty metres into the street and she turns back from the lack of any blood spots. At the crossroads she heads left and again after twenty metres stops and goes back before proceeding down the right side.
There. A smear across the front of a white van. Is it new or old? She gets closer and spots the sheen of the still wet liquid. This way then. Down the main road towards the town centre. She goes slower now. Checking each door to each house is harder as the road is wider and some of the doors are hidden from view behind hedges and walls.
Jess flicks her head up, a snort of air and a quiver of energy rippling through her as Charlie spots the smashed in window next to the open upvc front door. Blood on the windowsill and the curtains are ripped down inside. She goes out wider from the house and turns Jess round to gain a full view.
