The Undead Day Nineteen

by Haywood, RR

  Fifty metres on and two small side streets leading off either side of the wide main road. Again she has to slow down to look for the trail. Instinct tells her to keep on the main road but if the infection is seeking the survivors then it could be following any manner of route. She goes to the left, peering down and round and up at the parked vehicles left abandoned further into the small road. No blood. She circles round then over to the mouth of the other small junction bordered on both sides by low solid panel fencing as Jess tosses her head and snorts.

  ‘Easy,’ Charlie murmurs, her eyes fixed on the road trying to find the trail. Jess back steps nervously, lifting her feet high and looking for a way out. Charlie senses the fear and twitches the reins to hold the horse steady. Something must be in that side road. She clicks and pushes Jess further into the junction with her own senses thrumming to detect any sound or motion.

  They come from both sides. Two men that go up and over the low solid panel fences to charge snarling at the horse who bursts on to run deeper into the side road as another runs out from a garden ahead to race down the middle towards them.

  Charlie’s heart ramps to the fight at hand. On the field now. The other players are going for the ball and she lifts her backside from instinct to ride the horse’s motion. Her left hand gripping the reins and her right flicking the axe up from the buckle that lifts high to be gripped on the shaft and twirled over so the head sinks towards the ground. ‘COME ON,’ Charlie shouts, her voice booming into the quietness of the street that makes Jess focus as the fear slides away to the power of the game. Seventy kilos of a freshly turned adult female against seven hundred kilos of a riot trained horse with a bad temper and the end result was written in the stars from the second the infected woman chose this course of conduct.

  The axe swishes, a polo mallet ready to slam home. The horse glares, chomping at the bit as her legs open the stride. One in front and two behind. Charlie’s eyes glare unblinking and fixed. Her lips pulling back with a pulsing energy that radiates from every pore of her body.

  ‘INTO HER,’ Charlie’s words are not needed but she screams them anyway. She screams to vent that instant surge of pure fury coursing through her veins. Horse and human meet. The undead opening her mouth for a bite and finding a head battering her to the side that sends her spinning as the axe swishes with a perfectly timed swoosh to cleave through a skull that explodes with a burst of brain and bone. On they go, riding through the kill and building speed to clear distance from the two behind.

  The wide junction at the end looms and in that space she eases the speed to turn the horse who pivots round to face back down. A pause. Jess snorts and lifts her front legs to go. She wants to go. She wants to charge them down. Charlie holds, letting the energy bunch up for the thrill of the explosion of power. ‘COME ON,’ she flicks the reins and that’s all Jess needs. She bursts on, legs working to stride out.

  Two incoming. Two males both with heavy blood stains on their groins and both bigger and heavier than the woman now lying dead in the road with her head split open.

  Charlie roars again into the air, galloping with her heart thrilling as she rides the horse who holds that straight line.

  They charge at each other. The infected men side by side and Jess staring at the gap between the two. Charlie eases back on the reins, a gentle tug that tells Jess they are not going to power through them this time. This is something else. Jess can sense it. She feels the instinct of the play about to happen but she can stop on a sixpence. Let me have speed, let me use my power. The counter instinct flows, Charlie lets her have the lead.

  They close down in a few seconds that seem to stretch for eternity. The men snarling with bloody strands of saliva dangling from open mouths that stretch wide as they howl and snarl with clawed hands and eyes blazing red. The axe spins over, turning in a hand that times the point of impact. Everything on instinct now. No time for words or instructions or to twitch the reins and alter course. The commitment is here and at the last second Jess shows she can truly stop on a sixpence. She anchors on. Charlie’s thighs lock tight. She rears up. Charlie holds the rein and lifts higher to ride the rise beneath her. Jess’s front feet strike the man on the right, twisting as she lifts to give seven hundred kilos of weight to a body that cannot withstand such an impact and as he falls so Charlie brings the axe down from the apex of the swing. The blade bites deep into the chest and her grip holds true as the horse takes her on and through the man who gets split in two and sinks down with his ribcage splintered open.

  Three down. Three kills and Jess turns quickly, dancing round as Charlie glares to check all three stay down. Jess makes sure they do and moves to trample the soft flesh with hooves that pop heads open.

  ‘CONTACT CONTACT…THREE DOWN…’

  ‘COMING…WHERE ARE YOU?’

  A flash of movement and another streak of a blur of movement as an infected runs sprinting from a house at the end of the street, running to gain the main road and away out of sight.

  ‘ON,’ Charlie spurs Jess who spots the prey to be hunted. ‘COME ON…’

  A trot to a canter to a gallop in a few strides and Jess holds the middle of the road, watching the man run to the right side.

  Charlie bursts from the side street onto the main road, in her peripheral vision she spots the team running towards her with the three vehicles behind them. No time to stop. No time for orders from Mr Howie. He told her to find them and she lets Jess take the corner to open back up to chase the man sprinting down the pavement on the right side of the road.

  ‘GET THAT FUCKER CHARLIE,’ Howie’s voice urging her on. His desire to kill them reaching out to drive her into the fight. His confidence in her hardening her own resolve even greater than it was.

  ‘MEREDITH WITH YOU CHARLIE…’ Another voice in her ear, she can’t tell who but she flicks her head to see the dog streaking low to join the hunt.

  There is only this. This second when every tiny movement counts and you can’t think about it. You don’t have time. Ride the horse. Feel the motion with instinct from your gut. Let me carry you, do not drive me. Charlie relaxes that tiny bit, letting the horse have her way. More. Let me run. Charlie gives another fraction of freedom and if Jess had speed before she takes it more now and it builds as Charlie settles into the motion, gripping the reins one handed. You are too high. Charlie lowers her body closer to the horse. Lower. She lowers more, the axe held out to her right. LOWER. LET US WORK.

  Charlie grunts and sinks down like a jockey on the flat of the final furlough. The change is palpable. A sense of a great animal doing every inch of work to hold herself balanced with the weight central on her back. Charlie can sense Jess’s irritation at the saddle. She doesn’t like it. She wants it gone but you can’t remove a saddle mid gallop. She senses something else too and looks over her right shoulder to see Meredith veering between two parked cars to gain the pavement in a direct line behind the prey.

  They hold the road. The dog takes the pavement. Charlie is part of, but not within, the thing that is happening between the two animals.

  The infected is fast. He had distance but the fastest man cannot ever hope to outrun a horse or a dog and as the houses on the left end so he veers out to cross the road to vault the low fence to the town’s playing fields of multi-use pitches with bi-functioning posts used as football and rugby goals. Open flat land with well-tended turf and the infected doesn’t stand a chance.

  Jess veers behind him, her eyes fixed on the fence as Meredith sprints at her side and together they rise from power given from back legs that lift front legs to clear the fence and land easy mid-stride the other side. Charlie feels the lift and the thrill of it is immense. The surging rise and the drop like going fast over a bridge or the drop on a rollercoaster ride. Then they’re on grass, on turf, on a natural surface that gives a grip that cannot be beaten.

  Dog and horse equal in speed and it’s like the man is standing still. There is nowhere for him to go. He doesn’t turn to look but
runs on as Jess gives another burst of speed that slams him to the side to be taken by the dog already in flight. Meredith latches on and lets the momentum carry her forward taking the mouthful of throat with her. She lands and turns so fast she can see the undead sinking down with sprays of arterial blood jetting from his ruined neck. Jess eases the speed to turn and face back to the dog standing over her kill. Her head tosses. Her feet dragging clods of earth up. Meredith spins round again, her whole body showing the direction of the thing she sees on the far side of the fields.

  ‘Got him,’ Charlie rushes the words out, her heart still thrilling. It looked like the horse slammed the man into the path of the dog who was already leaping up to take him down. It was so fast. A blur in her mind. They were running almost flat out. Jess slammed him. The dog took him. That’s not possible. It’s not. It couldn’t have happened. It was fluke. The horse struck him and Meredith took him down. It was the speed of reaction instead of a planned series of moves.

  ‘Well done, where are you?’

  ‘Playing fields,’ Charlie pants, ‘down the road on the left…there are more. I can see them on the other side of the fields.’

  ‘Wait for us,’ Howie’s voice panting from running so hard.

  ‘I can take them,’ Charlie says, counting the figures in the distance.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Four or five…I can take them…’

  ‘Sure? Don’t be cocky…’

  ‘I’m sure. I can take them, Mr Howie. If it’s too much I will pull back.’

  ‘Go then…kill ‘em all,’ a growl of a voice that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Jess rears, lifting her feet inches to slam back down as Meredith gives voice to throw her deep bark out in warning of what is about to come.

  A twitch of her heels and they set off. Meredith and Jess shoulder to shoulder as they go through the gears to build to a sprint and Charlie lowers down with the instinct to let the horse go.

  The noise is amazing. The sound of hooves thudding on grass. Five of them standing still and not moving. See us. Come for us. Follow us. It doesn’t matter that she plays into the game being set for them. All that matters is to be there to end them to stop them killing others.

  ‘Go then…kill ‘em all.’

  ‘Oh gosh this will never do,’ Reginald speeds up as Howie’s voice comes through the radio dumped on the table amongst the opened maps, sheets of paper, guide books and pens. The drone now forgotten on the floor of the van with the battery on charge from the 12 volt power supply outlet.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Kyle calls back having heard the mutterings from the back through the wedged open door.

  ‘No I am not okay. None of us are okay. We’re all fools rushing madly into something we know nothing about. I am most certainly not okay. Seriously, I ask you, how can anyone work in this situation? He goes charging off at the first sight of them and god forbid what the consequences might be. I do hope Charlotte is okay. I like Charlotte. She is a bright girl,’ he stands up then sinks back into the chair as he flattens the map out to view down at the town they are in.

  ‘The scale is too great,’ he huffs and goes back to the basic street map he found in one of the guidebooks taken from the golf hotel, ‘playing field…did Charlotte say she was on a playing field?’

  ‘She did,’ Kyle replies, holding the van at a low speed and following the bus in front of them.

  ‘Playing fields,’ Reginald flicks between the ordnance survey map and guidebook, ‘got it. We finally have a reference as to where we actually are in this awful horrid town. Let me see. This is the playing field but…oh gosh, oh gosh darned damn and gosh. What direction are we facing?’

  ‘I don’t know, Reginald,’ Kyle says, turning in his seat to look at the array of maps and books on the table.

  ‘Anyone? What direction are we heading in? Does anyone have a compass?’

  ‘North east,’ Dave’s voice blares through as dull as ever.

  ‘Thank you, you are sure? Do you have a compass?’

  No reply.

  ‘I think they are busy running,’ Kyle says.

  ‘North east, playing field is here and we are going to the side of it heading in a north easterly direction,’ he holds the blade of his hand down to align with the compass drawing in the corner of the map. ‘Right yes, going in from this side,’ he traces across the playing field to the other side and looks down at the densely packed lines. ‘Charlotte, it’s Reginald. You are heading towards the dead centre of town. The start of the main road through borders the edge of the playing field.’

  ‘GOT IT… COME ON JESS!’

  ‘Oh my,’ Reginald releases the long exhalation of air. The High Street runs at an angle away from the fields. A long straight Roman road that intersects another wide road that leads to the dual carriageway out of town and then all the way back onto the motorway. Fields and open land stretch out on all sides of the town. ‘What’s here?’ Reginald mutters. His eyes flicking faster and faster to pick out the signs for the churches, the pubs the Post Offices, police station, pharmacies. ‘Why are we being drawn here?’

  Go back to the beginning and start again. The water was infected. People in the hotel drank the water and killed Neal. Mr Howie wanted to be sure it was the water so they found the treatment centre. Once that was confirmed, not that he needed to confirm as Reginald knew he was right but then people always want to know for sure, anyway, once that was confirmed he wanted to come into the town and warn any survivors not to drink the water.

  The infection did not know where they were which is why it chose to infect the water for the whole of the area to target one man. Neal. Neal is dead so the objective is accomplished. He blinks and stands up to rub the temples of his forehead. The objective is accomplished. The infection has reverted to type and, knowing where the other survivors are, has set to infect and turn them. That’s it.

  ‘It can’t be,’ Reginald mutters, ‘that can’t be it…’ Why this song and dance of penises and body parts and bodies left lying. That infected man ran away from Charlie too. They don’t run away. They run towards to at least have a go at infecting someone. It might have got on the minibus or at least tried to get on the minibus. Why run off? This is a puzzle without a solution. He blinks and freezes. A puzzle without a solution requires a very advanced level of conscious intelligence. What came first, the chicken or the egg? That simple question has confounded scientists for years and still they cannot agree as to the answer. To even begin to contemplate the answer requires a level of abstract thought that the other player simply doesn’t have yet. He chuckles with the sudden thought of putting the infection in front of a Picasso and walking off as it crumbles to the floor in complete confusion of a mind so genuinely advanced that only those on the same wave length can truly appreciate it.

  There must be an objective. What is the objective? What is the purpose of keeping Mr Howie and his intrepid exploring warriors so busy?

  ‘Oh gosh,’ he slumps into the chair, his eyes widening in realisation.

  ‘Going over a bump,’ Kyle calls out, driving the van over the kerb and through the smashed down fence already preceded by the Saxon and minibus.

  ‘Got him.’

  ‘Yes,’ I shout with the others all grinning with malicious delight at the victorious tone in Charlie’s voice. ‘Well done, where are you?’

  ‘Playing fields, down the road on the left…there are more. I can see them on the other side of the fields.’

  ‘Wait for us,’ I speed up and breathe hard from the extra expenditure of energy.

  ‘I can take them.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Four or five…I can take them…’

  ‘Sure? Don’t be cocky…’

  ‘I’m sure. I can take them, Mr Howie. If it’s too much I will pull back.’

  The sight of Charlie galloping out of the side road and turning so tight to give chase to the infected man running away is a sight that will stay with me in the catalogue of
images seared into my brain since this all began. The axe swinging in her hand and her backside lifted from the saddle as she flowed with the motion of Jess banking at what looked like an impossible angle. Meredith couldn’t hold herself back and if I could run like Meredith I would have been up there with them. We all would have. The thrill of the chase is on us. The speed they went down that road was stunning.

  We spared a second to view the body on the floor and the limbs ripped from sockets to point to a house that we ignore. Whatever is inside can fuck off. We’re chasing and not wasting time by stopping to look at dead dicks flopping about on the floor.

  For a second I was going to refuse her request to go after them. Not being separated is our first rule now but this is different. Having a horse is a game changer and anyway, the tone of Charlie’s voice told me all I needed to know that she could handle it.

  ‘Go then…kill ‘em all.’ I turn to see Paula heaving for breath and Clarence bent double with his hands on his knees. ‘Paula, Clarence, on the bus. Everyone else ditch heavy kit. We’re going faster now.’

  Bags get pulled from backs to be thrown in the back of the Saxon. The lads sweating with flushed faces but they’ve got legs left. I can see it. I can feel it. I strip my own bag off and ditch it in the back while glancing to Blinky who looks like she’s only just warmed up. She’s like Dave with a body already honed to physical supremacy with a heart, lungs and muscles used to sustained intense exercise.

  ‘Fuck me I feel two stone lighter,’ Nick says rolling his shoulders, ‘rifles or hand weapons?’

  ‘Hand weapons, Roy? You okay?’

  ‘I am,’ he replies, passing his bag to Paula on the bus, ‘be ready to feed me arrows.’

  ‘Will,’ she says, still gasping for air, ‘go…’

  ‘GO,’ I shout and we’re off. Running down the road feeling lighter and faster. The lads flanking the bus. Dave and Mo just behind me. Roy now running near the bus door. We pace into a stride just below a sprint. Legs pumping and eyes streaming tears whipped out by the wind rushing past our faces.