“We’ll never outrun them,” Amy wailed, hearing the cows drawing nearer.
“What choice have we got?” Muz shouted back at her, his head beginning to spin woozily. “Just keep moving.”
They couldn’t have been more than two hundred metres into the expansive fields when Raj looked back over his shoulder. Spreading his weight over four limbs, he was making fair progress and was some distance ahead of the others. Only Sam was managing to keep up. Looking back past the group, he saw the crazed herd leaving the road, still in chase. The rotting horse reared up on its hind legs and cried out in pain at having being caught around the throat by a tendril. Oozing over the jammed cars and vans, the blob was just behind the beasts.
“I’m not sure that they’re actually chasing us,” Raj called back to the others. “It seems they’re running from the creature.”
“Is maybe bit of both,” Tom shouted back, sounding badly out of breath.
Raj made it his task to try to avoid the more boggy rain-soaked low areas and scout out a relatively firm route for the others to follow. As though the footing wasn’t appalling enough, it began to rain again.
“Are you kidding me?” Amy yelled up at the slate grey sky, her tears lost in the downpour.
She looked back at Digby who was lagging slightly behind her. His eyes, filled with desperate determination, were locked on hers. The woman waited for him to catch up.
Thankfully, the heavy cows seemed to be struggling too, sinking deep into the dirt. Their mindless psychotic drive pushed them on relentlessly however, and they were gaining on the group.
Seeing the starving herd gaining on the woman and the dog, Tom turned and lurched his way back to her. Taking the remaining two bottles of alcohol from his backpack, he stood by her side, struggling to light them. As the cows bounded nearer, he had to bend double, using his body to shelter the fabric wicks from the now driving rain.
With them lit, he tossed the first as hard as he could at the advancing animals. It dropped into the dirt just short of the beasts without breaking and the wick went out. Waiting a few seconds for the beasts to come closer, he threw the second. This time the bottle hit a cow square in the face and shattered. Burning liquid splashed over the massing bovine bodies. To the man’s dismay, they didn’t even seem to notice, so driven were they by their raging hunger.
One of the animals, looking somewhat fresher and more physically able than her decrepit sisters, was making better headway and was dangerously close to catching up with the woman, the stocky man and the dog. Realising that the feeble-bodied humans couldn’t hope to outrun the mad beast, Raj grumbled to himself and sped back to them.
Putting himself midway between the floundering people and the lead cow, he stopped and dropped to lie in the mud. As he remained sprawled there, playing dead, the murderous animal thundered up to him. As the crazed cow stopped and bent to rip a chunk out of his torso, Raj again sprang to life.
He grabbed the heifer around the throat and swung himself up onto her back. Wrapping his feet tight behind the tops of her front legs for support, he pulled back on her stubby horns, until her huge wedge of a head was pointing skyward. The cow bellowed furiously. Though she reared and bucked wildly, she could not dislodge the man. Raj continued to pull, the muscles in his back and arms writhing under his thin skin. He possessed an incredible degree of wiry strength that surpassed his slender appearance, as though the fibres of his muscles were now made of steel cables. Straining with everything he had, he leaned back, feeling the connective tissue of his joints beginning to pull away from bone. Then, with a loud sickening crack, the cow’s head slumped all the way back into his lap. Her legs gave way and she dropped into the mud, pinning one of Raj’s legs beneath her.
Having watched the whole fight in transfixed terror and disbelief, Amy scrambled back to Raj, despite the still onrushing flaming herd. As the cooking cows floundered through the mud, drawing closer, she remained by the Indian man’s side, tugging at him. Though he wanted to run, Tom came to help, and together, they managed to slide Raj free.
“Now pick up the pace,” the inhuman ex-zombie chastised the others.
Muz had no hope of increasing his efforts though. His feet dragged through the sludge and his head lolled forward, as he felt more and more groggy. Though he was fighting valiantly against the effects of the sleeping tablets, the world around him continued to grow distant and surreal. His mind seemed to be slipping away from him and he wasn’t sure it was entirely due to the pills.
“Hey, stay focused,” Raj told him, matching the man’s pace.
Muz took several deep breaths and rubbed at his eyes.
“I think I’m meant to be on early turn tomorrow,” he told the doctor, struggling to concentrate and recall where he was in his shift pattern. “But they can bollocks if they think I’m coming in for seven after all this.”
Though Muz laughed a little at his own humour, Raj didn’t laugh back. The man’s flippant remark showed that he was slipping into a state of denial regarding the severity of his predicament.
They reached a particularly low lying area in the fields then. A large section of the ground was flooded and it was far too wide to go around with the cows on their heels. They had no choice but to swim. Throwing themselves headlong into the filthy water, they splashed furiously. Digby seemed to pick up, grateful for the weight to be lifted from his injured leg. Sam, with only one good arm and no lips to stop the water from rushing down his throat, struggled the most. As he thrashed against the surface, choking and spluttering, Tom came to his aid and helped to keep his head above the water.
The group emerged back onto sloppy mud, looking pitiful and spent of all energy. They still had some distance to go however, before they reached the compound that was drawing nearer at a painfully slow pace.
With a level of relief that inspired them to keep moving, they saw that the cows were struggling more with the expanse of boggy water than they had. Being far heavier, the massive animals had sunk deeper into the cloying mud beneath.
As they fought to free their thrashing legs, the blob caught up with them, sliding into the water. It seemed like a completely different animal once submerged, undulating its sloppy body like a leach, to swim with almost graceful ease and efficiency. Its tendrils snaked across the water’s surface, catching the cows by their legs and necks and drawing them into itself.
“Have you any idea how much writing I’m going to have to do for all this?” Muz moaned to himself, as he pressed forward.
With the coiled razor wire of the cordon line and the walls of the compound no more than a hundred metres ahead, the group then came across the bodies of five young adolescents lying dead in the dirt. They were the same youths that had challenged the group outside their tower a few days ago. Each had been shot through the head. The tall fat lad, being the easiest target and therefore the first that all the soldiers had aimed at, was literally riddled with holes. Yellow-white globs of fat pushed their way out the entry wounds in his exposed gut. The survivors did their best to ignore their blank staring eyes. It was a gruesome sight, but at least they had been spared a fate worse than death.
Laying in the sludge beside the youths was a ladder. Clearly, the now dead gang had brought it with them, in the hope of scaling the wall of the compound. Tom picked up one end and Raj the other.
The Pole still didn’t like that they were heading for the cordon, especially now that they were carrying the ladder, their intent had to be clear to anyone watching them. Were the mud covered bodies at their feet, and they themselves having already been shot at by Marines, not enough to prove that it was a stupid idea?
“I am not like this,” he moaned. “It déjà vu all again.”
“Déjà vu means all over again,” Raj corrected him.
“Is what I say. We going to get shot.”
“You could have stayed back in the flat,” Raj said.
“And how I stay alive alone?” Tom asked him bitterly.
Wonder
ing why they had not yet been fired upon, Tom peered through the downpour to see that there were no guards manning the scaffold tower that looked out in this direction from behind the wall. Though he should have been happy about that, it was in fact extremely disconcerting. What could cause the soldiers inside the compound to allow such a blatant gap in their defences?
Eventually, the tall corrugated iron sheets stood just ahead of them. The razor wire at their base stretched off in both directions on either side. The trenches that had been dug just thirty feet forward of the metal panels had now been filled, the soft dirt standing slightly proud against the surrounding fields.
Though the lay of the land had concealed it, even from up in the tower, they now saw that the compound stood abreast the M1 motorway, using the road rather than the fields as a firm base for the camp. Standing amid the six lanes were several helicopters and a couple of fixed wing aircrafts of various kinds. The military had evidently been using the road as a runway.
The rain seemed to become more insistent, soaking the dirt and making it difficult to stand, even while remaining stationary. With arms outstretched for balance, the group trod over the disturbed earth of the trenches. On the other side, Tom and Raj raised the ladder over the coils of wire and leant it against the wall.
Still crossing the trench, Amy felt something far harder than the soil under foot. Stopping and lifting her leg, she saw, amid her own shoe print in the dirt, a man’s face all but buried. The chubby little woman screamed. As she did, a hand thrust up from the ground beside her and gasped tightly at her ankle, dragging her off balance. Pulling himself against the woman, the buried man rose up from the earth and fell upon her.
“It’s a grave,” Raj yelled in belated warning.
Over the past week, many people had tried to approach the compound. With their warnings to stay away having fallen on deaf ears, the soldiers had killed them all. When the bodies had started to rot, they had piled them in the trenches and covered them over. Unfortunately, not all of those buried here were as dead as the soldiers had thought.
The undead cadaver pulled itself up Amy’s chest, the soft full form of her breasts looking like an attractive meal. The woman continued to scream, her arms and legs waving without coordination. She was so terrified that she couldn’t even begin to try to protect herself.
Before the cannibal corpse was able to take his first bite however, Digby bit deep into his neck and dragged him away. The crazed man’s teeth continued to gnash feverishly, longing to sink them into the female’s fatty body, while the dog savaged him mercilessly.
Amy sobbed, not with relief, but in the realisation that her faithful friend must now be infected, his teeth and jowls smeared with blood.
“No, Digby,” she begged.
Raj ran at Digby on all fours, so hard and fast that the dog was knocked onto his back before he even knew what had hit him. He could not afford to let the powerful animal turn. With the dog pinned beneath him, he bit into his furry neck, tasting his hot blood. The dog yelled in a far higher pitch than the recovered zombie would have thought possible for such a large breed.
“Get off him,” Amy screamed.
She struggled hastily to get to her feet in the slippery dirt. When she finally managed it, she ran at Raj and kicked him in the face.
The Indian man sprang back from atop the dog and stood upright. As he composed himself and wiped the dirt from his clothes, he once again appeared human, rather than the rabid animal he had briefly become.
Dropping to her knees, Amy lifted the dog’s head into her lap and hugged him. Blood clung to the thick fur of his neck.
“Why the hell did you do that?” she wailed furiously.
“I wasn’t attempting to kill him,” Raj replied with a calmness that only served to make Amy even angrier. “He got himself infected. I was trying to help.”
Digby lifted his head and licked Amy’s face before getting back to his feet. Shaking with relief, the woman realised that the wound to his neck wasn’t bad then.
“Help him? Help him!” she continued to yell. “How is biting his throat out supposed to help him?”
“As I said, my intention was not to bite his throat out, as you put it,” Raj told her. “If I had wanted to do that, he would already be dead. It’s only a hunch and a slim possibility, I admit, but maybe my amoeboid cells will do a better job at transforming his genetic coding than those of the animated corpse he bit.”
Amy saw his reasoning, but she still glowered at the man, as she walked over to the wall with Digby at her side.
“Just think how much overtime I’m going to get for all this,” Muz mumbled.
Raj looked at him with pity. By the time the doctor had awoken from his fight with the giant amoeba, figured out that the police officer was infected and checked him over, the cellular spread within him had already been too advanced for biting him to have any possible beneficial effect.
Tom, despite his reticence, was the first to scale the ladder, constantly looking up at the tower, expecting a soldier to appear and aim his rifle at him. It didn’t happen.
At the top, he cautiously lifted his head over the iron panels and looked down into the compound. Much of his view of what lay within was obscured by a large green tent standing only a few feet from the wall. He could hear, over the chugging of a nearby generator, the sounds of people though, barking orders and running around. He wasn’t able to make out anything in particular of what was being said, but everyone sounded agitated.
A stack of wooden crates piled up against the panels on the other side meant he was able to climb over easily. Standing atop the boxes, he leant back over the wall and gave a thumbs-up to the rest of the survivors, who were stood looking up at him with apprehension.
Muz and Sam were next up the ladder.
“May I?” Raj asked Amy, gesturing to Digby.
“Just don’t hurt him,” the woman said warily.
Raj bent and putting an arm around the dog’s chest, scooped him up with little effort. The dog began to growl.
“It’s okay,” Amy told him softly, rubbing behind his ear.
Carrying the ten stone lump of a dog, Raj then scaled the ladder with ease and passed Digby over to the men on the other side, before deftly leaping over the top of the wall.
In last place, Amy climbed up. When she reached the top, she held onto the corrugated sheets for support and the sharp edges of the metal dug into her burns, causing her to hiss in pain. She struggled to clamber over and Raj had to help, catching the majority of her weight, as she flopped without control onto him. She felt a hot wet trickle down her back and knew her exertions must have reopened her bullet wound.
Together, the weary survivors clambered down the crates, jumped into the mud, and looked out between the edge of the tent and a stack of drums.
There were many other tents, laid out in orderly rows. The numerous soldiers that were running around in various directions appeared just as worn and tired as Muz’s motley band. Full of haste, some ran into each other and shouted angrily in passing. One man was almost decapitated by the prongs of a forklift truck, as he ran out blindly into its path from behind a tent.
There were various uniforms to be seen, English Marines in green berets, USMC soldiers wearing what looked like camouflage baseball caps, a few blue United Nations helmets, and some others that none of the hidden observers recognised.
“Okay, this is it,” Muz said, the adrenaline being released into his bloodstream allowing him to pull his thoughts together. “Nobody do or say anything stupid.”
With that, he stepped out from behind the tent onto the crisscross rubber matting that had been laid out as flooring to keep the mud under control. The others were right behind him. They couldn’t have taken more than four or five steps before they were spotted.
A nearby soldier did a swift double take as he ran by, struggling to carry four metal ammo boxes. Eyes widening, the young man came to a stop and dropped the boxes, unslinging his rifle and poin
ting it at the group.
“H… hey,” he shouted nervously over his shoulder at anyone who might hear.
“It’s okay,” Muz said, putting up his hands.
“Hey,” the jittery man shouted even louder. “We’ve got a problem.”
Others in the camp heard him then, and it was only a few moments more before the survivors were converged upon and found themselves staring down the barrels of in excess of thirty rifles.
“What’s going on?” a Marine Sergeant with a massive chest and thick arms demanded to know, as he came sprinting over.
“Please,” Muz said. “We had to get out of there. We’ve lost so many people.”
The Sergeant looked him up and down, taking in the filthy police stab vest and kit belt he was still wearing.
“How the hell did you manage to get in here?” he asked aggressively.
The muscular man then looked up the scaffolding of the south facing watch tower.
“Who in the name of fuck is meant to be manning that friggin’ post?” he yelled at the soldiers around him.
“Ferguson, Sarge’,” someone piped up.
“If he’s sleeping on watch, I will personally fuck him with his own bayonet,” the Sergeant snarled. “Someone get up there.”
A soldier broke away from those massing around the survivors, ran to the base of the scaffolding and began to climb the ladders.
Seeing the commotion and the soldiers gathering by the edge of the camp, a man of rank came running over then. Having been making his way back to the accommodation tents from the showers, he was wearing nothing but a pair of combat trousers and a pair of flip-flops. The cold rain against his naked torso didn’t seem to bother him.
“What’s going on?” he barked.
The Sergeant turned and looked him up and down with a scowl. He didn’t know the man, and from those three words alone, had already decided that he didn’t like his superior demeanour.
“I’m Colonel Grieves,” the officer said forcefully. “Now tell me what the problem is.”
Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel Page 47
