Me and Kay were in the living room when we heard the horn blaring. I’d been napping, overcome with a sudden tiredness but at the sharp sound, my head shot off the arm of the sofa.
‘What the fuck…?’ said Kay, looking up from the book she was reading.
‘D’you think that’s Misfit? What could have happened?’
We both stood and headed towards the window. I was wrong, it wasn’t Misfit. Instead, I saw a white car, too far off to see who was at the wheel. I looked at Kay, panic clawing at my insides.
‘Shit. What do we do?’ I said.
‘We get out the way,’ said Kay. ‘They aren’t bloody stopping.’
The car sped down the track towards the cottage’s grounds and showed no signs of slowing.
‘Fuck!’ I said. If the car carried on at the rate it was going, it would crash through the gate and into the living room, right where we stood.
Me and Kay darted from the room, down the hall and grabbed our weapons from the kitchen table.
‘This way,’ I said to Kay, nodding to the back door. I figured it was best not to be seen just yet, not until we knew who and what we were dealing with.
I expected to hear a crash at any moment, indicating the vehicle had made contact with our cottage but aside from a racket that suggested they had busted through the gate, the sound of metal meeting brick never happened. Me and Kay snuck around the side of the building, careful not to be seen, and peered out as far as we dare. I could see the car had come to a stop just a metre or so from the living room window. All was still.
After a moment the driver’s side opened and I watched as a teenage girl, no more than around fourteen or fifteen staggered out onto the grass. Her arms, neck and face were smeared with fresh red blood but I couldn’t see from that distance if she had been bitten. She scrambled to the back of the car, and she stood for a moment, her wild eyes flicking left and right. The girl opened the rear side door and she reached inside. That’s when I noticed there was someone else on the back seat. The girl lifted the man – I could just make out shaggy hair and a beard – into a sitting position. By the way the man’s head lolled back I knew he was unconscious. The girl slipped her left arm under the man’s arms and began to haul him out head first. She managed to drag him from the car but she didn’t have the strength to hold him up and the pair of them disappeared from view as they collapsed to the ground on the other side of the car.
‘Let’s go save a stranger,’ said Kay and she darted across the front garden towards the car.
I followed her and as we rounded the vehicle, I saw the girl’s eyes widen at the sight of us. She sat on the grass, her eyes darting from me to Kay, with the man’s head on her lap.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘We’re here to help.’
‘No one can help.’ The girl’s shoulders sagged and she looked down at the man.
As she stroked the hair from his face I saw a tear roll from her cheek and fall onto his forehead. He looked a lot older than her, maybe mid to late forties. His overgrown dark hair was peppered with grey and the corners of his eyes were lined. I guessed he’d been a good looking guy in his day but the apocalypse had drained him, left him etched and gaunt. He had been bitten, that much was clear – a chunk of flesh was missing from his neck.
‘There’s one thing we can do for him,’ I said.
The girl’s eyes shot up to look at me and I waited for her to scream at me and refuse to let us put him down. Instead she let out a little gasp and gave a slight nod of her head.
‘You understand what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ she sobbed.
‘We need to do it now,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he has long before he…’ I was going to say, before he dies of his injuries but I couldn’t finish. I knelt down before the girl. ‘Do you want to be here when…’
‘Daddy, I’m sorry, Daddy.’ The girl leaned forwards and spoke the words close to her dad’s ear. ‘I love you,’ she added before she sat up and looked at me. ‘No. I don’t want to be here.’
‘OK, come on,’ I said.
I stood and held my hand out to her. She gently lifted her dad’s head off her lap and placed it on the grass. I saw his eyes flutter open and he looked at his daughter.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said and she leant forwards and kissed his forehead. She hugged him, holding on tight, blocking my view of him. She remained like that, her shoulders shaking with violent sobs, and I worried her dad would turn and bite her.
‘We need to go,’ I urged. She didn’t move so I leant forwards and placed a hand on her back and rubbed it gently. ‘Come on, sweetie.’
The girl’s body tensed and she straightened up. She sat looking down at her dad for a few seconds before she said, ‘Good bye,’ in a small, broken voice. Her dad gazed up at her, his eyelids flickering until, like a flame in a draft, they went out.
I held my hand out to the girl and, after a slight hesitation, she grasped it. I helped her to her feet and she shot off towards the cottage. I turned to Kay.
‘I got it,’ she said.
I nodded and headed off after the girl. I found her sitting with her back against the wall outside the back door. Her legs were drawn up and she was hugging them to her chest. Tears streamed down her cheeks. ‘I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.’
‘Come on, let’s get you inside,’ I said.
I placed an arm around her shoulders and helped her up. I guided her in through the back door and settled her onto a chair at the kitchen table. I crouched down beside her, my body responding, I noticed, in a maternal way. I wanted to hug her, to take the pain away. Even though she wasn’t that much younger than me, she was still a child and a child who had just lost her last surviving parent at that. I wanted to mother her.
‘I know nothing I say right now will help, but you’re safe now. We’ll take care of you.’
She managed to register the barest hint of a smile on her tearstained face before erupting into more sobs. I placed a hand on her knee and rubbed.
‘I’m Sophie,’ I said after a moment.
The girl looked up at me. ‘Rachel,’ she croaked.
‘You coped incredibly well out there, Rachel. You’re going to be just fine.’
Kay appeared at the back door. Rachel began to cry afresh, realising what her presence indicated. Kay walked soberly into the room, shoving her bloodstained axe through her belt and covering it over with her shirt before coming to a stop with her back resting against the sink.
‘We’ll help you bury him,’ I said. ‘We can give him a good–’
‘There won’t be time,’ said Rachel cutting me off.
‘What’d you mean?’ asked Kay.
‘They’re coming.’
‘Who?’
‘They followed me. Sorry.’
‘Whoa, slow down and tell us what’s happened,’ I said. I stood and pulled out the chair next to Rachel and sat on it.
‘Me and my dad, we’d been staying in a house just down the road, closer to the village. We’d been there for months after the last place we stayed at… well…’ Rachel hung her head and I watched a tear fall onto her thigh, staining the grubby light blue denim a darker blue.
‘You don’t have to do this now,’ I said.
‘No. I do,’ she said urgently. ‘It was just me and Dad after that and everything was quiet – for months it was quiet. Dad was really good at finding food. He was good at getting into other houses and he got a lot of supplies that way. So we were OK. But,’ she said, looking up at me, ‘today, Dad had just got back from scavenging and I was out front helping to unload the car, when they came. We heard them before we saw them – a sort of rumbling. I’d not seen so many zombies at once since we got out of London in the early days.’
‘What?’ said Kay.
‘Dad told me to get in the car but I panicked and ran for the house. We tried to stay out of sight but they knew we were inside. They managed to get in. We ran for the car. Somehow I managed to get there without getting bitt
en…Well, you saw for yourself. If only I’d got into the stupid car when he’d first said…’
‘Don’t blame yourself,’ I said.
‘I bundled Dad in the back and I just drove. Dad had given me a few lessons in case… but I panicked and… I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring them here.’
‘Shit,’ I said and I jumped to my feet.
I tore down the hall and into the living room. I peered outside and sure enough, I saw a horde of zombies lumbering down the track towards the cottage from the road beyond.
Rachel appeared next to me at the window. I saw her glance down at her dad’s body laid out on the grass beside the car. Luckily his head was hidden behind the vehicle. She touched the glass with her fingertips, then raised her vision to the approaching zombies.
There were bigger things to worry about.
‘Holy-mother-fucking-shit-fuck!’ I said as I watched the sea of zombies approach down the track. I remembered Rachel saying she hadn’t seen as many zombies at once since leaving London, and it was as if the population of London in zombie form was heading towards us now. OK I exaggerate slightly. Only slightly.
‘Bring ‘em on,’ said Kay, clutching her axe as she joined us at the window.
‘Kay, it’s you, me and a teenage girl against that lot – are you mad?’ I said as I realised it really was just me, Kay and a frail teenage girl who’d just lost her dad versus a huge horde of zombies. And we had no chainsaws, no guns, no long range weapons at all; just an axe, a claw hammer, a carving knife and whatever we could arm Rachel with at short notice. There was no way we could keep that amount of zombies out of the cottage. We were done. We didn’t even have the glass bottles available to make petrol bombs… bombs… I glanced at the car Rachel had arrived in. I had an idea.
‘I need your help, both of you,’ I said to Kay and Rachel. ‘Come on!’ I darted out of the room, along the hall, through the kitchen and out the back door.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Kay when I stopped outside the shed where the garden tools are kept. The shed was quite new, I’m guessing put up by the young couple that lived in the cottage before us and it looked somewhat out of place compared to the older, original outbuildings with their faded, crumbling lichen covered brickwork.
I pulled open the door and ducked inside, ignoring Kay’s question. She’d soon see. I remembered seeing some discarded pots of paint, rollers and drip trays in there and I hoped I’d also find something else – I lifted the clear plastic bottle of white spirit up as though it were a prize. ‘Yes!’ I said. I also grabbed an edging knife, a long handled tool with a squat but sharp arrowhead-like head that I’d used to cut the edges of the veg patch. Satisfied, I shoved past Kay and back outside. ‘Come on,’ I said again, handing the edging knife to Rachel and I sped off to the front of the cottage.
When I rounded the corner I could see that the horde was not far off. With the gate down, they’d gain access to the cottage in no time. With that many zombies lending their weight, I knew we couldn’t defend the old building for long. They’d get in.
‘We need to run. Now!’ said Rachel, her eyes bulging with terror as she gazed at the zombies.
‘No. I’m not leaving here with my boyfriend not knowing where we are. And I’m not leaving this lot for him to drive into,’ I said.
I stopped beside the car.
‘You’re not thinking of driving through that lot, are you?’ asked Kay. ‘Cos that would be going full fucktard.’
‘No. I have a better idea,’ I said, remembering something I’d seen on a sciencey TV show Dad used to like. I hoped it would work.
I pulled off my shirt and with the edge of it held in my teeth, I ripped a strip off the bottom, just like I’d see people do in movies a hundred times, ready to be used as a bandage. But that’s not what I needed it for. I threw my shirt to the ground and opened the bottle of white spirit, pushing down on the red cap in order to operate the child proof design. I shoved the end of the strip of fabric down into the bottle, making sure that all of the fabric got a good soaking by putting the cap on and giving it a shake.
‘Kay, open the petrol cap,’ I said.
Kay nodded and did as I asked. I opened the bottle and tipped it upside down so that the remaining liquid spilled to the ground. I didn’t care, I didn’t need any more of it, and I poked my fingers inside the opening to fish out the drenched fabric, giving it a squeeze to get the excess out. Kay tossed the petrol cap to the grass and waited beside the car for me to feed the soaked fabric into the petrol tank. The theory was, the white spirit would ensure that once I set light to the fabric, it wouldn’t snuff out before the flame had made its way into the petrol tank.
‘I’m hoping its low on fuel,’ I said to Kay. ‘Fumes will ignite better than fuel. Right,’ I said to both Kay and Rachel, ‘help me push the car up the track. We need them bottlenecked for this to work.’ I patted my jeans pockets and realised I didn’t have my lighter. It was still in the pocket of the biker jacket that I’d left inside. ‘Start pushing. I’ll be back in a sec,’ I said before I turned and darted back to the cottage.
I located the jacket over the back of a kitchen chair. I considered slipping it on but, even though I wore only a vest top, I didn’t feel cold – a mixture of adrenaline and the milder early spring air. I pulled the lighter from the pocket, leaving the jacket where it was, and sped back to the others.
I helped them push the car through the busted gate and far enough up the track that the front runners were only a couple of metres away from us, then I lit the piece of shirt I’d left hanging out of the petrol tank – the fuse. It caught easily and I knew the white spirit would do its job. Satisfied, me, Kay and Rachel turned and darted back down the track and into the front garden.
We’d left the car positioned fairly straight on so that there would be room for the zombies to start squeezing through the gaps either side of the car between it and the fence that separated the track and the fields that ran alongside it. That way, a controlled amount of zombies would trickle through the gate to us both before and after the explosion so we could take them out without getting swamped.
Sure enough, a few zombies began easing their way past the car on either side and continued to lumber towards us. We stood in a line in the garden, waiting for them. Five front runners managed to get through before the car exploded. Even from where we stood, I felt the heat of the explosion on my skin. The zombies anywhere near the car when it went up were incinerated immediately and their charred remains fell to the ground where they continued to smoulder. A few zombies that had been further away from the blast but close enough to catch fire continued to lurch around while their bodies burned, spreading the fire to others. The flaming zombies staggered towards us behind the others that had already got through.
I moved forwards to meet the first wave of zombies as they staggered through the gate. Kay kept in line with me but Rachel, her weapon clutched in front of her body, hung back, her bulging eyes fixed on the zombies lumbering towards us. I wasn’t surprised by her reaction. I wasn’t worried either; Me and Kay could handle that little lot, no problem.
I thrust my blade between the eyes of a zombie before ripping it free and plunging it into the ear of the next. I glanced up at the car and saw it burning steadily. Zombies attempted to squeeze past it, only to catch light – their dry, withered bodies succumbing easily to the flames. I saw the bottlenecked zombies building up behind the car, their bodies putting a strain on the fences either side.
A few smouldering zombies lurched towards me and Kay, their charred arms outstretched, their jaws nothing more than blackened bone now the flames had eaten away any remaining flesh. The acrid smell of burnt meat overwhelmed me and stung my nostrils. I retched but managed not to be sick. I pulled the neck of my vest top up but, as I launched myself at the zombies, it kept falling down so I left it and tried my best to breathe through my mouth without gagging.
Some of the still burning zombies fell before they got to us. Th
e ones that made it to us received a blade to the brain. I could feel my hands and forearms beginning to blister from the heat emanating from their bodies.
‘Oh my god! Look!’ I glanced behind me to see Rachel pointing. I followed the direction of her finger to see the fence giving way on the right hand side from the pressure of the bottlenecked zombies behind the car. Zombies sprawled to the ground as a whole section of fence was flattened beneath their weight. Those that remained on their feet clambered over their fallen comrades and made it past the car. Some of the zombies wandered into the field, finding themselves trapped again by the fence between the field and the front garden. But the majority managed to tread along the flattened fence and stagger past the car and towards the busted gate in greater numbers than I felt comfortable dealing with.
‘Shit!’ I said, moving backwards towards the cottage. ‘We have to retreat.’
But it was at that moment that Rachel decided to go full on hero. She darted past me to meet the crowd of zombies head on, screaming out a battle cry.
‘Rachel! Fall back! I yelled but if she heard me she didn’t respond. She swung the edging blade into zombies’ heads with force, her slender body strengthened by adrenaline and revenge. I could only imagine that thoughts of her recently deceased dad drove her on. She pounded and stabbed and sliced.
I moved forwards, yelling at Rachel to come back. I stabbed the ever increasing number of zombies that filtered through the gate, coming at us a little faster than their previous charred companions.
‘Sophie, leave her,’ said Kay, coming up next to me. ‘Let’s get out of here. This is bloody suicide.’
‘I can’t leave her,’ I said and I ploughed on towards Rachel and the main body of the zombies. I wanted to grab her and do a runner out into the fields behind the cottage while we still had chance.
Only problem was, as more zombies strayed off into the field to the right, their numbers began to swell. Their weight began put a strain on the fence separating the field and the cottage’s garden. ‘Shit, I said as the wooden posts began to give. ‘Can’t we get a break today?’ I muttered to myself as I watched the fence posts topple. Some of the zombies at the front fell forwards with the motion of the fence collapsing, but most managed to remain on their feet and they poured into the garden to the right of us. This effectively cut us off from heading that way and to the rear of the cottage. Now there was only fight, not flight.
Blog of the Dead (Book 3): Lost Page 20
