“Toby.” I called.
“I see them.” He replied.
“Only five.” Pat added as he hefted his lump hammer in one meaty hand.
The vans were coming closer the sound of their engines accompanied by the occasional shriek of metal scraping against a wall and the zombies had no doubt been drawn to us by that. Once they saw the three people standing opposite though they changed direction and came straight at us, moving clumsily between the parked cars.
I was eager to prove to myself that I was still able to kill as cleanly and confidently as I had done before so I was the first to meet the zombies. I swayed back from a wild swing of the zombies arms and then swung forward and drove my knife blade up beneath its jaw and into its brain. It fell without a sound and took my knife with it.
Pat was beside me and swinging his hammer to crush the skull of the next as I reached down and fumbled with the handle of my knife as I tried to pull it free. By the time I had managed to withdraw it from the corpse and stand back up, the rest of the zombies were dead.
“You ok?” Pat asked and I flushed and gripped the knife tighter.
“I’m fine.” I muttered before walking away to continue along the street.
I was far from fine. Once again I had proven inept at that one thing I had always been so good at and enjoyed so much. I tried to search back to when I had first started to have the problems and soon came to the realisation that it was after I had killed the deserters.
It didn’t tell me why I was having problems but it gave me something to go on and if nothing else a place to start as I tried to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it.
The third street was clear and aside from a momentary concern about the corner we managed to proceed along it with little issue. As we turned into the fourth street the van with Cass, Gregg and Vanessa became stuck, caught between the tight corner and two cars.
“Damn.” Pat said as he heard the screech of the metal as the van tried to push its way past.
“May as well see what we can do to help.” Toby said with a sour look of his own at the noise.
Lily and the others in her van couldn’t open their doors to get out and help so they just wound down the window as we passed them on the road, walking between the rows of cars.
“Keep moving to the end of the road.” Toby said and Gabby nodded.
“We’ll see if we can help... oh hell.” Pat said as he rounded the corner.
I was walking right behind him and soon saw the reason for his alarm, a whole host of zombies.
“Get the van moving.” I said to Pat and he nodded and crossed to speak to Gregg who seemed to be driving while Toby walked up to stand beside me.
“Doesn’t look good.” he said in what appeared to be a massive understatement.
“Certainly doesn’t.” I agreed.
“Help me push these cars.” Pat grunted as he smashed a window on the nearest car.
He reached in and finding no keys, released the hand brake. Gregg reversed the van enough that it wasn’t pressed right up against the car and then together the three of us got in front of the vehicle and pushed against it.
There wasn’t much space between the cars but with a lot of effort and Pat steering the car with one arm, we managed to move back and then forth and then back again. Several minutes effort and we had less than an inch of extra space and the moans of the undead were audible over the engine.
“Is it enough?” I asked.
“Let’s hope so.” Pat said before signalling Gregg.
I could see the zombies getting closer with several seeming almost to run and I experienced a strange feeling of disquiet as I realised they were the faster, fresher ones.
We hadn’t encountered more than a couple of them at a time and now we potentially had seven or eight moving rapidly toward us while most of our group were trapped in vans they couldn’t get out of to help us.
When I tore my gaze away from the approaching mass of undead, I could see Gregg slowly inching forward with Pat directing as best he could from the front of the van. Toby moved up to stand beside me.
“We don’t have enough time.” he said and I had to agree.
Kalam, Dale and Tameka in the final van were beginning to look a little panicky as they watched the advance in the side mirror. They were gesturing and shouting as the first of the zombies arrived at the back of their van.
“They can climb.” Toby said with surprise, as we watched the first of the fresh looking zombies jump and catch the back of the van before pulling itself up. The rest of them climbed on the cars or jogged between. I gripped my knife tightly and drank down a deep breath of the frigid air.
“Van’s clear.” Pat yelled as I met the first zombie to reach me.
The space between the cars in the road was less than two feet in width which meant I could go forwards or backwards, I chose to advance. I stepped into its embrace with my forearm pressed against its neck to keep away those teeth.
I swung my knife around towards its skull but was deflected by its arm as it clawed at me. My second swing went better and my blade broke through its skull with an audible crack. It fell still against me and I pushed it away as the next arrived.
The zombie that had clambered over the van was perched above the cab crashing its fists against the windscreen as those inside screamed in terror. Toby was busy with an enemy of his own and Pat was rushing forward with his hammer raised.
My booted foot caught the zombie in the stomach and knocked it back, I kicked again at its legs and it jumped backwards causing my foot to connect painfully with the back door of a dark blue car.
Before I could regain my balance it leapt on me and pushed me to the snow covered ground. I lay beneath it, struggling to keep its rotten mouth away from my uncovered face. It seemed stronger than those I had fought before or perhaps I was weaker. Either way I was about to die at the hands of a zombie and I could think of nothing more embarrassing.
Toby caught it a solid blow on the side of its head and it became limp in my grasp. I had been wrong; there was something more embarrassing than being killed by a zombie. To make things worse he helped push the stinking carcass off of me and held out a hand to pull me to my feet.
I ignored his outstretched hand and pulled myself up against the side of a car in time to see Pat finish off another of the fast zombies as the slow shambling horde arrived.
“We have to go.” Pat screamed at the people in the cab. “Climb out the fucking window.”
Tameka had pulled herself halfway through the window when a zombie with just one arm pushed between the cars and grabbed hold of her. She screamed and lost her grip on the door frame in her panic and fell towards the zombie that sank its teeth into the skin of her face before Pat could reach it.
He roared his outrage and crushed the zombie’s skull with a wet thud. Tameka was still screaming and Karam and Dale were stuck behind her, she was half way through the window and the passenger side door was pressed up against a wall.
The undead were amongst the cars now, several pushing against each other to reach the screaming woman while Pat was forced back by a couple more. Toby was in among the zombies swinging his baton and I was standing behind them all, useless.
It was when Pat looked my way that it clicked. Every time I had failed in my killing, every time I had needed help, one of my friends was there with me. When it had been Toby and me alone, I had been my normal self. I had no idea why it was happening but I knew that having them around me was the cause.
As the old and new members of my group fought against the undead with their wailing and moaning almost drowning out Tameka’s screams, I finally knew what was wrong with me and as the screams cut off I pushed forward through the abandoned cars to meet the zombie threat.
Something had shifted within me with the knowledge and while my movements were not as fluid as they had once been, while not every strike went where I intended, it was enough. I could at l
east kill again.
I threw one shambling creature dressed in tattered rags, against the side of a car and pressed my weight against it while I pushed my knife through its eye socket and into its brain. The next managed to brush its foul stained fingers against my cheek before I drove my blade through its skull.
“We have to fall back.” Pat shouted as he crushed the head of yet another zombie. “There’s too many.”
As I looked over the growing crowd of undead I had to agree. The van was surrounded with the zombies’ jostling each other as they tried to reach the terrified Karam and more were pushing forward with each second that ticked by.
Toby looked devastated as he realised the same thing and almost as one we turned and ran with the wails of our abandoned people following us.
We jogged along the road, snow kicking up around us. At the far end of the street I could see the back of Gregg’s van and realised that it had been such a short time. Neither of my companions seemed inclined to speak and that left me with my just my thoughts as we rapidly outpaced the slow undead.
By the time we reached the vans and came to a stop panting and gasping, I thought that perhaps I had an answer to my problem.
Toby was the one to break the news to Gabby, Lily and the others while Pat just stared back the way we had come looking both angry and sick at the same time.
I shared a brief look with Lily, her gaze conveying her joy at seeing me alive and I knew that was what I had been missing. The joy. Ever since I had killed the deserters, the only time I had found any kind of real pleasure in killing the zombies had been when I was alone with Toby.
When I had faced them with my friends, I had felt nothing. Or perhaps I had masked my pleasure, so sure that they were watching me every time we had fought together, watching and waiting for some sign of the serial killer they expected that I had fallen back into my old habit of hiding.
Every time I had been in a fight with the people I called friends, I had held back. For some peculiar reason I was reluctant to reveal the real me. The shift within myself that I had felt earlier during the fight seemed to go all the way through me. Somehow I was sure that the next time I needed to fight, I would be more like I should be. I just didn’t understand why and resolved to ask Lily about it when I had the chance.
Satisfied that my days of needing the aid of others in a fight was at an end I looked over to my friends and companions and wondered what they were waiting for. Gabby was weeping and even Lily seemed upset. I knew enough by now to know that it was likely due to the loss of another two members of Gabby’s group and perhaps even Dale. I was finally wise enough to know that they wouldn’t appreciate my questions so I just stood quietly in the snow and waited for them to be ready to move.
Chapter 20
It was turning dark by the time our despondent little group drove their vans slowly down the long driveway to the boat house. Our boat, the only means of transport across the lake was sitting safely tied up in the water where we had left it.
My breath was steaming in the air ahead of me and I was bone weary and very much in need of some sleep. Without need for discussion we climbed into the boat to spend the night huddled together. It was far too dangerous for us to try and navigate the lake at night.
Gabby’s group stayed close to each other by the front of the cabin, I couldn’t blame them really. Since meeting us they had lost three of their group leaving just the four of them to sit on two seats.
Cass, Gregg and Pat sat together towards the centre of the cabin and spoke quietly while Lily finished securing the cabin hatch. They were subdued in respect to the others but didn’t seem to feel the same amount of loss as Gabby and her group.
I moved straight to the far end of the cabin to sit alone and think in the darkness. As interesting as it was to watch the various emotions play out on the people around me, I just wasn’t in the mood for anything but brooding.
“Hey.” Lily said quietly as she sat gracefully beside me.
“Hi.” I replied, though perhaps it was more of an unwelcoming grunt. She seemed unfazed by my mood though.
“You don’t seem yourself.”
“I’m not.” I admitted with a sigh.
“Tell me about it.” She urged gently and much to my surprise I did.
I explained the problem I had noticed with myself and my recent realisations about it. She listened without speaking and when I finally stumbled to a halt, she smiled at me.
“You’re worried.” She said.
“Of course I am, I need to be able to kill.” I hissed.
“No, not about that.” she said, and the smile widened. “You’re worried about what they’ll think about you. You know what that means don’t you?”
“What?”
“You like them. They’re your friends and you don’t want to scare them away so you’re hiding that darker part of yourself from them.”
“I am?” I asked with more than a little confusion. She was touching on feelings that I had no real understanding of.
“Yes.” She said, “I don’t think you need to though. They’re still here and still willing to work with you, so I think they’ll be able to survive the sight of the real you.”
“Gregg did try to shoot me.” I said quietly, though he had apologised and seemed okay with me at the moment.
“He did yes.” Lily agreed, “He hasn’t tried it again though.”
“Well I guess we’ll see if you’re right the next time I have to kill some zombies.” I said.
“We will yes.”
The silence that followed was comfortable and even pleasant. Lily was warm where she pressed against me on the narrow seats. She seemed perfectly comfortable beside me and I wondered if I was supposed to put my arm around her but decided against it. I wasn’t entirely sure of what our relationship was.
She sighed and pressed herself closer to me before resting her head down on my shoulder and I had to admit that it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling to have her there. I listened to her breathe as we sat in the dark cabin and felt as close to content as I could be without killing someone.
“Are you going to be ok with being back at the apartments?” Lily asked quietly.
“I suppose so, why?”
“Well, with Emma not being there... it must be difficult for you.”
It took me several long minutes before I replied as I fought against the surge of rage that filled me, warring with that rare sorrow I felt at the memory of her death. The revenge I had wrought on the deserters for being the cause of her death was small comfort.
“I hadn’t really thought about it.” I said and then since she seemed to be expecting something more, I added, “It’s not something I really want to think about.”
“That’s ok.” She murmured, apparently pleased with my response.
We sat in silence for a while longer as the clouds released their loads of snow that fell in flurries around us. Lily shivered and pressed closer to me and without thinking my arm slipped over her shoulder and enclosed her in a protective embrace.
She didn’t seem inclined to move away from me or remove my arm so I left it there as I enjoyed the closeness, which in itself was such a rarity for me.
“I bet they’ll be happy to see us tomorrow.” Lily murmured before covering a yawn with one hand.
“Somehow I doubt even a boat full of food will make me any more popular.” I said grimly.
“Well don’t worry, if they want the food they’ll have to accept you.”
“Perhaps.” I said and let the matter drop.
“I feel terrible for them.” Lily said with a nod towards the front of the boat and the huddled group that was so diminished in such a short time after meeting us.
“It’s the kind of world we live in now.” I said, “Death is persistent and everyone needs to realise that it’s no longer our world, it belongs to the dead.”
“That’s a very bleak way of looking at things.” Lily said
and I could almost feel the frown that was no doubt forming.
“Bleak or not, it’s realistic.” I said, “If we try to continue on as we did before the apocalypse began, we won’t make it.”
“Do you want to make it?”
“Whether I do or not doesn’t matter.” I said quietly, “The world’s changed and whether I want to or not is no longer up to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sixty million people in this country alone.” I said, “Looking at the number of survivors we’ve seen it’s not hard to believe that there’re more zombies than people. Their numbers keep growing while ours shrink. We can’t win against that number; just survive as long as possible.”
“I don’t want to just survive.” Lily said miserably.
“Then we need to make some changes.” I said and she shifted in the darkness as her face turned towards mine.
“What changes?”
“An island somewhere, maybe the one here in the lake or perhaps one out to sea.” I said as I considered the options, “Somewhere that is secluded enough that the zombies can’t reach us and large enough for us to sustain ourselves for a number of years.”
“Years?”
“Most likely decades or more.” I said. “Whatever’s animating them seems to be slowing down the decomposing that should be happening. If we make it to the summer we’ll see what happens with the insects and heat but I’m hesitant to suggest that they’ll have any noticeable effect.”
“I hadn’t even considered how long it would take for them to decompose.” Lily said quietly, voice barely above a whisper.
“Like I said, if we survive to the summer then we may see some of the more damaged undead dying off at least.”
“Oh god. Sixty million zombies.” Lily said in quiet disbelief.
“That’s just us.” I said, “There’s more than six billion people in the world and most of them are likely undead now.”
“It’s hopeless then isn’t it?” Lily said in a whisper as she held back tears that threatened to fall, “I really don’t want to die Ryan.”
Killing the Dead (Books 4-6) Page 27
