Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel]

by Meadows, Carl

  And shit, did I need it with what came next.

  Every flat was a horror story, and I can’t recount them all, but this one was—without doubt—the worst of them. It will haunt me to the end of my days.

  On the top floor, number nine, lived a young couple in their late twenties, I’d estimate. It would have been a homely place once, looking at the previously soft pastel colours, the big comfy sofa with cushions big enough for a toddler to use as their own personal bounce house, and a wall covered in photos as an homage to the travels of their youth. They were pictures of sunshine and laughter, of good times with friends in the far flung corners of the globe, as they lived a life of youthful adventure before the realities of life started to take hold; careers, house, kids, all that stuff.

  Nate breached the door and I lifted the barrel of the SA80 so it didn’t point at him and he moved into the little hallway. We knew there was undead in there, because the place was drowned by that hell-stench, thick and bitter, violating every sense and turning the saliva on your tongue to bile.

  The flats were very open plan, so they were pretty easy to clear quickly, with the kitchen and living room all in one large space, with doors off to a master bedroom, a bathroom and a second smaller bedroom, which was little more use than a walk in wardrobe, storage space, or office.

  I knew it was bad when I heard Nate swear.

  I’ve never seen anything really faze him. I imagine he’s seen some terrible things in the service, things he’ll never be able to unsee, but I always thought that made him harder somehow. Seeing the things he’s seen, that he refuses to talk about, I thought made him that little bit more resilient each time so he could deal with the next dreadful scene he had to witness.

  Nothing, absolutely nothing, prepares anyone for this, though. It affected Nate so much, his gun stayed silent and that fact led to a dark fascination taking hold of me. You know the one I mean. Someone says, “Don’t look, it’ll make you sick,” so you just have to look, because that little part of you simply has to know why it’s so bad.

  I shuffled up behind him, peering round the width of his shoulder, and my world was forever changed.

  The couple had turned towards us after the breach, and they were on the far side of the room, so our horrified pause wasn’t imminently lethal, but my mind struggled with what my eyes could clearly see.

  The woman had been pregnant. Heavily pregnant. Like, almost at term pregnant.

  The flat was awash with blood, a canvas splashed crimson by the insane, but my eyes were only for the woman.

  Her belly was torn open and within the ragged bloody slit of the wound, I saw a tiny arm.

  Moving.

  Grasping at the air.

  Reaching out of the wound towards us.

  All I can think is that this woman, so close to giving birth, suffered the horror of her baby dying in her womb. And it turned, tearing her apart with dark, unnatural strength.

  From within.

  There were no other wounds on her, and the blood had pooled thick and dark around the couch. She must have lain there, bleeding, both panicking as they realised something was going horribly wrong with the pregnancy, and then the screaming would have started, her husband losing his fucking mind as he watched his wife being ripped apart by their unborn, undead child.

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  The lower half of her face was matted with old, dark blood, the front of the guy’s throat missing a mouthful of flesh. They both stumbled towards us, the woman’s gait awkward as she carried the weight of her monstrous spawn.

  I was crying by this time, almost babbling on the edge of madness, my eyes fixed to that tiny, malevolent limb as it hungrily reached for us.

  The bark of Nate’s rifle shocked me back to life, the old dog recovering his wits and getting back to business. He dropped the husband, turned the rifle to the woman, and squeezed off a second round that cut her strings.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off it, even though I was praying to whatever force would listen to not have that child’s head emerge from the wound. I could still see the rippling of the undead flesh on the woman’s belly. Putting her down hadn’t affected the horror within, and if that tiny head emerged from the bloody wound in her stomach, I think my mind would have broken.

  With one arm, Nate gently pushed me back.

  “Back in the hall, kid,” he said softly. He’d lowered the rifle, his right hand slowly drawing the Glock from his hip. “I’ll take care of this.”

  I obeyed, but my eyes were still on him as he moved further into the room. I couldn’t see the woman’s motionless body anymore, but I watched Nate intently. The pistol was in his hand, pointed down towards her corpse, and I knew where he was aiming. I could just see part of him, and once his aim was true, he turned his head away.

  He rubbed a weary hand over his face, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

  No gunshot has ever jarred me like that one did. The very marrow of my bones felt like it had been washed out by ice water. Every part of me went cold, every tiny muscle spasmed in a shiver of revulsion. It wasn’t just a shot I heard; it was one I felt reverberate in every part of me.

  Nate stepped out of the apartment and gently closed the door behind him.

  I looked at him and for the first time in my life, I saw the glisten of barely held tears in his eyes. This thundering block of granite, a man that made Rambo look like a whiny little bitch, had been cut to the core by what he’d seen, and the sight of his distress cracked me.

  He sensed it the moment our eyes met. His rifle was slung down to his side and the Glock was returned to his hip, and he just opened his arms. I smashed into him, wrapping my arms round his waist as I cried out all the grief for what we had seen, and what had been lost behind door number nine.

  I’ve got to take a break. Bringing all that up again, reliving it all, writing it down; it’s left me hollow. It needed to be recorded, because if we ever win this war and we look back, anyone who ever reads this has to know what we lost. Has to know why we had to fight.

  This isn’t just a world overrun by the dead. It’s a world of a billion stories, with so many of them ending in tragedy, or loneliness, or mind-bending horror.

  When you live in the graveyard, you can’t weep for everyone, but that young couple, with their pictures of happiness and a future before them, deserved somebody’s tears.

  I gave them mine.

  August 20th, 2010

  THE DOG’S BOLLOCKS

  I took the rest of the day to sort my head out, and while I don’t really feel better—as I don’t think I ever will again after seeing that—I’m together enough to get back to recounting our black op against Bancroft. This is largely thanks to Freya’s boundless compassion and fussing over us both yesterday. I had a hot beverage in my hand every time I thought about making one, and Freya walked round the perimeter of the lodge’s ground with me, our arms linked, just being there. It was too nice a day, sunny and warm, and I needed light and air to banish the choking darkness of my thoughts.

  Love that girl.

  Particles is also a fucking champ. Little dude fussed over me like a complete mentalist. He knew I was off and was determined to make me laugh with his short-legged antics and intense desire to lick my face until he’d banished my misery.

  Love that little guy.

  So, yes, back to the op.

  We spent a couple of days sorting out Nate’s numerous perches and escape routes for when he had to displace, then decided to get on with the op. We got lucky, largely because of Mark’s good intel of two-week fuel runs, and I was lying in our observation post when I saw a small convoy start to assemble.

  Four cars, each with three armed thugs, and Mark driving the little baby tanker. Two cars in front, two at the back. Now was the real test of whether Nate’s theory of them going for the same station was correct.

  I relayed this information to Nate over the radio. I knew they weren’t on our channel, because I could see the passenger
in the lead car talking into his handset, so I felt safe in just relaying it all without the need for code.

  “Eyes up, Nate. They’re assembling, channel is safe, I can see them using comms.”

  I felt so professional.

  “Copy. Totals?”

  “Convoy, two vehicles in front of tanker, two at rear, three men in each and the tanker driver. Twelve hostiles.”

  “Loadout?”

  “Couldn’t see all, but minimum four rifles. All carrying at the hip.”

  “Copy that.”

  “Hey Nate, wanna hear a joke?”

  “This isn’t the time,” he chided.

  “Oh cheer up, buttercup,” I said with a mock huff, trying to sound all offended. “It’s a good one.”

  There was a momentary pause. “Okay, I’ll bite,” he said finally, his tone suggesting he was already regretting it.

  “A Roman soldier walks into a bar, holds up two fingers and says, ‘Five beers please!’”

  Nate clicked the talk button in readiness to bollock me, but as the punchline dropped, he let go of the button. He wasn’t quick enough though, and I just caught a brief snapshot of his throaty laughter across the radio. When he finally did click the mic again, I could hear the smile in his tone.

  “Business now, Erin,” he said, but my work was done. Shit, we both just needed a giggle after the gloom of the previous days, and it put me in a better frame of mind.

  As the convoy rolled out the gates, I gave Nate the heads up, then settled down to observe the distinctly weakened manpower within the compound.

  Twenty minutes later, I heard the distant sound of a gunshot. There’s no ambient sound anymore, no traffic or humdrum of daily existence, and the echo of Nate’s opening shot carried on the wind. It was distant, but it was so invasive to the silence, I caught it immediately.

  So did the compound.

  In fairness, they got their heads up from the radio blaring to life, and their QRF rallied quickly as Nate said they would. Another eight men ran to a pickup, armed with an assortment of shotguns and handguns. That’s when I realised that some of them weren’t handguns. They were the wrong shape.

  They were machine pistols. Uzis. Maybe not actual Uzis, but similar. Light, handheld machine pistols that would spit bullets at a rapid rate.

  “QRF of eight hostiles. No SA80’s, but shotguns, handguns and I think machine pistols. Assembling in a pickup now.”

  “Displacing under fire,” came Nate’s shout over the radio, the rattle of gunfire making his words hard to pick out. “Three hostiles down but nine still standing. Two of them have training. Can’t do another eight right now, Erin.”

  “Copy.”

  I don’t think Nate meant, “hey Erin, I need you to take the QRF on single-handed, there’s a good girl,” but that’s what my brain heard.

  Nate could handle himself. They were untrained and probably just spraying everywhere, but the two with training suggested Nate thought they had military service behind them. That would make sense; soldiers coming back from service being chewed and spat out by a civilian life they couldn’t function in, it’s unsurprising that Bancroft would recruit men of such obvious martial skill into his ranks.

  Previously, he’d kept those aces hidden, but now Nate was unexpectedly having to deal with two men who knew how to handle those weapons and would have basic tactical awareness. Bancroft had sent his big guns to protect the fuel run. Another eight men added to that mix might mean bad things for Nate. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, so I did what any mildly dysfunctional person would in that situation.

  I acted entirely on emotion, applied no common sense, did something spectacularly reckless, and lucked out.

  Picking up my gear, I gave it legs through the trees while the QRF was assembling. They had to come down that country road and they couldn’t do it at speed because of how bumpy it was, pickup or not, as it would smash the suspension to all hell, not to mention probably throw the six guys in the back of the pickup holding on for dear life.

  So, I ran like the fucking wind, Nate’s lessons swirling through my head.

  “If you have to take a vehicle, then stop it if you can,” he said, a ghostly image of him floating above my head as I recalled his wisdom. Okay, so that didn’t happen, but if they ever make a movie of my life, I want that in the scene.

  Stop the vehicle, so you have a stationary target and they can’t readily accelerate. Make them sitting ducks.

  Thundering through the trees, I headed at a diagonal towards that exit road. I’d never make it to the end of it before them, so my eyes were raking the ground as I neared the trail, before finally landing on what I was looking for.

  Picking up a thick broken bough from the earth, I stepped out from the trees and laid it across the road. Not fully, to make it obvious, but in a fashion where it looked like it could have fallen from one of the overhanging trees. There wasn’t enough space to go round it, and it was too thick to simply drive over, so someone from the back would no doubt jump out to throw it aside.

  It had to look natural, and I think I did an okay job. Then I ran a little further down the trail, back into the trees, grabbed a load of branches and pulled them over my head and upper body, just popping the end of the rifle out and aiming right at the spot the pickup would come down.

  I saw it appear round the bend at the top, rolling ever closer towards me. All I could think then was, “What the actual fuck are you thinking, Lockey?”

  I had a few weeks training with the rifle, I was okay, but I wasn’t a fucking lethal sniper like Nate. Still, he’d taught me the basics of standing, kneeling, and lying down while firing, and I made sure the rifle was set to semi. One bullet at a time, burst in a pinch, but that muzzle ride was a bitch, so avoid if possible. Pick your shots. Make them count.

  Christ, my heart was like a thunderstorm in my chest from the run, and the surge of adrenalin from what I was about to do.

  The pickup edged ever closer and as it neared, I aimed down the iron sight for the driver. Keep the vehicle motionless. Don’t let them escape.

  I was about to kill a living breathing man, and I wondered if I was going to freeze.

  The truck stopped, one man tossing his shotgun to a buddy while he jumped out of the pickup’s rear. As he leaned down to move the log, all I heard in my memory was Nate under fire and knew I couldn’t hesitate.

  The bullet smacked through the windscreen, punching through that little hollow at the bottom of the throat and just above the sternum. I couldn’t make that shot again if I tried, but holy shit, that first one went true.

  The first gunshot scared the shit out of everyone, disbelief causing them to panic, having no idea where the shot came from, so I moved the barrel slightly, aiming at the guy that had just thrown the log from the road in panic. As he turned to get back to the truck in a flurry of arms and legs, I squeezed off a second round, taking him low in the back. Pretty sure I hit the kidney and he went down like a half-ton sack of shit. He didn’t move.

  Well, not immediately anyway.

  There were shouts and cries from the back of the truck. The QRF wasn’t the elite, thank fuck. They were expecting to just put more boots on the ground and be directed against the lone gunman terrorising them. Instead, they got a lunatic amateur (though a quick study) that had no idea what she was doing. Plus, they weren’t that far away.

  They knew I was ahead of them somewhere, seeing as how the first round had gone through the windscreen. I kept my head down, wincing, as one guy looped his machine pistol over the top of the cab and just let out a random unsighted spray. I wasn’t worried, because he was shooting so high and I was flat on my belly, but still, that rattle of gunfire gave me a shiver. Flashback central to Shooty in his sniper perch; being under fire is no fun. Knowing someone is trying to actively kill you with high speed lead is an arse twitcher.

  There was lots of shouting, lots of screaming down their radio that they were taking fire, and I muttered a bit of profa
nity to myself. The last thing I needed was QRF revision two coming down the road, adding even more bodies to the fight, so I had to take Nate’s plan and displace. I couldn’t get an angle on them all cowering behind the truck, so I had to move. First thing first though, keep their heads down.

  I switched the rifle to burst, sending two volleys downrange at them, the bullets raking the cab and one side of the truck. Nate wasn’t fucking kidding; that muzzle ride is a bitch, and I won’t be doing that again if I can help it. I couldn’t aim for shit. I did, however, get the bit of luck I needed when the two guys I’d put down… awakened.

  The one on the floor with a hole in his kidney twitched and started to rise, while the inside of the cab suddenly filled with screaming, as the driver reanimated and pounced on the passenger, who had been crouching in the footwell to avoid being shot. A spray of crimson painted the inside of the cab, the screams chilling, as the driver ravaged his buddy in the tiny confines of the truck. Nasty. Three down.

  The first guy I dropped rose silently to full height, completely unseen. I think the guy who shot over the top of the cab must have jumped down behind the tail with the rest of them after unloading, so five of them were crouched round the truck’s rear, otherwise No Kidney would have been spotted immediately.

  Instead, he shambled towards the truck’s rear, drawn to their panicked jabbering and one poor bastard saw the monster too late. As he peeped around the back of the truck, his intent to try and spy my position, his face collapsed in horror as he found his undead comrade only feet away. Before he could raise an alarm or bring a weapon to bear, the thing peeled back its lips and accelerated as they do in that last moment of ravenous hate. The zombie fell on him, mouth tearing at flesh.

  Now, when a zombie suddenly appears in a pack of you, I’m pretty sure your fight or flight mode kicks in and you work on instinct. Seeing a hungry undead suddenly pounce on one of them, the other four reflexively scattered. I switched back to semi and lined up the sight on one guy raising his shotgun to put the monster down, but I squeezed the trigger before he could fire, aiming for centre mass. My shot was off, it was too low, but it ripped right through where his appendix should be. He dropped, screaming in agony, the sound jarring my ears.