by J. Thorn
I think I was lucky, although I was sure I felt bullets brush by me, and I know one missed my shoulder by barely an inch, leaving a dark scorch mark on my jacket. I think that I had cleared most of the ground that they were firing upon by the time they started shooting. There were a few explosions not far from me as I ran, and I was vaguely aware of others running across the same ground, but that open ground, towards the cover of the hill where Looky and Winters were crouched, waiting, was too quiet, too still. Apart from the guns roaring above us and the screams of the dying behind me, no one on that field made a sound.
My shoulder wrenched with pain as I hit the stone ramparts at the bottom of the hill. My friends were ten yards further along the wall to my right, I guess I had lost track of them and veered off as an explosion sounded a few feet behind me. The mud was deep and I struggled to crawl through it to reach them, suddenly aware that I was covered in blood, though I felt no pain, so it couldn’t have been my own. Then I noticed what it was I was crawling on.
Half buried in the mud at the bottom of the hill were bodies, hundreds of them, rotten and plump, full of maggots, and they weren’t whole either, many of them were just bits of body, Legs and arms, torsos and heads all submerged in the slush that lay next to the wall. The uniforms weren’t the same colour as ours, so I guess our hilltop nemesis had found a way to get rid of their dead, to stop them from stinking up the place, and we had the misfortune to have to sit in amongst it. Behind me someone called out in disgust, and I spun round to see a young man crawling back away from the wall, horror in his eyes as he looked down upon the open cavity of a ribcage into which a head had fallen, neatly, smiling its rotten grin out at us.
I tried to call out to him as he backed away from the wall, but my voice had gone, and all that came out was a harsh rasp. I was too late anyway. Gunfire exploded from the hill above and his body erupted and fell apart, pieces flying across the ground away from the wall. Two other men running towards the hill were caught in the gun's arc, as it spread outward from its target and into the oncoming throng of desperate men, all so close to the temporary safety that the rampart offered, they too were torn apart.
It was the last time I heard the guns from above. One minute they were thundering down upon us, and the next, they fell silent.
It took us a while to crawl around the side of the hill to a small break in the rampart that Winters had spotted. There, the wall opened up into the first layer of trenches, blown apart by artillery shells. The hole must have been fresh, because as the three of us stumbled forward into the trench we were greeted by the remains of our enemies. Only one man was still alive, dragging himself slowly up the slope of the trench, his legs detached at the knees. He was blabbering and yelling something unrecognisable for a moment, before Winters picked up the man’s own rifle and put a bullet in the back of his head.
I don’t know what I had expected as we made our way through the winding paths of the hilltop fort. I know that I didn’t expect it to be so empty of the living. We crawled and picked our way through three layers of trenches before we found anyone alive. And that single man was sitting shivering and talking the same nonsense as the legless guys down below, his machine gun hanging useless from its wall placement where he had abandoned it. He saw us, and ran straight for the sandbags, jumping out into open space to fall head first to the ground below.
Through all the trenches we found endless piles of the dead, but none of them seemed injured. There were no bullet wounds or half-blown-up defenders, just bodies lying in the dirt. Winters checked a few of them as we went, and confirmed that they were dead, but all the same he couldn’t find a reason why.
The three of us finally raised the British flag high on the top of the hill in a central plateau that had somehow remained undamaged from the artillery bombardments, and then sat waiting for reinforcements to come and take the rest of the hill. I have no idea where Looky had stashed that flag.
I perched on a log seat, looking out over the open ground towards our own lines, while Looky and Winters checked some of the bodies that were littering the ground.
"A gas attack?" I asked.
Looky shook his head. "There would still be a stink in the air."
Winters looked up from searching a body on the far side of the clearing.
"If there had, we would have been hit too."
He looked back down at the dead man lying huddled against the sandbag wall of the clearing, and frowned.
"This body is still warm."
"What?" It was Looky’s turn to be confused. He walked over to where Winters was holding the dead man's wrist.
"It would be, wouldn’t it? He's only dead a few minutes."
Winters glanced up.
"No, I mean really warm."
"We should go and find out what everyone else is up to, I’m sure they should all be swarming this place by now," I said, pushing myself away from the wall and walking over to where Winters knelt.
Shouts from our own men and screams from the dying could still be heard from the field below, but it seemed that we were the only ones to have reached the top of the hill.
Looky leaned down over the dead man with a puzzled look on his face. I had only crossed the clearing halfway when the body twitched.
The leg was the first to go. It was like a spasm, except slower. A cracking noise resounded over the clearing, a sound like thick branches breaking.
"Oh Jesus!"
Winters stumbled back away from the body as the second ripple of movement spread through it, bones cracking one after the other as the whole body writhed slowly. Winters reached back for his rifle, which he had slung over his shoulder while he searched the bodies, but Looky was faster.
"What the hell?" I said, reaching for my own rifle a second after Looky took a step back and raised his rifle. He was fast, that old guy, and moved out of range just as the dead man’s arm shot out, his hand clenching like it was trying to grab a hold of him.
My ears were still ringing from the sound of guns and artillery, so when Looky blew the dead man’s head half away, I barely heard it, but I did see the splatter of blood, brains and bones dash across the floor and up the sandbag wall.
The body twitched one more time before slumping motionless to the floor again.
"Did you just see that?" Winters blurted. He was gasping for air.
"He can’t have been dead," I said, crossing the rest of the clearing quickly to stand by his side.
"He was dead," said Winters.
"You did say he was still warm," said Looky, kicking the body.
"You calling me a fool?"
"Of course not, but you did say he was a lot warmer than he should be."
Winters was about to speak again when I saw more movement on the edge of my vision. I spun round, rifle raised, and my nerves on fire, to see another of the bodies moving. This one was a little further down the slope, leaning against the sandbag wall.
"There’s another," I said, moving towards what I had thought was a dead man, with my rifle held out in front of me, ready to fire.
"Wait," called Looky.
"Just shoot him Reggie," said Winters.
"No, wait."
Looky sounded insistent, so I moved forward, but held my fire, as he took a position behind me.
"What the hell are you doing Looky?" demanded Winters. I could hear him moving along the other side of the wall, behind me.
"You both saw how that last one moved, didn’t you?"
I nodded, but didn’t turn to face him, just in case the new moving corpse did something I wasn’t ready for.
"So?" asked Winters.
Looky stepped past me and moved into a crouched position a few feet from the body, which began writhing and twitching, the bones breaking with every move.
"That ain’t normal," I said.
"Exactly," Looky confirmed, "and I want to know why the hell it ain’t."
I heard the sound of Winters cocking his rifle.
"Hold up. Wait," sai
d Looky, raising his hand to command a halt. "Just wait damn you. If he gets up and comes at us, blow the shit out of him."
So we waited, as the body twitched some more and bones cracked. Then it lay there, still.
"Damn, that’s strange," said Winters.
Then the body began to move again, using its broken arms to raise itself off the floor. Gradually it stood upright, and then turned to face us.
Half of the dead man’s face was bruised and broken and it looked as though it was held together only by the grazed skin that hung from his face. His eyes had turned clear, almost like a blind man’s, except they seemed translucent, almost totally clear. There was something very unusual about the way those eyes looked. They almost glowed.
"Wait," said Looky, I guess he was preempting Winters, because the old guy cursed. We stood there, all three of us with our rifles aimed at the dead man, as he looked back at us. Then he spoke, his voice deep and harsh, almost a whisper.
"You should be gone from this place, dying ones, before it is too late for you."
"What the hell do you mean?" said Looky, his voice commanding and loud. "You should be dead. I saw you dead, yet you’re standing. Why is that?"
"You cannot know, dying one, you must not know."
It took a step towards us. The man’s gun lay on the floor barely a yard from him, but he didn’t seem at all interested.
"You come a step closer, and I’m gonna send you the hell back from where you came."
"Futile, dying one."
"Who the damn are you calling dying one? What the hell are you anyway?"
Winters and Looky started backwards, keeping the distance between us and the dead man, I kept in line with them, but heard a noise behind us, that bone-cracking sound. I glanced across the clearing, and saw that at least a dozen other bodies, all the ones that were lying there, were contorting in the same manner.
"Erm.. I think we have a problem…"
"Not now Reggie," said Winters.
"No really, guys, you need to see this, there are more."
"You should leave before my master arrives," spoke that same deep, coarse voice.
A shot rang out, and as I was watching the man take another step towards us, half of his face just vanished. The body shuddered, unbalanced by the blow, then staggered backwards for a step before collapsing into the mud.
Across the clearing three of the other bodies were now pushing themselves to their feet. I glanced at my friends. Looky was reloading his rifle, while Winters backed away towards the slope where we had first cleared the summit of the hill.
"Should we shoot them?" I asked, unable to hide the fear in my voice.
"No point." it was Winters. "Look down there."
Behind him, down the slope that led into the warren of trenches, it seemed that the whole ground was alive with movement. The dead were rising, and there were many of them.
"Unless you’ve got a whole heap of spare shrapnel, we better just get us the hell out of here," Winters continued. "I know that I don't."
The three of us backed up to the far wall, against the sand bags that protected the clearing from the slope leading down into the field. Around us, nearly every dead man was slowly getting to his feet, excluding the two we had already dispatched.
Looky raised his rifle and took down the nearest two cadavers, while I aimed at another that was rising just ten feet away from us. Looky looked as nervous as I felt.
"Well boss, I hope you’ve got some bright plan, because apart from diving over this wall down a forty-foot drop to those rocks, I’m clean out," he said, shaking his head.
Just as Winters glanced behind him, looking out over the drop down into the field below, a doorway in a wall barely twenty feet away burst open, expelling two soldiers whose faces were pale, eyes wide with shock. They stumbled out into the light from the cavernous bolt-hole, and into the clearing, spotting us before I even had a chance to register that they weren’t just more walking dead.
Looky only had time to curse and raise his rifle towards them before the first one opened fire on us, loosing off three shots before I could react. As I spun around, and fired on the shooter, I heard a grunt and Looky disappeared from my peripheral vision. I feared the worst. My shot took the shooter full in the chest, and he staggered backwards, nearly knocking his companion over in the process, before falling over down the steps to the doorway they had come through.
As I struggled to reload my weapon, and the second soldier turned to face me, a shot rang out behind me, then another, and the remaining man crumpled to the ground, twitching.
Magazine refreshed, I ran forward, and put a final bullet into the first soldier, before running back to see how badly hurt Looky was. By now there were maybe two dozen of the walking dead slowly edging their way into the clearing, and I could see at least as many shambling up the slope from the trenches below.
Looky was dying. Hit directly in the neck by one of the shots. The second had gone astray, with the third taking Winters in the back of the leg. Looky’s face was already turning pale, and he was struggling to breathe when I reached him. Blood pumped in hot torrents from behind his hands as he clutched at his throat, gasping for every breath that he could force down his throat.
Winters staggered over to us, and fell in a heap next to his old friend. Those two men had been through so much together. His face was stricken.
"No, no, no, you old tramp, don’t you die on me."
"To late…boss, He…got me…a good one."
Every word was forced, his voice weak.
"Damn you John. This ain't the place. We were supposed to finish this together. You remember? Tea on the regent’s, and sandwiches on Blackpool beach."
"I think…I might have to…pass…on the tea, boss. And I never…liked…Blackpool anyway."
"Don’t you worry, John. I’ll drink tea for both of us."
"You do that…for me, boss."
Moments later John "Looky" Wilmot ran out of blood. His voice grew raspier, his breathing slow, and his face strained. I watched two scenes unfold, one eye on my friends, and the other on the dead men walking, who were slowly approaching us now. Winters held Looky, cradling his friend’s head as the old soldier took his last breath. His eyes glazed over and his shoulders sagged.
"We have to get out of here," I stressed, leaving it as long as I could before making the point. The walking dead men were now starting to cross the clearing towards us, closing in, and on their faces was a tortured look of murderous, pure hatred.
Winters nodded.
"Into the bolt-hole."
Winters hoisted Looky up onto his shoulder, and even with the wounded leg, carried him towards the hide hole that the now dead soldiers had unveiled to us. I would have helped him if I could, but someone had to watch out for us, and carrying three rifles wasn’t easy.
Once in the hole I rammed the door shut, using several broken poles that had split away from a section of the wall that was collapsed. Two spades and half of a chair helped to bar the entrance. There was no other exit. It was just a small room, barely bigger than a good sized shed, with three bunks and a small overturned crate in the middle, probably once used as a table. There was a gasoline lamp on the table, still lit, and playing cards strewn all over the floor. The room looked like a makeshift home for maybe three soldiers, two of whom I suspected we had just killed. Where the last was, I could only speculate. I hoped he was one of the ones walking around outside.
I positioned myself opposite the entrance, sitting on the turned-over crate, while Winters hauled Looky onto the bottom of the bunks, before slumping down against them.
And we waited.
The first thud on the door came maybe a minute later, but it seemed like a lifetime. The door jarred only slightly, the spades and shafts of broken pole taking most of the blow. I got the distinct impression that whatever was hitting the other side of that door was neither alive nor very strong. With each thud came that familiar cracking sound as the cadaver’s bones
collapsed inside its dead shell.
It puzzles me why the bones of these newly departed, but walking, corpses, were so brittle. They did move in a very strange fashion, so maybe that was the reason. That was my guess at least, that every move they took, every step forced upon the dead bodies by whatever strange and godforsaken thing that now inhabited them, was against the natural movement of a man. I think they shuffled in whatever manner they would have done in their previous bodies. It seems the only rational excuse I can think of.
Soon the single pounding of a fist or foot became many, until the door was nearly shaking on its roughly made hinges. I prepared for the worst, for the moment where my three magazines of bullets, whatever Winters had left, and the remaining rounds that our trigger-happy friend Looky had left, would be the only thing prolonging the time I spent on this earth. I settled myself, even at that young age, to be ready to face the almighty and try to account for my sins. That thought scared me.
But it never came.
A few minutes later, just as the last of the gas ran out in the lantern, and darkness came upon us, the pounding stopped. The door still barely held firm.
I waited for a few minutes before creeping to the door, to take a look through one of the cracks that had formed during the assault. In my thoughts I could hear Looky telling me to wait up, give it more time. But I was always impatient, and was soon looking through one of the thin hairline cracks, out into the light of the day. One more pound on that door and I would have taken it full in the face, and Looky was no longer alive to tell me to do otherwise.
Outside I could see them all, walking away back down the slope, towards the maze of trenches that wound all the way to the bottom of the hill, where only a few collapsed walls breached the twenty-foot jagged drop that separated the hill from the muddy flatlands pocked with shell craters.
