March of the Dead (Killing the Dead Book 11)

by Richard Murray

  “If there’s not too many undead?” Jeremy asked. “That motorway goes right past several towns.”

  “There’s bound to be undead there,” Marie added and I waved away their concerns.

  “We’ll deal with that when we have to. Best option is that we can cross the motorway and the zombies come up against it and split to go both directions along its length.”

  “What about the Ferals?” Lisa asked. “They won’t do that, will they?”

  “We’ve not seen them for a couple of days now. Likely they went another direction,” Georgia said.

  “Which might mean they’re ahead of us or behind!” Abi added with a small whimper.

  “More than likely they’re ahead of us, we’re ahead of the main horde and so long as we keep between the two, we’re safe,” I said with a grin. “All we need is somewhere secure and we can hide out while the whole damn horde passes us by. Either way, we can’t do anything till we reach the road so let’s just wait, shall we?”

  They subsided with minimal grumbling and I went back to keeping my attention focused between the road ahead and the horde behind. I didn’t need to mention that the three men I didn’t manage to kill would be somewhere in the area too. I very much doubted that we’d seen the last of them.

  “Sounded almost like your old self there,” Georgia said softly.

  I spared a moment to glance her way and caught her studying me as she walked. Her eyes sparkled as they met mine and she nodded slowly.

  “Definitely more like your old self. What changed?”

  “No idea what you mean,” I said and didn’t bother to stifle my grin.

  “Ah,” she said. “Told you that you just needed to keep at it. I was right, wasn’t I?”

  I just grinned at her and she laughed, a low, melodic sound that had genuine humour in it. She was right and something had changed. The darkness that had shrouded me for so long seemed to have been banished, not entirely, but enough that I could feel the first stirrings of desire inside of me. I’d found my joy once more and I was determined to enjoy every second of it.

  The road we were on eventually crossed over the motorway to connect with a place called Abington, a small village set in the South Lanarkshire hills. Though plenty of foliage hid the majority of the village from us, it was clearly small, likely less than a couple of hundred people.

  Judging by the number of undead that we could see amongst the trees, none of those villagers had survived the end of the world.

  “Damn,” Georgia said in a whisper that carried easily in the still summer air.

  I waved my hand before my face to disrupt the flies that seemed intent on swarming me and glanced over the railing to the motorway below us. It was hard not to let out a groan of frustration.

  Beyond the village was another road before the land rose up into tall hills that were, to be frank, probably more than we could handle considering the state we were in.

  The motorway below us had cars, vans and trucks dotted along its length. Each side of the motorway had three lanes and a hard shoulder. A steel barrier separated the two sides and I could well imagine that the people fleeing towards Glasgow would watch in horror and confusion as they looked to the opposite side of the motorway and saw people fleeing in the other direction.

  Most of them, I supposed, would have run of out petrol long ago and been abandoned. Some had been pulled over to the hard shoulder, others just left where they stopped. Bags and suitcases littered the road and land at either side and a great many undead walked its long length.

  “What now?” Lisa asked in a small voice full of fear.

  “Can’t risk the village,” I said as my head thumped back against the metal railings as I slumped down against them. “Can’t cross the motorway, so it’s back to heading cross country.”

  “Keeping far enough from the motorway that the undead don’t notice us,” Georgia added.

  “We’re boxed in,” Abi said.

  There was an edge of hysteria to her voice that might have irritated me if I hadn’t been so damned weary. She wasn’t wrong though. We couldn’t go south and every time we tried to head east, we were forced back north.

  The West was wide open, but with the horde moving ever northwards and stretching across damn near all of the country, I highly doubted that we’d reach the coast before they caught up with us. Which left us with north-west now, since the motorway effectively stopped us going directly north.

  “Looks like we’re headed towards Glasgow,” I said with a smile that I wouldn’t hide.

  “What’re you so happy about?” Georgia asked.

  That city covered around seventy square miles and housed six hundred thousand people, at the very least. We were being pushed northwards by a horde that may well equal that same number of people and our only destination likely had a half a million or more zombies waiting for us.

  “Nothing,” I said with a laugh that I couldn’t contain. It didn’t matter about the noise I made, the moans of the undead below and around us made sure I wouldn’t be heard.

  “Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

  I didn’t answer as I pushed myself wearily to my feet. It hardly seemed worth the effort to keep going since we had little chance of surviving no matter the direction we took.

  As I looked back to the south, across the rise and fall of the land, they swarmed in their tens of thousands. An unstoppable wave of undead that would tear us apart in mere moments. I touched the hilt of my knife with just the tips of my fingers, brushing its worn surface as I considered whether I should use it on myself rather than be devoured.

  “Screw it!” I muttered. I’d die with it in my hand, killing as many of the zombies as I could.

  Chapter 12

  The next few days passed in a daze for me. I couldn’t speak for my companions, but the slow pace at which they moved and their general lethargy told me much. There were as exhausted as I.

  We followed the motorway as best we could and the going went a little easier as the ground levelled out for a number of miles. The land around us became farmland, overgrown fields and the occasional carcases of the farm animals were ample evidence of a lack of people.

  While we saw occasional groups of undead and even the odd lone creature, we were able to avoid them with little effort. One peculiarity I noticed was when we passed a wind farm. Hundreds of undead had gathered beneath the great blades as they spun, heads turned back to stare up at it.

  For some time, it bothered me as to why they did that and then finally I realised. The sound of the blades as they sheared the air, loud enough when close by that you could almost feel the reverberations in your bones. For the undead, with poor eyesight and attracted to sound, it must have sounded like human activity and they waited patiently for the chance to feed.

  On the evening of the third day, we came to a stream in a small copse of trees, that crossed our path from east to west. The last of the toilet cistern water had been finished off a day and a half before. We’d not had the chance to boil it and as unpleasant as it had been, it was better than nothing.

  As soon as we saw the stream, the group rushed forward in a display of energy that had been lacking for some time. They each fell to their knees on the bank and dipped their hands eagerly into the cold waters.

  “Hold,” I commanded in such a tone of voice that they looked back at me, exasperation and even anger on their faces. I just pointed to the corpse that lay half in the water a little way upstream and their faces fell.

  “Goddammit!” Abi said as her eyes welled with tears.

  “It’s not fair,” Lisa added and I almost laughed at that. Since when had life ever been fair?

  “Mummy…” the little girl managed to say, almost a wail, though a weak one.

  “What if we boil it?” Marie asked.

  Her voice was dull, and it was clear to all that she’d given up hope. Not that that made her any different to most of the group in fact. She turned to her face, dirty and streaked with sweat,
to me. Her hair dishevelled and greasy, stuck to the sides of her face and I gave a shrug as something whispered in the back of my mind.

  They’d begun to look to me for answers and I wasn’t exactly sure why. The change had been slow, but since I’d killed that man outside the farmhouse, they’d looked to me for decisions. Maybe, because I’d taken charge or perhaps because anyone else who’d actually wanted to lead had been killed. Either way, it annoyed me.

  “Do you really think we’ll have time to boil it?” I asked as waved an arm as I pointed in the general direction of the horde that wasn’t too far behind.

  “What about drinking from upstream?” Georgia asked with exasperation. “Surely we can try that.”

  “Fill the bottles,” I said as I wiped one hand down my face.

  The shade from the trees was a welcome relief from the unrelenting heat wave we’d been experiencing. Summer in the UK was hit and miss at best, but it’d been weeks since we’d had so much as a whiff of rain.

  “From upstream?” Abi asked and her lower lip stuck out as I glared at her. It trembled a little as she said, “just asking.”

  “Yeah, from upstream a little ways,” I said as I sucked in a breath and almost choked on a damned fly. I spat it out and ignored the all too brief burst of laughter from the group.

  A moan rose somewhere behind us and the mirth died. It was close, too close and we needed to get moving once more. The few hours of sleep we’d managed were far from enough and the last of the food was long gone.

  “We should kill the fat one,” Georgia said and I frowned her way.

  She’d moved to stand beside me and she wiped a greasy strand of hair from her forehead before absently scratching at her head. She had lice, I’d seen them as we’d walked, little dark parasites moving through her hair. Not that I didn’t, I conceded as I scratched at my beard. One of the side-effects of being filthy and living like tramps I supposed.

  “Why?” I asked and she glanced at me, eyebrows raised in surprise.

  “You need to ask?” I just shrugged and the crease in her brow deepened. “She could feed us for a fair bit and her blood would provide some hydration.”

  “The others would go for that?” I asked with a smirk.

  “Sure! I mean, c’mon,” she said. “How can she still be fat when we’re all starving?”

  “Maybe leave that as a last resort.” I wasn’t entirely sure that she was kidding. “Cannibalism’s not really for me.”

  “There’s worse things to do,” she said with a shrug. “It’s just meat.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “But even so, I’d rather exhaust all options first.”

  “What options?” she snapped and several faces our way. She waved them back to their task. “We’ve seen bugger all houses lately. We’re surrounded by zombies that are getting closer every damn hour and we’re being herded towards a city that will definitely be full of the damned things!”

  “Exactly,” I said. My voice quiet, for her alone. “We’ll be killed before we starve, so no need to resort to eating each other just yet.”

  “Damn you’re pessimistic, aren’t you?” she said with a shake of her head. “We hamstring this lot and leave them here, wailing in pain and while the zombies are distracted, we gain a bit of ground.”

  As plans go, it wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible and I’d contemplated doing the same thing more than once. But, as I’d realised, it would be pointless.

  “It would distract a few of them at best,” I said. “Ten, twenty, perhaps a hundred even. Still, more than enough would just keep moving forwards and we’d be in the same position.”

  “We’d still be better off alone,” she said. “They’re slowing us down.”

  In fairness, she wasn’t wrong. While Abi had complained more than the rest, she’d managed to keep pace with the group which would be fine, but the pace was set by our slowest members. We’d have been much further ahead if we didn’t have the child with us, and the parents knew it.

  They took turns carrying her, and I could admit to a little admiration of how they managed to carry her for so long without rest, but she slowed them down and they, in turn, slowed the rest of us down.

  “We should kill the kid at least,” Georgia said when I didn’t answer. She held up her hands in surrender when I looked at her. “Fine! Bad idea. Who’d have thought you were such a fucking sensitive serial killer.”

  I held my tongue lest I say something that I would regret. I was in no condition to fight her and if she lashed out at me with that ridiculous Japanese trowel that resembled a weapon of war, then I might not be able to defend myself in time.

  “You know I could make it painless,” she said. “If that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “Leave the kid alone,” I said, surprised at the anger laced through my voice when I spoke.

  “For now,” she said without looking at me. “But unless we find somewhere safe soon, I’m cutting away our deadweight.”

  She walked away without looking back and I tapped lightly on the handle of my knife as I considered what to do. She wasn’t wrong but still, I was reticent about slaughtering my companions and I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps some lingering feeling left over from the last group of people I’d been with. I just knew that when I thought of slaughtering them, a memory of one of my friends would intrude.

  “Bottles full,” Lisa said with a wistful look at the bottle of murky water she held.

  “We’ll find a way to filter it,” I said. “Just give us a bit of time.”

  With, thankfully, little complaint, they put the bottles into their bags and looked to me. I approached the water’s edge and stepped in. The cold water rose almost to my knees and was shockingly cold for a moment.

  The stream wasn’t exactly wide, but neither was it narrow. Three metres or so at least and the stream bed was made up of pebbles and larger rocks. The waters murky enough that it was hard to see where I was going.

  I grabbed a clump of grass and pulled myself up the banking on the opposite side. Lisa came next and then Georgia who refused to look my way. Jeremy was next, carrying his daughter and followed by Marie. We all waited as Abi moved slowly, arms outstretched as though trying to balance against the mild pull of the waters.

  “Think the stream will stop them?” Jeremy asked and I shrugged.

  “No idea,” I said. “Probably too many of them to…”

  I cut off at the sound of a splash and a shriek of pain from the woman in the water. She flailed her arms, face twisted into a grimace and I took an irritated step towards the water.

  “What happened?” Lisa asked the flailing woman.

  “Foots stuck!” she called. “It hurts! Help me!”

  With a curse that would have made a sailor blush, Georgia stepped back into the water a moment before I did and waded out to her. She reached down carefully, feeling below the water for the rock and with a grunt, shifted something.

  “Thanks!” Abi said and held out a hand.

  “Get up!” Georgia snapped as she slapped the hand aside. “It’s not bloody deep.”

  “Can’t” the other woman said. “Think it’s twisted.”

  The others on the stream bank shared looks of concern and I turned to them as I said, “start walking. We’ll catch up.”

  Abi held her hand out to me as the others slowly departed. I’m sure that they knew what was going to have to happen but also knew that they didn’t want to be there to do what had to be done.

  “Stand up,” I said as I waved Georgia back.

  “Help me!” Abi pleaded and I shook my head.

  “If you can’t walk on your own, we can’t carry you. It’d be the death of us all,” I said and Georgia nodded her agreement.

  We both stood back as the thickset woman tried to push herself to her feet. She tried several times and with each attempt, she’d whimper and then collapse back into the cold waters.

  She glared at me defiantly and said, “see! I can’t fucking do it.”

>   I stared at her a moment as she sat with arms crossed and a petulant look on her face and I realised how much I loathed the pathetic creature. I glanced at Georgia and raised one eyebrow.

  “Nah, you do it,” she said and the corners of her mouth lifted as the other woman gawped at the two of us.

  Without anything else needing to be said, I stepped forward and pulled my knife free of its sheath. There was a single, loud shriek and then silence as the rushing waters around me turned red.

  “Get her bag,” Georgia said and I nodded as I pulled the straps free and lifted the soaked bag from the water.

  “Let’s go,” I said and she reached out, one hand resting on my arm for a moment as she smiled.

  “Feel better?”

  “Sure,” I lied as I pulled away and waded over to the banking.

  As I pulled myself up, I couldn’t help but wonder where the joy had gone. It’d been there just days before when I’d killed that man but as my knife entered the flesh of the loathsome woman, I’d felt nothing.

  The scratching at the back of my mind began once again as I pulled myself up onto the banking and I did my best to ignore it as I set off after the others.

  Chapter 13

  They didn’t catch up with us that night and after barely an hours exhausted sleep, we kept on moving.

  No one had said anything when we’d caught up with the group, though Lisa had a teary gaze as she looked at us with a shudder. It’d had to be done and even they must have realised that.

  We spent a good portion of the morning crossing fields that would have, at one time, held livestock or crops. Stone walls surrounded them and while they wouldn’t deter the undead for long, each wall would slow them just a little bit, until enough of them were pressed up against it to push it over. That gave us time, which was something we sorely needed.

  Towards noon we entered some woods and I began to relax a little. When I looked back to the south, I couldn’t see any sign of the undead and I was mildly optimistic that the stream combined with the numerous walls, had slowed them down.