by Thomas Hall
Three of the Patrol Men were dead: Anton, Huey and Demetrius. Ostensibly this was because they had run into a group of zombies that were too big for them to handle. Dale wondered if they had been killed by bites or by bullets. Velma wouldn’t want anyone else armed. Darren and Jessie no longer went on patrols.
Despite his concerns Dale felt sleep stealing over him. His eyes were heavy and with nothing but his worries to keep him awake he soon fell asleep.
When he woke it was light. He could hear the front door opening and again felt that same temporal displacement. He stood up at once and damned himself for not finding a weapon before he’d sat down.
He stepped away from the chair and into the dining room. He could still see the front door. He held his breath and waited. What if they came in through the back? He pushed the thought away. If they came for him at all they would catch him but at least he would know.
‘Dale?’ Beth said. She closed the door behind her. ‘What are you doing up?’
He stepped towards her. ‘I could ask you the same thing.’
She looked at him confused. She was on her own. ‘I’ve been… I went…’
‘I know where you’ve been Beth.’ Suddenly he was sure that he did.
‘Of course you do. We spoke about it last night.’
Now it was his turn to look confused. He could remember talking about something as they fell asleep the night before but it hadn’t been anything important. She wouldn’t have told him she was going to get soldiers. He would have remembered something like that.
‘You don’t remember do you?’ she said. She looked less confused and more angry now. ‘You never listen to me anymore Dale.’
‘Where have you been?’ he said.
‘Where do you think I’ve been?’ she said.
They stood in silence for a moment. Each demanding that the other answer first.
Beth shook her head. ‘I had to take Dawn to school, they were going to the tower to watch the zombies,’ she said. ‘You remember?’
‘What tower? Why are they doing that?’
Beth looked at him for a moment and he thought she was going to answer. She shook her head instead and brushed past him to go up the stairs.
They got under one another’s feet. Dale began to feel bad about being there at all but he didn’t see what other choice he had. It didn’t stop him becoming angry at the slightest provocation and snapping at Beth. She didn’t understand. How could she? He was trapped once again and she didn’t know the full story.
More than once she had suggested he go to see Velma and apologise. As if he could do that and then be allowed to go free. She didn’t understand that it would just be exchanging one prison for another.
He sat in the chair facing the window and tried to remember what they had argued about. Just as the days became meaningless so too did the fighting. It was frustrating and he had no one to take it out on other than her.
Dale stood up when he heard the key in the door. At his insistence Beth had begun locking it when she went out. She never argued about that and really it was more than he deserved to have a partner like her. A wave of gratitude washed over him and he decided that he would apologise.
He walked towards the door but almost at once he could see that it wasn’t Beth.
A man, a stranger, stepped into the house. He was dressed in black body armour and he was holding a handgun. He moved with practiced silence.
Dale stepped away from the door.
‘Hello?’ the man said.
Dale watched him from the living room. He didn’t recognise the man but he knew the type. He was a soldier through and through. He wasn’t considering the morality of what he was doing. If anyone asked later he would say that he had been following orders. By that time though, Dale would be dead or back in the hospital.
‘Is anyone home?’ the soldier said.
Dale reached for the poker that had been by the door for the last few days. Beth had called him paranoid for putting it there but he felt no satisfaction for being proven right. He picked it up.
The soldier had his back to the living room. He walked towards the kitchen with his gun up.
Dale took a silent step towards him. He adjusted his grip on the poker. Neither one of them made a sound.
He followed the soldier into the kitchen where he stopped. The soldier turned around. He had a big smile on his face.
‘Hello Dale,’ the soldier said.
Dale still held the poker over his shoulder. The gun was pointed directly at his chest. ‘You aren’t going to shoot me.’
‘Not unless I have too. They want you alive but accidents happen.’
The looked at one another. Neither one of them lowered their weapons.
‘What are you doing here?’ Dale said.
‘Looking for you,’ the soldier said.
‘Why?’
‘Orders.’
Dale felt angry. He wanted to hit the soldier but he didn’t move.
‘Put the stick down,’ the soldier said.
‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ Dale said.
‘Yes you are.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because it’s the only way to keep these people safe.’
Dale gripped the poker more firmly. He wondered if he could swing it and hit the soldier before he could pull the trigger. He needed a way to distract him first. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’re telling me you don’t know?’
‘Know what?’
The soldier smiled. ‘Of course you don’t know.’ He laughed.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘This is all your fault Dale,’ the soldier said.
‘What is?’
‘Everything. The zombies that keep coming into the village?’
Dale nodded.
‘They aren’t coming into the village. They’re being turned here.’
‘What do you mean?’ Dale said.
‘It’s your blood Dale. Your blood is in the water.’
Dale shook his head. ‘You’re lying.’
The soldier shrugged. Dale noticed that he was becoming more relaxed. Growing in confidence that Dale wasn’t going to swing the poker and take him down. ‘Why would I lie?’
‘Because you want me to go back to the hospital.’
‘Yeah, I want you to come back to the hospital but I don’t need to lie. It’s the truth.’
‘No it isn’t,’ Dale said but even as he said it he wondered. Wesley had said the zombies in the last attack were from the village but they thought they were people who lived in the outskirts. It had probably been that a small group had got in and attacked them. ‘Who told you I was here?’
‘No one,’ the soldier said. Dale wanted to believe that because the other possibility was that Beth had told them. He didn’t want to think badly about her.
‘So you just got lucky?’ Dale said.
‘You could say that. We’d have found you eventually though. Every house is getting searched.’
They looked at each other. Time passed in a series of heartbeats.
‘So what happens now?’ Dale said.
‘You going to put that stick down?’ the soldier said.
‘Are you going to put the gun down?’
They looked at one another. The soldier began to lower his gun.
Dale swung with as much strength as he had. The ceiling was too low to swing overhead so he struck the soldier in the side of the head. The sharp end pierced the flesh at the temple. The soldiers eyes opened wide.
He pulled the poker out with some difficulty. The soldier fell to the floor.
CHAPTER 13
DALE WAS PANTING FOR BREATH. HIS ARMS ACHED. His head was spinning. He looked at the soldier who was face down on the kitchen floor. Almost certainly dead.
Almost was no guarantee though. Before he did anything else Dale picked up the gun that the man had dropped and checked to make sure it was loaded. Then he held it in one hand while
he felt the soldiers neck with the other. No pulse.
For a moment all he could think about was what a lucky escape he’d had. But the moment was like a bubble and it popped before he’d had time to properly enjoy it. A dead soldier caused about a thousand more problems than it solved.
Beth would be home soon. What would she say when she found out what he had done? She knew he used to be in the army, and probably that he had killed people, but that was different. That was part of his job. This had all the hallmarks of a murder.
He stood up. He passed the gun from one hand to the other. He wondered what he should do.
Eventually, the soldier would be missed. If he was near the end of his shift it might be a matter of minutes before someone came looking for him. If he was near the start then Dale might have a few hours. Time would eventually pass regardless of how much of it there was. He needed to come up with a plan.
Dale paced back and forth in front of door. One of them had to leave. Either he had to get the soldier out or he had to go. He considered the possibility of dragging the body into one of the houses nearby. Some of them were empty. But when the body was found it would draw attention to the area. It might buy him a few days but then what? They could move to another house, one that had already been searched, but would Beth be willing to do so? She had made this her home. What would he say to her?
He forced himself to calm down. Getting worked up would not help the situation. But he imagined Beth walking back through the door and seeing the body on the kitchen floor. She would scream. She would shout at him. She wouldn’t understand that he’d had no choice.
Dale stopped in front of the body again. It was all the soldiers fault. If he hadn’t come here he would still be alive and Dale wouldn’t be in this situation. He hadn’t asked the solider to come looking for him. It wasn’t his fault.
Dale aimed the gun at the soldier’s head. He wanted to take out his frustration on the person who deserved it but what would be the point? The man was already dead. He couldn’t be killed again. Unless he somehow rose up as a zombie to live a second, half, life. Then Dale could shoot his body full of holes before finally taking off his head.
He turned away. Revenge fantasies weren’t going to get him out of the situation. He needed help and there was only one person in Harmony who was likely to offer him any now.
Dale opened the front door. After a month in self-imposed exhale the gentle wind felt biting. Spring was coming but it felt like the middle of winter. The sun was too bright. The colours and fragrances overwhelming.
He looked around but he couldn’t see any soldiers. He closed the door behind him and moved as quickly as he could safely manage. The gun was tucked into the back of his trousers but he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.
Harmony wasn’t a big village in terms of population size but it was spread out. The majority of people had chosen to live close to the centre, near the town hall and what they thought of as safety. He was fortunate that Beth had wanted to live as far away from her grandfather as possible and chosen a sparsely populated area on the opposite side of the village.
Soldiers would be on every street corner in the village centre but few were roaming the streets on the outskirts. It meant that Dale would have to walk around the outside of the village to reach Wesley’s house but it would be worth it if he could help. If he couldn’t then it was a wasted journey.
He passed a cottage that looked empty but had fresh blooms of pink and yellow flowers in the garden that looked cultivated. He didn’t know who lived there. He passed another house where he could hear people talking in loud voices. They might have been arguing. Most of the houses he passed were silent and seemingly empty.
Further, from Beth’s house things began to change. In the distance he could hear zombies moaning and the gentle rattle of machine gun fire. He looked down side streets towards the village centre but he couldn’t see anything. After a few minutes he began to worry about Beth and Dawn. He hoped they were alright.
He didn’t see any soldiers but he saw plenty of zombies. They didn’t see him. He crept along silently and did nothing to draw attention to himself. They were making their way towards the middle of the village where everyone would be gathered and making the most of the sunny weather. It might even have been a market day.
Dale wondered what had drawn them all to the village. He felt cut off from events. He was a stranger. Most of the people he had known probably thought he’d run away or been caught like Anton, Huey or Demetrius.
The rattle of machine gun fire became more pronounced. The moans of the zombies seemed to come from everywhere. It took his mind off what had happened in the kitchen, that there was still a dead body there. He began to wonder if he could blame it on whatever was happening in the village. He could tell Beth that he’d thought the soldier was a zombie. He’d made a mistake.
Wesley’s house appeared in the distance and he began to relax. The country house was as safe as anywhere in Harmony and Wesley would know what to do.
Dale hurried across the lawn. The sounds of gunfire and zombie moans receding into the background. By the time he reached the front door he was practically running.
The front door wasn’t locked but that gave him no cause for alarm. Most people didn’t lock their doors. Dale pushed it open and went inside.
It was dark. The old building hadn’t been made to let in a lot of sunlight. The windows were small and high up. The front faced the wrong direction. Dale closed the door behind him.
‘Wesley?’
The entrance hall was as large as Beth’s sitting room. A chair had been knocked over and pieces of a china vase were scattered across the floor. Dale walked further into the house.
‘Wesley are you here?’
He could hear the panic in his own voice but didn’t relate it to anything in the house. It was natural for him to be scared. He had killed a soldier. It was why he was there at all.
‘Wesley?’
The answer came as a low moan yet still Dale didn’t sense that there was something wrong. Still he kept going further into the grand old country house.
Wesley appeared in the middle of a dark passageway that led to the kitchen. He stood leaning against the wall and stared at Dale.
‘There you are,’ Dale said. He walked more quickly towards him, still unaware, or still unprepared to accept that there was a problem. ‘I need to talk to you.’
Wesley moaned.
Dale stopped.
All thought of the dead soldier in Beth’s kitchen was gone. He stared at Wesley’s face. His skin was pale and lifeless. His eyes were black marbles.
‘No…’ Dale said. He took a step back but didn’t turn away. ‘Wesley?’
Wesley moaned and took a shuffling step towards him. He was dragging his left leg along as if it had been injured. There were no visible bite marks on him.
Dale took another step back. He didn’t want to believe it. It wasn’t possible. Wesley couldn’t be a zombie.
‘What happened to you?’ Dale said.
Wesley moaned as if he was trying to answer but Dale knew that couldn’t be true. Zombies had no capacity for language. If the thing that had been Wesley was making a noise, it was either in anger or frustration.
Dale took another step back and felt the wall behind him. Still without turning away he reached for the handle but couldn’t find it. In his distress, he forgot that there was no door behind him at all. If he felt his back against a wall it was because he had turned.
‘Stay back,’ Dale said. He could feel the panic rising through his chest. His voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘Stay away from me.’
Wesley kept coming towards him. When he was just a few steps away Dale remembered the gun that he had taken from the soldier. He pulled it out of his jeans and released the safety. He held it up and pointed it at Wesley’s head.
‘Stay back,’ Dale said.
There was a moan and the briefest flicker of eye movement towards the gun. Then
Wesley kept coming towards him.
Dale was sweating. His finger slipped on the trigger. He needed to wipe his forehead but he didn’t dare move. He didn’t want to kill Wesley but what choice did he have?
‘You’re already dead,’ Dale said.
Wesley didn’t reply.
What would Beth say when she saw the dead soldier in her kitchen? She would come here looking for Wesley as well and find him dead on the floor. And Dale there, responsible for it all.
What if he was already too late? Dale had no way of knowing where Beth had gone when she’d stormed out of the house. She might have come here to see Wesley and found him a zombie. She might not have been quick enough, he might have gotten her.
Dale aimed the gun at Wesley right eye.
‘I’m sorry Wesley,’ he said. Then he pulled the trigger and killed him.
CHAPTER 14
DALE DROPPED THE GUN. THE SOUND WAS COLD. Brittle. He looked down and saw Wesley lying on his face. There was a hole at the back of his head where the bullet had gone through but little blood.
‘What have I done?’ he said.
No one answered. He took a step back and slid along the wall. He felt unsteady and thought that he might fall over.
Dale slowly lowered himself to the floor. He picked up the gun. It suddenly felt heavy. He didn’t want to hold it but he knew he had to.
He didn’t get back up. He couldn’t look away from Wesley. He felt the gun in his hand and heard the soldier telling him that this was his fault. He didn’t want to believe it but he knew that it was true.
Dale had no idea how long he sat on the floor with the gun in his hand, looking at Wesley. He remembered putting the gun in his mouth at one point and then deciding that he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill himself because it wouldn’t solve anything. At least that is what he told himself.
