‘Close your windows, batten down your hatches, cover your mouths and eyes!’ Bailey began to yell as the machine drew closer.
It seemed like sound advice.
The pitchfork gang at the front looked like they’d been briefed on this, and began pulling on masks and goggles, then getting them on those at the front who were holding the zeds back. If what I thought was about to happen was actually going to happen, their clothes were going to be ruined.
People tried to press themselves into the side of the busses, guessing what was coming next just as I had. Those of us who couldn’t get close enough, like Claire and myself, settled for turning our backs on the barricade, putting out heads down, and praying to the Gods.
New sounds replaced the gunfire that had previously filled the air. The wet ripping and tearing of steel through flesh, the pained groans of the machine as it crunched through bone, the screams of we oh-so happy few as red rain washed against the side of the busses.
Fortunately, the shape of the harvester’s business end directed most of the gore outward or downward, not a whole lot went flying skywards, but there was a hell of a lot of gore to manage, and I felt spatters of it running down the back of my leathers and onto the top of my jeans. The coagulated, near-solid blood of the days-long dead.
Sat in the cab of his harvester, I hoped Rob Grant was having a wonderful time.
Thirty Five
The battle was over. We had won. But it didn’t feel like it.
The first thing Captain Hale did, was lead the way out into the bloody battlefield and start making sure the bodies stayed dead. He took out a combat knife and pressed it through the eye of every corpse with an intact head. His soldiers followed him, wading through puddles of thick brown gore and doing the same.
Then the Captain ordered patrols out to scour the acreage, make sure all the other bodies were going to stay down too – and deal with those zeds who’d been buried in the fortification collapses. He sent another to put out the fire at the side gate, and garrisoned a final squad to stay behind at the barricade, to protect the house, main gate and our wounded.
I felt dirty, tired and sick. I wanted to wash the filth out of my hair and off my jacket, but there were lines for the kitchen sink, bathrooms, even the garden hoses, and on the grand scale of things, I’d gotten off pretty lightly. There were people upstairs who required full showers. Multiple full showers, in close succession. Good job the water was still running, and the electricity was still on.
Lydia and her venerable aunt fired up the kettle and broke open several bottles of Rob’s bootleg spirits. It went in coffee like a treat, but some people were just passing it around, taking it as it came. After a night like that, we’d all earned it.
In the aftermath of the battle, the barriers between soldiers, cops and everyone else began to break down. They’d never been tall barriers to begin with, but one of the SySec pair that’d been assigned to guard the house began to cry into his mug, and it was a young mother’s arm that wrapped around his shoulders, the one who’d stood with the screaming toddler on the motorway until Claire bribed them with a lollypop.
My mind drifted to the kids for a moment. The danger might have passed, but the kids were made to stay upstairs, in the rooms at the rear of the house, where they couldn’t see the mess in the courtyard. I know I wouldn’t want my kids to see that. I didn’t even want to see that. If Rob’s homebrewed rum could bleach it from my mind, I’d gladly suffer any hangover.
It was getting towards dawn when the patrols started to return. Light crept over the horizon and began to show the bloody tale of last night, played out across the courtyard. In short; Rob Grant’s farmstead was a foul mess. Much like my hair, despite having been washed twice over the sink at that point. I was still waiting for a shower to free up.
The courtyard was caked in drying ichor, and spread with a mixture of bodies and body-parts, littering the ground like debris after a storm. The stink rising from it was horrific, a blend of decomposing body and overflowing outhouse. It’d only get worse as the day went by.
It was going to be a massive effort to clean up, but Rob seemed eager to get to it, before people were too liquored up to feel like it. Hale timed it right, getting people organised and equipped at that line between comfortably numb and no use to anyone.
Wearing more of the dust masks and goggles from the construction site, brave souls began sweeping and raking the mess together for others to shovel into wheelbarrows, which were carried then to the outer defences.
There was no small amount of vomiting, people needing five minutes for a sit down, and a couple of people just flat couldn’t hack it and needed to be relieved. I couldn’t blame them. There was something worse about seeing the bodies when they were in pieces, a reminder that we’re all just meat waiting to rot.
I shook that morbid thought off because it gave me an idea.
‘Yanis thought that the undead might identify each other by that smell,’ I told Hale and Rob in the courtyard as the barrows were loaded. ‘It might play a part in what stops them from attacking each other.’
‘Go on?’ Hale said.
‘You can try spreading the remains out a little beyond where you made the defences,’ I suggested, ‘I’m sorry we can’t find a deep hole to throw them all into, but at least this way they may be of some use.’
‘Them poor souls,’ Rob said shaking his head, ‘ghouls threw them at us like they were nothing. They were people once. Seems wrong of us to just…use their bodies. Shouldn’t we bury them? Or burn them?’
I let the men think about it, but as usual it fell to me to advocate the practical solution.
‘If there’s even a small chance Yanis was onto something with that theory, better we keep them above ground. Might attract carrion, but that’d be a small price to pay if it puts off another attack.’
‘Do you think that’s likely?’ Rob asked.
Hale looked uncomfortably across the courtyard, surveying the mess. ‘I think we got them all. All bar the ghouls. You’ll have to watch out for them if you’re staying here, but they don’t have an army any more, and they seem smart. Maybe smart enough to know this place is too dangerous to attack again.’
‘I hope so.’ Rob nodded. ‘I don’t like having me home under siege. But I’m not leaving either. Spread the offal outside the fields. I’d appreciate it if you could help me rebuild before you go, if that’s not too much trouble?’
‘Honestly Rob,’ Hale said, ‘I’d be glad to stay here another day or two. Get some proper rest, gather our strength again.’
‘Take as long as you need. Don’t suppose you know anyone who might be able to help with me harvester? I don’t think I can stomach cleaning her on me own, and I need to check her moving parts for damage. Any of your team good with machines?’
I volunteered to help, and changed into my scrubs. I’d just got my jacket and jeans clean, and was not going through that again. The scrubs I could burn afterwards, it wasn’t like I was going back to County General any time soon.
I met Claire in the corridor as I left the bathroom, where she’d been waiting for me. She instigated another tight embrace, this one going on just a second longer than the last.
‘What’s up? I asked her.
‘Guard says Tony and the others are dead. Succumbed to the infection. They didn’t turn immediately, so there’s one thing we know about ocular transmission.’
‘How are they now?’ I asked. ‘Turned?’
Claire shook her hair. ‘It’d have been useful to see an intact infected, but Mrs Lowe saw to the screwdriver business herself.’
‘She’s a tough old broad.’ I nodded.
‘Takes one to know one.’ Claire said.
‘You calling me old?’ I scoffed, ‘Nah, you’re the tough one. Back there in the barn, I caved under the pressure. I froze up. You’re the one who picked up a shovel and started fighting.’
‘It’d have finished me off before that, if you weren’t there.’
‘Think I might still owe you one though.’
We stood there in silence for a moment, but for once, it wasn’t awkward. I didn’t feel myself leaning in for a kiss or anything like that, but when we hugged again, it was real friendship.
Real forgiveness.
‘Are you ready for the autopsies?’ she asked.
‘I’m not…’ I admitted, cringing from the question. ‘I can’t see Tony. Not like he is. I just…you remember him in the ambo? Couldn’t shut the guy up.’
Claire smiled. ‘He could sing too, and when Dave joined in, hah…’ she laughed, but brought a hand up to cover her mouth. Her eyes were watering. ‘I can direct one of the others to do it. McGann, probably, he’s not involved in anything else right now. I’ll get him to write us a report up.’
Outside, people were hosing down the side of the busses, which had been painted with enough unidentifiable gore to give us all a lifetime supply of nightmares. They were doing a thorough job of it, scraping off the viscera with thick rubber gloves and using rags to get it out of every nook and cranny near the windows. SySec did not want the smell haunting them all the way home.
I spent the morning helping Rob with his harvester. I had to stop to suppress the urge to vomit a few times, and there was the ever-present worry that the great churning blades would suddenly spring to life and bisect me, but Rob was careful to electrically disconnect them before we started cleaning them down, also being fond of not losing fingers and hands.
We were about to take a break anyway, when Emile approached. The bottom of his trousers were covered in hay, so I figured he’d been tidying up the stables. When I saw what was in his gloved hand, I knew that was the case.
‘Corpse-wagons forgot this.’ He said, holding up the severed head of the ghoul by her long, dark hair.
Again, judging by the hay, it’d rolled into the stall last night and been missed when people went in for the body. How do you see a headless body and not figure the head is around somewhere? Guess they were just glad to have a whole body to pick up, not a few pieces.
The ghoul’s eyes were open, and despite being greyer than before, losing the life that had once filled them, they still locked upon me. Her mouth opened, and she bared her teeth.
I didn’t even have the words to express my feelings about that. I was tired, numb, and frankly I’d have had the same reaction if she’d sprouted spider legs from her neck and tried to scuttle away.
‘Stick the bitch in a sack and take her to Sydow.’ I told him. ‘I don’t know how the fuck she’s doing that, and I definitely don’t want to see her doing it. Tell Hale too. He’ll want to know.’
*
We spent the rest of the day putting the farm back together.
Most of the defences were repaired or replaced, the fortifications in the fields, the side gates, all better thanks to the tender care of the world’s most heavily armed home improvement team. Though they were down on bullets, they had spirit to spare. They were alive, after all.
That lasted until the late afternoon, when we buried the dead. Those who had died in the first attack, those from last night, and those from the lodge, having been autopsied by McGann and the other medics. They’d made a full report too, photographed on their phones before the batteries died, and documented on lined paper from Rob’s office.
The burial took place in the corner of the field left fallow this year. It was not particularly idyllic, or peaceful. A bit overgrown. The sheep would probably be back in here in a day or two. I don’t know if Tony and Tucker would have liked it, but it was all we had.
Hale made a speech. It was about survival and being strong in the face of adversity. Facing your fears and fighting them being true bravery. We’re all heroes. Something like that. I was there but my head wasn’t.
Might come as a surprise, but I was thinking about home. More specifically; was I going back or not? I’d felt trapped in that fight. Trapped ever since I got shoved into the back of the ambulance. I didn’t get out sooner because going back would have been dangerous, but it would have at least been a choice I made, not just something I was along for the ride with.
I could stay here. Help on the farm. Tend the horses. There’d be food in the long term, security, and the secrets of Lydia Grant’s one-pot cooking. Or I could turn back. Take my chances on the road. Might be dangerous, but at least it’d be a chance of going home.
Then there was option number three.
*
Captain Hale, Sergeant Bailey, Mrs Lowe, Officer Asturias, Doctor Fielding and I were sat at Rob Grant’s table, while the man himself fetched drinks from the kitchen. It was late. Most had gone to bed. The farm was as clean and as defensible as it was going to get. Now that was taken care of, Hale insisted we have a debriefing.
Rob insisted we do it over drinks.
I liked Rob.
‘They’re not just smart animals,’ Hale started, ‘the ghouls are capable of making and using weapons. Those firebombs were clever. They knew we had flammable defences, and exploited the weakness.’
‘But they’re either not smart enough, or lack the hand-eye coordination necessary for using guns,’ Bailey threw in, ‘otherwise they’d have been using all that firepower from Overbridge against us.’
‘If it was them who took the guns, and not someone else, a human factor.’ Hale pointed out.
‘That ankh was on the windows of both hunting stores,’ Mrs Lowe said, ‘from what Emile tells me, that’s a symbol of this Dead Company. Muerto thingy.’
‘Muerto Compaña.’ He nodded. ‘The old stories are from a time before guns, so even if we take them as true, there is nothing to say they can or cannot use them. It may have been them who took them, perhaps for others to use, or perhaps just to keep them away from us.’
‘There were some supplies left, what do you make of that?’ Mrs Lowe asked him.
Emile shrugged. ‘I believe whoever was looting the stores was interrupted before they got everything, or maybe they decided to leave something for the next person. I can only guess.’
‘You said the zeds are like things from Island lore,’ Claire said to Rob, ‘is there anything similar to the Muerto Compaña in those stories?’
Rob took a swig of his drink and shook his head. His accent thickened the more he drank. ‘Zombies, they most either vengeful dead or slaves to evil magic. Duppy, ghouls, they like evil people in life, an lured others to horrible deaths for the food, or the fun. No armies of the dead in the Islands, far as I know.’
‘We have it confirmed though, that ghouls can assemble their own firebombs,’ Hale said, keeping us on track, ‘and that they make their own claws by chewing off their fingertips and sharpening the ends of their finger bones.’
‘Which is utterly disgusting.’ Claire said.
‘What else do we know?’ Sergeant Bailey prompted. ‘What can we guess from their actions?’
‘The common zeds take orders from them, they’re smarter and more organised when the ghouls are in charge.’ I said, ‘They’ll wait for stragglers to join the horde, suppress their hunger, at least temporarily, and combine their efforts on weaknesses – like how they were pulling at the same boards to tear down the walls.’
‘The zeds are foot soldiers, and the ghouls the generals.’ Hale nodded, putting it into a context he understood.
‘Or maybe more like sergeants and captains,’ Mrs Lowe said, leaning over the table for the bottle, ‘there could be a hierarchy in the ghouls, or much worse things further up the chain of command.’
‘The ones we saw in the barn communicated with each other,’ I said, ‘did it sound like anything to you?’
Claire shook her head. ‘Just hissing and growling, didn’t sound like a language, but maybe that’s just because we don’t speak it?’
‘If they communicate, I’m going to bet they’ve a hierarchy,’ Hale said, taking a sip from his almost untouched glass. Unlike mine, it was neat. I had lemonade with it, abandoning coffee so I could sleep to
night. ‘Whatever else is up that chain of command, we can guess it communicates with the ghouls, and the ghouls probably didn’t die in the battle today. Wouldn’t have been stupid enough to commit with the rest of the horde.’
‘You saying me home may still not be safe?’ Rob asked. ‘Even if I fend off the ghouls, I got more problems?’
‘I can’t promise anything, Rob.’ Hale sighed, ‘The offer is still open to come to Sydow.’
‘Nah, I can’t leave now. We just got the place nice again.’ He smirked, topping himself up.
‘My people want to stay,’ Mrs Lowe said, ‘Now they’ve fought for this place, they’re keen to take you up on that offer, Rob. If it’s still on the table?’
‘Might have to help build the guest houses up, but the roofs are on. Watertight, at least.’
‘Excellent.’ Mrs Lowe said, clinking glasses with him, ‘We’ve got to run a quick errand, get up to my hunting lodge and bring back supplies. I’ve got some more weapons and ammo up there, and a load of MCIs…’
‘You’re all doomed if you need those MCIs.’ Hale jumped in, face straight but a twinkle in his eye.
Mrs Lowe pointed a finger of warning at him. ‘We’ll grab our gear, and come back here.’ She said, jabbing the finger at the table top. ‘Then I don’t know…back on the road, we could salvage what we can from those cars stuck down there. We left all our other supplies there too. Be nice to pick them up, help pad out your stores if nothing else.’
‘Remember though, the enemy is an army,’ Hale warned her, ‘you’ll have to move as if you’re in occupied territory.’
‘Yes, mother.’ Mrs Lowe grinned at him.
‘The families expressed an interest in staying as well, those with kids?’ Claire said. ‘Do you have room for everyone Rob?’
‘If I don’t, I’ll make it.’ He said with a nod, ‘The guesthouses can put up about twenty or so, more if they bunch up.’
The Suburban Dead (Book 2): Emergency Page 33
