Great Bitten (Book 2): Survival

by Warren Fielding

  Without breaking my stride, I kicked the first infected in the head, landing the full arc of a kick that any rugby fly half would have been proud of. Something snapped and the infected fell limply to the floor. The second infected was so engrossed with its meal that it barely looked up at me. It didn't have time left for seconds. A garden fork was plunged into its neck. I turned away, faced with more horror as one of the guardsmen bellowed for blood, stabbing the fallen infected in the back of the head over and over again. The scene in front of me was carnage. It seemed like there were fast infected everywhere. I dodged back as something ran past me. I didn't know if it was friend or foe.

  Rich came roaring into view, barrelling into an unfortunate undead. Blood spatter sprayed out. I wasn't going to bet against Rich winning that one.

  I spun at a new cry. The man with the pitchfork had been tackled by another one of the fast infected. I darted to take the weapon whilst the infected was distracted with its new meal. Its heft was awkward, the weight all at one end. I held the fork in the middle, my hand fitting neatly into a fist around the wooden handle. I grabbed the shaft, treating the tool like a trident. The tackled man was on the ground. I put the forks through both of their heads before they had a chance to realise what was happening.

  Another infected charged me. It was a woman. She was slight, and couldn't have weighed more than eight stone, but her charge caught me off balance and I stumbled backwards. It wasn't enough to knock me to the ground, and I tried to spin her off me. Her jaw opened and her teeth pulled at my shirt. I heard the fabric tear and braced for the fire of breaking skin, but there was none. I pulled at her top. It was a flimsy pyjama vest, and tore in my grip. Luckily, the woman had nothing but forward momentum. I sidestepped her and she stumbled a couple of steps and fell face-first into the concrete. She skidded forward. Any normal human being would have been howling in pain. She howled, alright, but it was a bestial anger that all the survivors were overly familiar with.

  My heart thudded in my chest as Karen entered the fray. She had come prepared, and the woman that had attacked me had her hissing head decapitated before she could even pull herself up off the ground. Karen nodded at me firmly, her embarrassment this morning forgotten, now all business. The cries around us were not abating. There was all-out war at the gate. I was disorientated for a short time.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. I spun around to be met with Karen thrusting the pitchfork back at me.

  "You'll need this. Stay sharp, idiot."

  She pushed past me, moving forward with purpose into the fray. There were more arriving from the rest of the community every second. Was that such a great idea? Isn't that the way the infection spread so quickly in the first place, population density?

  Panic bloomed in my chest. My heart raced. Now was not the time for a panic attack.

  I screamed as I was tackled again in the leg. It was a child, no older than Isabelle. At first, I thought it was her. Then I saw short-cropped black hair and knew with relief it was not. I snapped out of my malaise. With a little more aggression than perhaps necessary, I grabbed the child by his hair. I twisted him away and pulled his head up. Bloodied angry eyes looked up at me. He hissed, teeth black with dried blood. There were bits of hair and skin between his little incisors. This infection truly took no prisoners. I pushed him to the floor and kicked him over. I couldn't look into the eyes of a child whilst ending his life, not even one that had been taken by the infection. He thrashed once, and was still.

  I looked for my next target before I realised we were beginning to take the upper hand. I backed away and watched the rest of the community finish the task, as one—blood and bodies everywhere. I heard a woman crying in genuine pain, not the howl of the hungry infected. As the rest of the world came breaking into my ears, I heard more than one set of cries. I looked around and pretended that I wasn't searching for Karen, but I knew in my heart I wanted this woman, more than any of the others, to come out of this melee alive. My racing heart pulled down a rate when I saw her walking towards me side-by-side with Rich. Both were covered in their fair share of blood, but they both looked unharmed.

  "What's happened here? Who's hurt?"

  Late to the party, Gordon bustled up to the gates, which were being hauled shut by four men and women. We were safe again, for now, but the commotion likely brought the attention of more than a few infected in the area. We didn't want them at our front doors. Rich pushed his way to the front of the remaining people.

  "I'm trying to find out, sir. We had some people try to join us. It looks like they were hiding a couple of bitten. They turned whilst some of their people were being checked out."

  "What a fuck-up. Who was in charge here?"

  "This is not the time, Gordon. You took long enough getting here."

  Rich wasn't going to be called out for bullshit when we had so many people lying dead across our threshold, but there appeared to be more than a few sympathisers wanting answers to questions. Rich didn't look happy himself.

  "Look, we'll get cleaned up here, then I'll come and see you. Everyone, clear out. We've sorted the problem. We don't need a crowd here."

  I went to move away, but Rich called me back. I lingered awkwardly, hands in pockets, moving from foot to foot. I nodded as people walked past me. I held eye contact with Karen longer than was strictly necessary. She was a striking woman. Oddly more so after despatching the undead. She was hot and out of breath, chest heaving. Her eyes held an excited glint. I wondered how much she really got out of killing them. I felt the adrenalin too, but I suspected deep down the things she hadn't told me yet, meant she truly enjoyed doing away with the undead.

  Before long, there was me and Rich left, with one lingering man. I recognised him. His name was Simon. He worked the walls. He looked pale and shaken, and tugged at Rich's sleeve gingerly to get his attention. I walked over, and we all stood in a loose triangle.

  "Listen, Rich, you need to reopen the gate." Simon’s voice was quiet and nervous.

  Rich laughed.

  Simon didn't. He looked deadly serious, and the emphasis was on the mortem. He held his left arm out, and gingerly pulled up his sleeve. Rich and I both took a few steps back. There was a bite mark on his lower arm. It wasn't big. The bite had barely punctured the flesh, but it would be enough. The small wound was already an angry red, puckered and swollen with disease. Simon would still have some time before he would turn, but there was no denying that eventually, he would become one of them. Simon knew it. His eyes held an undeniable sense of doom. Enough so that he wanted to effectively commit suicide. Would he turn before the infected outside the gates got to him? Who knew.

  Rich shook his head.

  We were twenty feet from the gates themselves. A fast infected sprinted against them then. We all jumped back and turned to look. A woman, probably in her early twenties, snapped her teeth against the bars. Her face was covered in dried blood. So were her clothes. She hadn't fed in a while, but she was still alive. Her venomous charge against the bars of the gate showed that. Her body must have been severely dehydrated, her system devoid of nutrients, but she still pushed her sallow putrid flesh against the bars, gnashing her teeth in a vain attempt to get at our hot flesh. She pushed so hard that her head started squeezing between the gap between the struts, which couldn't have been more than six inches. The more she pushed, the more her temples constricted. Black coagulated blood started to ooze out of her nose and from her mouth, down her chin. She was killing herself to get to us.

  Rich shook his head. He picked up a knife from the ground, strode up to the woman, and took care of her with a strike through the eyes. (Watching her slowly constrict herself to death, for her to just rise again as a slow infected, was obviously not of desire or benefit.) There were no others, not for now, but neither Rich nor I wanted to open that gate again and expose ourselves to the threat of more infected within our gates.

  Simon was right, though. We also did not want to risk having an infected—a guaranteed
fast infected—in our midst.

  "Then just put me over the wall. There's got to be a way."

  Rich and I shared a look. There was easily a way. We could just tip him over the wall at one of the watch points. It was too much of a metaphor for putting out the trash for me to be comfortable with it, but we weren't faced with a variety of choices if we wanted to keep the community safe. Rich looked around at the bodies we still needed to deal with.

  "Can you take him, Warren? I can't leave this. What if one of the children stumbles on it?"

  I nodded and took Simon gingerly by his uninfected arm. He supplicated mutely. It had been his choice, after all. What was there left to protest? I didn't let go, though. He may have been in shock and accepting his fate at this point, but there was still a chance that 'fight or flight' instincts might kick in and I didn't want to have to explain to Gordon how I had lost and chased a zombie around the community—especially if that loss resulted in more deaths.

  I already had a point in mind and we weren't that far from it. A minibus straddled the wall and the defenders would stand or sit on top of it. There was virtually no gap to the wall and it would be easy for Simon to jump to the other side. I didn't know how many undead would be lingering there, but that didn't matter to me.

  The bus had two defenders on top, two males barely out of their teens. They were new additions to the community, even greener than I was. I had been introduced to them, but I couldn't remember their names. They both gave me a curt nod.

  " 'sup?" one drawled lazily.

  I winced a little inside.

  "Need to take the top of the bus for a couple of minutes."

  "What's up with that guy? He looks like shit."

  "I feel like shit." Simon shivered.

  "There was a problem at the gate. He's been bitten."

  "Fuck!" Both boys scrambled to their feet, the roof of the bus making popping sounds as the metal bounced and bent underneath their feet. All credit to them, they had brought their weapons round to bear within a few seconds, but a bat and a shovel weren't going to do much to deter us from our task.

  "Calm down. Rich knows we're here. It's not a bad bite," I said.

  "I don't care how fucking bad it is. He's bitten! He's a risk to us all!" said the younger of the two.

  "You think we don't know that? Keep your fucking voice down before you start another riot," I explained.

  Simon started coughing, his rasping voice tired and angry. His eyes were starting to droop, as if he were drunk and tired.

  I wanted to ask him what it felt like, to have the infection setting in. Common decency held my tongue.

  "I know what's going to happen to me, kid. Why do you think I'm here? I need to get on that bus. So I can get over there." Simon nodded at the wall, and realisation dawned on the two lads. They skittered to one end of the bus, but didn't get down.

  "Are you bitten?" the older of the boys asked, nodding his head at me.

  I shook my head, and that seemed to be enough for them. The lad who had spoken first to me waved me up, not that we needed permission. I gave him a signal of thanks, and boosted Simon onto the roof. Now, I stood in the footwell of the open driver's side door and hauled myself up in turn. On closer inspection, I saw the two boys were unsettled by what we were doing, but they weren't questioning our intentions. See nothing, say nothing, do as you're told, and keep yourself quiet. These are the kind of soldiers and workers that Gordon wanted in his community. Not disruptive little bees like me, unsettling the rest of the hive with my talk and my questions. I felt uneasy then, on this vantage point, vulnerable to be pushed over the wall and helpless to return—left at the mercy of the undead.

  Simon took a small step forward, but I felt like retreating, clambering back down to the stability of solid ground. The hairs on the back of my head stood on end. This did not feel right or good. Simon looked over his shoulder at me, one hairy eyebrow arching up in question.

  "Should I be the one asking if you're okay?" he said.

  "No. Shit no, you shouldn't. Is there...is there anyone I need to look out for? Anyone you need to get a message to?"

  "Fuck no. My entire family died right at the start, and I'm the only one left. Just...you're the guy that finds things out, right? That gate is never opened. Find out who did this. It doesn't feel right. I don't want...I don't want to die for no reason. We were all dying for no reason before the shit hit the fan. Now there's so few of us, it feels like everything has to mean something now, you know? I can't see the point in there being any life anymore if we're just going to still fight each other. Just...make sure the people here are safe."

  He turned and ran off the edge, a prisoner sentenced to death, choosing to take a run off the plank rather than be pushed into the sea. I darted forward then, and so did the other two at the opposite end of the bus. I dropped to my hands and knees, feeling more comfortable with four limbs against the roof of the vehicle than two. I strained my neck over the wall and saw Simon roll, and come very unsteadily to his feet. He limped away, favouring his left leg, staggered to a tree, and leaned against it, looking back at the wall.

  I couldn't tell now if he was smiling or grimacing. He waved at me, and flipped the bird to the other two. I heard one of them mutter that he was a wanker, but neither of them had the balls to say it aloud.

  Simon looked like he was about to slouch against the tree, then he thought against it. I heard him mutter, then he started stumbling away from the wall as quickly as he could.

  I heard movement then from further down the wall, from the back end of the community. Whatever it was, it was moving damned fast. There was no way it was shambling undead. Simon couldn't move quickly enough to outpace the predators chasing him down. Two of the fast infected broke cover then, heading straight for Simon. The two lads swore, skitting back to the corner of the van and away from the wall. This was an odd reaction for two men chosen to defend us, and a worrying one. I noted it and decided to mention it to Rich.

  My gaze swung inevitably back to Simon. The infected were leaping on him. I dropped my head, sad and disgusted. Without another word to Tweedlescum and Tweedletwee, I slid off the van and trotted back to the gates.

  There were more people milling around the street than usual. Word of the rioting at the gates had doubtlessly spread, and folk were out in force to find answers to their questions. A couple shouted, trying to hail me down. What Simon had said was causing me trouble. I was the one that found things out. How many people said that? Or were still saying that? Is that why I had Gordon on edge? What were people saying about me? What had I started?

  Back at the gates, Richard wasn't alone. Both Gordon and Rick were there, and neither of them were helping to clear up the dead. Rick was hanging back, as if he had been hired to be the bodyguard and muscle, which was a joke in and of itself, and it looked like Gordon was attempting to pin Rich against the wall, although that was akin to trying to keep a body on the wall with staples and blu-tac. I didn't break stride, pushed Rick out of the way, and went to stand by Rich. Gordon glared at me, his face flushed red with anger and his chest heaving. He looked like a prime candidate for a heart attack, and I started wishing one upon him in the near future.

  "This has got nothing to do with you. Fuck off." Spittle dripped onto Gordon’s chin as he spat the words angrily at me.

  Well, that was blunt. "Just reporting to my boss. Simon's done. I watched him go myself," I said.

  "The bitten guy? Good. Don't need any more of those fucking things about. Are you done here?" Rich asked, effectively giving me an out from the situation.

  I looked to Rich and back to Gordon. I didn't want to leave Rich alone, but his eyes were full of warning, and there was no pleading for me to stay. I left, knowing when to call it a day.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The sky was a rare sheet of azure blue, dropping to the lightness of ice where the sky met the distant landscape. Warmth was starting to permeate the air. I'd even wound down one of the windows. I hadn't ex
pected to be out of the community so soon, but here I was, shotgun to Rich's bulk behind the wheel. We were just doing a drive around. I felt like it was an excuse to get us out of the way for a day. It was certainly a phenomenal waste of fuel. We were to recon the wreck site where Ben and Connor died. We were to look for the bodies of Toby and Tom. Gordon had been very specific about that. I suppose his intention was to make sure they hadn't survived the explosion. Question marks remained over the disaster, and the remaining members of the first recon groups were still being blocked from speaking to each other. I hadn't so much as lain eyes on Charles since we got back to the community. I had managed to glance the others in passing, though they had hurried quickly the other way. There was a strong rumour that Charles was housed with Gordon. I had no reason to disbelieve this.

  After we were finished at the wreck site, we were doing a massive circle around the community borders, looking for pockets of survivors. We weren't to make any approaches, but we were to try to assess whether the groups was a threat.

  I wanted to go back and check on Trish and her girls. My mind wandered back to them a lot after Isabelle went missing. Half the community was up in arms looking for her, too, when they weren't on shift. Travis had been miserly about our efforts, and had refused special dispensation to put together a team to specifically look for her. He had pointed out, rightly, that many of us had already lost more than one little girl in our struggles to get to and stabilise the community and he would not risk the status quo in the hunt for one child. Yes, he was right, but he didn't have to be such a bastard about it. I hadn't liked the way he treated me when I asked. I knew things were going to be different, but his eyes had been cold. He had almost looked pleased to turn me down.

  Between Gordon and Travis, I felt like we were stuck between a rock and a hard place with our leadership. Their tight-lipped clique was beginning to stink of the operation Austin had run at the pier, and I wasn't being given any reassurances that we were heading in a better direction.