Beth did her best not to over react but it was difficult. She had told everyone that they weren’t staying in Carningsby and she had given them plenty of good reasons why. “I told you we’re moving on,” she said.
“I know you did,” Russell said. “But I’m going to sort out the zombies.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ve already lost one person to the cold and there’ll be more if we don’t find a warm place to settle. Darrel told me there’s plenty of houses down there, don’t even look like they’ve been touched.”
“Don’t you think that’s odd?”
He frowned at her, slung a rifle over his shoulder and reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He lit one and blew smoke into the air. “Odd?”
“All those houses just sitting there untouched,” Beth said. “Isn’t that odd?”
Russell shook his head. “You haven’t been on the road for long, I forget that sometimes.”
“So there’s plenty of places like this? Places that look like no one’s ever lived there?”
“I wouldn’t say that, but there’s a lot of odd things out there. You learn not to look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“That’s what I’m doing, is it?”
“Could be. You’re scared, I get it, but if we keep going then we’re going to lose more people.”
“I disagree.”
“Well that’s unfortunate.”
“We’re leaving.”
“We’re not.”
It was the first time she could remember properly disagreeing with Russell. It seemed they were at an impasse and the only options she had were to either give in to him, and concede that she wasn’t really the leader, or stand her ground and wait to see what happened.
“My people are leaving,” she said.
Russell looked at her for a long time. He took a long drag on his cigarette and then dropped in on the ground where it hissed out in a puddl.
“You want to split the group?” he said.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to split the group, but you’re not giving me a lot of choice.”
He sighed. “Beth, we can get rid of the zombies, no problem.”
“It’s not just about the zombies.”
“I know,” he said quickly, cutting her off before she could try to explain herself again. “I know it isn’t, but hear me out. We’ll get rid of the zombies and then you take another look around. If you still think we should move on then we’ll move on.”
“You’re willing to risk the lives of whoever goes down there just so I’ll take another look around? I’ll probably still say no.”
“I guess you might,” he said. “But either we risk the lives of a few trained people here, or we risk everyone’s life on the road. Seems like a fair trade to me.”
It also seemed like a fair one to Beth, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit it. “If I still say we go then you won’t argue?” she said.
“You have my word.”
“Okay, we’ll go down and take another look.”
Russell smiled and began to slide the side of the truck closed but she reached out a hand and stopped it before he could. He looked at her and she looked straight back at him. This was one condition that she wasn’t willing to back down on. “I’m coming as well.”
“It’s too dangerous,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, but you managed to convince me it’s worth a try.”
“Beth, we can’t both go.”
“Then you stay here,” she said.
“Let go of the door,” he said.
“I need weapons,” she said.
“Be reasonable Beth,” he said.
She said nothing and they stared at one another.
“Fine,” he said, standing back and releasing the door. Beth almost fell over. “Get what you need and follow me.”
She forced herself to calm down and climbed into the van, selecting the weapons that she was most familiar with and stocking a vest with spare rounds of ammunition. There were bigger weapons in there and it would have been much easier to deal with the zombies using something that exploded, but that would risk damaging the very place that they were hoping to move into. Nevertheless, she took a couple of grenades with her before she jumped out of the truck and went to catch up with Russell.
* * * * *
There were ten of them, all heavily armed and holding their guns as if they expected zombies to jump out on them at any minute. Beth walked beside Russell at the front of the group, the pair of them General’s, leading their troops into battle. She tried to remember that she had seen less well-trained people kill more zombies, but it was difficult.
The long stretches of abandoned streets seemed less threatening than they had done when it had been just her and Ellen. In some ways she could now see them through Russell’s eyes; a gift that she would be foolish to turn down.
She led them through the streets and there was no sign of zombies, but she could hear them moaning in the distance. It seemed reasonable to believe that they were still outside the same building where she had seen earlier, but there had also been stragglers who had caught them off guard.
“This way?” Russell said as they approached the side road she and Ellen had gone down earlier.
Beth nodded and allowed him to take the lead a little. She gripped her gun more firmly.
Their plan was to each take a position around the crowd. From there they would simultaneously open fire on the zombies and take down as many of them as they could in one go. After that they would pick out stragglers one at a time.
They passed an 80s theme pub and at the end of the road she saw the Irish bar where she and Ellen had hidden. Wisely, Ellen had elected not to return a second time, and Beth was beginning to wish that she had made the same decision, but there was no going back now.
She held out a hand and they slowed. She communicated with Russell using a series of gestures, they were too close to the zombies to risk talking.
He nodded that he understood and then passed the message back to the others. A moment later they each went off to find places that would allow them to do the maximum amount of damage.
Russell turned back and gave her a thumbs up.
She nodded and then they too separated.
Beth stood there for a moment on her own, wondering whether she had made a terrible mistake. She could have taken Dawn and the others who remained loyal to her and been halfway to the next town by now. But she hadn’t and she was well aware that more than one person might pay for her decision with their life.
* * * * *
She took a position on the first floor of the Irish bar. The door had been locked but with a little bit effort she managed to break the rotten wood and get inside.
Like the rest of the town, the inside of the pub seemed to be untouched. There were still bottles of spirits lining the walls behind the bar and fridges (without power) that still contained beer and bottles of wine. She tried to ignore the bad feeling she got from the place and found the stairs at the back which took her up. She took a place by the window and waited.
Outside she could see the zombies. They were all facing the red building, which she thought had probably been a town hall. She had no idea what could have drawn them to the place, but the fact that they were behaving so uncharacteristically, made her more concerned than how many of them there were.
Beth placed the grenades on the window ledge alongside her spare ammunition. She was too far away now to make any practical use of them. She slid the dirty window up as quietly as she could and then leaned her gun out as if she was a sniper.
After what she guessed was five minutes she released the safety on her gun. She counted down from ten to one and then gently squeezed the trigger.
She couldn’t hear anyone else shooting, but by the way the zombies dropped, she could tell they were.
They fell at the edges first, their heads exploding and their l
egs crumbling shortly afterwards. The air became full of red mist and when she returned to shooting, after emptying her first clip, she found it more difficult to see the zombies below.
Beth racked another round and waited for the fog to clear. When it did, she could see that they had taken out half the zombies, and the rest of them were stumbling over the bodies that now littered the ground. They were moving clumsily, slowed by the cold. She waited a beat and squeezed off another dozen rounds, scoring six clean head shots, missing three and wounding another three.
It took less than twenty minutes to put all of the zombies down. By the time they were done, Beth was left with three spare magazines and the grenades.
The town fell quiet as the last echoes of their gunfire died in the distance.
“All clear?” called a voice. She couldn’t tell whose.
“All clear,” came the answer a moment later.
* * * * *
Beth took a deep breath and marched towards the door.
A gust of icy wind blew in her face and she closed her eyes against it. After a moment she looked around and saw that the others had begun to emerge and were walking towards the zombie’s they had killed. She considered calling them back and warning them to be careful, but it would be a wasted effort; these people knew what they were doing better than she did.
“What do you think?”
Beth almost jumped out of her skin at the closeness of his voice. She turned around and saw Russell standing there, already smoking a post-kill cigarette.
“Looks like we got them all,” he said.
She nodded. “Looks like it.”
Russell smiled and then walked away to join the others.
Beth watched them from the safety of the road. She knew that it needed to be done, but couldn’t help flinching every time one of them pushed a zombie over with a boot. After a while she headed over to join them.
The total of “nearly dead” zombies they found was three and they were so far gone by the time they reached them that they didn’t pose any threat. A single bullet in the head of each was all it took to see them off. When Beth was satisfied that there were no more zombies in the area she started to lead them back to the convoy.
“So will you reconsider?” Russell said, catching up with her as she turned down the side street that they had come along.
“You really want to stay, don’t you?” she said.
“We need to do something Beth, we can’t just keep going until the petrol runs out, or the weather kills us all.”
“Do you really think that could happen?”
He shrugged.
She sighed. “I’ll think about it. But I don’t like it. All those zombies, what were they doing there?”
“They’re zombies,” he answered. “They weren’t doing anything.”
She nodded, but secretly thought he was wrong.
“Look, this place is perfect. There’s a hundred empty houses that we could move straight into. There’s fields we could use for planting food in the autumn. We could make a life here.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
They carried on walking and she did think about it. What she thought was that Russell was probably right. There was no reason to keep going when they had everything they needed right there. It would be stupid to think that there was something better out there for them, or that there was some magical place where there weren’t any zombies. That wasn’t the way the world worked now. Now there were zombies everywhere.
“How would we defend it?” she said.
“We’d work something out,” he said. “There’s a way.”
She heard something and it sounded as if it came from far away. By the time she realised that wasn’t the case the zombies were already upon them.
Beth didn’t even have a chance to call out a warning, but it wasn’t needed, everyone could see as well as her she could.
There was about a dozen zombies, still able to move quickly which meant they had only recently been killed. Dale had told her that, within a few days, decomposition started to slow them down.
“Everybody back!” Russell shouted, seizing control of the situation in a way she never could have done. He already had his gun up and was aiming at one of the zombies, but it moved around too quickly to get a clear shot.
Beth backed away as he had instructed, and soon found herself against a wall, the others surrounding her as they checked their guns and joined Russell in taking aim.
The first shots made her ears ring, but they had no effect on the zombies. Beth aimed again and this time she didn’t even come close.
They kept shooting and finally one of them was hit. It fell to the ground, still moaning, until a second shot put it out of their misery. It was down but the ratio of shots fired wasn’t promising. They could easily run out of ammunition before half of the zombies were dead.
“What are we going to do?” someone said.
Beth found herself shaking her head, as if any of them had the expectation that she would be the one to come up with a plan.
She kept shooting and not hitting anything and wondered who would be the first to run out of bullets.
They slid along the wall, putting as much distance between themselves and the zombies as they could, but they all knew that there was no point trying to run.
* * * * *
Beth watched the zombies. They were almost indistinguishable from humans. If they had been standing still she might not have realised that they were zombies at all.
Russell stopped beside her and didn’t say anything. They edged along the wall and the zombies kept coming towards them. They had bunched together in a group and were now no more than five metres away.
“It’s time,” Russell said, not looking at her and, by the sound of it, doing his best not to move his mouth.
“Time for what?” she said, following his lead and keeping her eyes on the creatures.
“You picked up hand grenades,” he said. “Do you think you can get them from here?”
Beth wasn’t sure. Five metres didn’t sound like a lot, but maybe it was too close, considering what she was planning to throw. Then there was the wind to consider and, in her panic, she might do something stupid, probably would, the way she felt...
There wasn’t anything else she could do though.
“Just get on with it,” Russell hissed.
The zombies were getting closer and, she thought, it was just a matter of time before they were too close for the grenade to be a good idea. If they got too close, then she would end up blowing herself up as well.
She took a grenade off her belt. She’d never used one before, but still remembered the films where she had seen them used. She felt for the pin and pulled it out while squeezing the thing closed.
“Beth, do it!” Russell said.
The zombies were no more than a few feet in front of her now. She threw the grenade and watched it fly into the air.
“Run!” Russell shouted.
They all ran as quickly as they could.
Beth counted, expecting to get to five, but was only on three when she felt the air around her vibrate and then heard the explosion. She kept running, not sure what the explosion would actually do to the zombies. Would it kill them, or would the discarded pieces of meat still be alive?
After a few metres Russell reached for her arm and she stopped running.
She turned back. The zombies were still standing, but their movements had become an epileptic dance. Their arms waved around as the fire consumed them. She could smell the burning flesh and, worse than that, she could hear it.
Beth turned away, no longer able to look.
She saw that the others had raised their guns, but she couldn’t bring herself to do the same.
Twelve shots were fired. When she turned back again the burning bodies were just a pile on the ground, no different to the many others that she had seen burn recently.
* * * * *
None of them spoke as they
walked back to the convoy.
There was no one outside the caravans but there were lights on inside and she could see smoke. They made their way to the truck and silently removed all of their armour and guns, laying them on the floor of the truck to be cleaned once they had washed and felt up to the task.
The others left as soon as they were done and she found herself alone with Russell.
He looked at her expectantly.
“Just ask me,” she said. She still didn’t know what her answer would be.
“It’s almost sunset,” Russell said. “We can survive another night on the hill.”
“And then?”
“Then you have to make up your mind.”
He lit a cigarette.
“There’s an empty town down there,” Russell said. “A little bit of clearing up and we could move in.”
“No more running?” she said.
“No more running.”
Beth found that she was nodding. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay what?”
She swallowed. The decision felt like a big one, possibly the biggest that she’d ever made.
“We’ll stay,” she said.
“Beth, that’s— “
She cut him off before he could get any further. “We’ll go down in the morning but we won’t be moving out of the caravans, not until we’re sure it’s safe and not some kind of haven for zombies.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “But maybe we could get some of the older people into a house right away?”
Beth nodded. “Okay, but we’ll be keeping up a guard. I don’t want anyone to relax until we’re sure.”
“Of course,” he said.
They stood together for a moment longer. It felt awkward. Then she smiled for the last time and walked away, back towards her caravan to find Dawn and give her the news before she heard it from anyone else.
CHAPTER SIX
They moved the convoy onto the residential street which she had walked through with Ellen, which was as far away from the scene of the zombie slaughter as they could get without moving into the suburbs.
Zombie Apocalypse (Book 3): Absolute Zero Page 7
