The order counter had also been ransacked, but not as much as he had feared, as sitting at the far corner without a care in the world was a box of chips. If there was anything he didn’t despise from this establishment, it was the chips, even if cold.
With a pleased grin, Peter snapped up the chips and hurriedly examined them. They were cold, but thanks to near toxic preservatives, they were not rotten. Peter sighed in relief and, after one small bite, confirmed that his sight wasn’t deluding him. These chips were safe to eat. He proceeded to gobble them up; he noted that it wasn’t nearly as good as the cat foot.
Thanks to a drop in fast food regulations, this chip order was huge, enough for a full meal. He had only eaten a quarter when he decided he should do the rest sitting down at a table; he must try to maintain some sense of civility.
He walked slowly to the seating, not concentrating where he was going as he filled the void in his stomach. He was awoken from his daze just before reaching the brightly coloured seating area, where he unknowingly walked into a metal chair which, on the best of occasions, would only make a noise capable of forcing a deaf man to self-mutilation. Peter’s teeth and ears rang from the shell shock, but that was the least of his problems. Something else had heard him.
Hisses and growling started pouring in from outside the venue; he knew he didn’t have much time. He dropped the now half-eaten cold chips and hastily searched for a place to hide. He wouldn’t make it in a chase, if these were the creatures he feared.
‘Sorry, guess you weren’t that insane,’ he could hear himself whispering.
The sounds of predators were approaching and, without any better spot, he crouched and hid under the table, bringing up a chair (wooden, so as not to compound the problem) to block the entrance.
Then he waited.
The hisses came closer, but as they were not met with anything else, they soon abated. All he could hear was a deep gurgling, as if the creatures had something stuck in their throats.
Then she appeared. Peter almost always kept a grudge, and he would not soon forget the woman who had barrelled into him only yesterday. From his viewpoint below, Peter could not see much difference in the woman, besides the obvious deprivation in her tan and the signs of mutilation scarring her body. Upon her neck, Peter could see the scab of what was, in all probability, a bite wound. She also had such a wound on her leg and scratches covering her body. Peter should have felt a little bit sorry for her, but that was not his way. All he knew was that he didn’t like this woman, and that she had become something he didn’t like even more. She was a zombie, no doubt about it, but she seemed different from the beggar. She was more like the shambling zombies which had hung out beside his bike. Her perceptions seemed dulled; she didn’t seem as angry – besides the occasional hiss. The zombie turned and he could now look into her eyes – no pupils, and just plain white. She was blind.
Peter was no scientist; he wouldn’t know what this meant. All he knew was what all gamers knew – that zombies could spread the virus through a bite. But if he remembered correctly, the beggar didn’t have any bite wounds. Maybe, just maybe, zombies who gained the virus by bite lost their sight. It was a likely possibility and, in fact, made his survival chances higher. The blind could seldom fight as well as the sighted.
No matter his confidence, however, he didn’t move. He held his breath as the zombie approached. It was sniffing the air for prey. It definitely wasn’t like the zombies in movies. This creature was more like a wild animal, an animal in human form…that wanted to eat him.
She came closer, until Peter could see her knees up close. She sniffed above and then with a sharp hiss, swung her arms to knock the chips onto the floor, trampling them as she moved off.
Peter suppressed a groan. That was the rest of his brunch ruined. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable holding his breath, but the zombie was still close. He would have to do it for just a bit longer.
She was still loitering. Oh, how Peter abhorred loitering.
First, she knocks him over, then she becomes a flesh-eater, she then proceeds to interrupt his meal and trample on it, just to loiter around forcing him to suffocate himself. He truly despised this woman.
He had been holding onto the hilt of his knife and he now found his hand almost crushing it. He loosened his grip after realising that he had almost cut himself.
The zombie woman was still there, but it seemed she had long become bored of finding a meal. She rather used her time to aimlessly wander in circles. She continued to dawdle, till the point where Peter could almost not stand it anymore, his face almost turning blue from holding his breath. Then, as if he had been answered by some divine being above, she left.
With a gurgle and indifferent hiss, she shambled out of the room, knocking into the counter and eventually disappearing outside of Peter’s vision.
He felt relief, but didn’t release his breath just yet. He listened, trying to sense the distance of the zombie. Then, when he felt it was safe, he let out a gust of air – alerting the zombie to his position.
He had barely managed to back up to the far side of the under table when the woman pounced, hissing and growling while trying to claw through. He was stunned, but managed to keep his ligaments from being bitten. She was clawing through, slowly and angrily moving closer and closer. As her head came into reach, he quickly kicked her in the head; this stunned her for barely a second and she came back in full force.
Peter was curled up in a ball in the corner under the table, the zombie edging ever closer. Her head came nearer and, as she began entering the space under the table, Peter knew that his time was up. No matter his strength, a zombie could feel no pain.
Then he remembered how much he hated this woman. Hated her for petty reasons, granted, but hated her nonetheless. This filled him with the rage he needed.
She now had her arms up, ready to restrain him so she could have her meal. As she sprung forward, Peter drew his knife.
The knife didn’t hit her, but neither did she make any headway. Both of them were in a melee hold; their arms around each other’s necks. But the zombie was not the traditional wrestler. She just wanted to bite. Slowly but surely, she moved her head towards his arm. She opened her mouth, readying it for her attack. Her mouth was merely a centimetre away from his arm, and then he let go of her neck. Stunned, she tried to go in for another attack, but Peter was ready. He punched her in the face with all his strength, keeping the head back as he pointed the knife upwards and drove it into her throat. The long blade felt no resistance and went up her throat and into her head.
She slumped to the floor. Peter was still holding the blade even as it was entrenched in her throat. He was panting like a steam engine, all the shocks of this fight coming back to him.
‘I killed someone,’ Peter murmured, wide eyed and shocked.
‘Good work, I knew you had it in you.’
Peter ignored this and retrieved his blade. He swore as it would not budge from the squelchy flesh of the zombie’s head.
‘Told you that no blood-groove would be a problem,’ he chastised.
‘No you didn’t! None of us thought of it,’ he rebutted.
There was a short pause, and then he answered, ‘What do you mean ‘us’? We are one and the same, after all.’
Then the hisses started, silencing both of them. This time they were further off, and too many imaginable to fight on his own.
Abandoning his blade, he exited the vile fast food venue and escaped Cavendish Square. He ran out of the market area and didn’t turn back even as he heard crashes of zombies exiting the building. He ran and ran, upstairs and down stairs, over fencing and up ladders. Eventually, he wound up on the roof of a small office block. Peering back at Cavendish, he could see the zombies moving out, searching for the noise maker. They wouldn’t find him. They shambled about, some ran into other alleys, none knew where had actually gone. Peter was no longer hungry, but he knew he would be hungry again, and he also had another dilemm
a. He had run in the opposite direction of his apartment and for the first time after Z-Day, he truly didn’t have a place to stay.
He knew he had been sheltering himself from this world all this time, but now he had awoken. He had to greet this new world as, cheerful or not, it was here to stay.
Peter turned from his vantage point and bent down to pick up a tire iron. He gripped it tightly and then swung it just as the blind zombie noticed him.
Yes, he didn’t want to engage this new world, but Peter wasn’t a pessimist, even if he was somewhat of an unpleasant person. He would make the best of this world.
The blind zombie fell, head smashed from the quick blow. As it fell, Peter grinned slightly and spoke to himself,
‘Hell, this could be kinda fun.’
5. Survival
The day was still young and Peter was yet to guarantee his survival in this new age. Now that he was out of shelter and out of supplies, he would need to work out something else. He, of course, needed a decent weapon, as the melee with the zombie back at Cavendish reminded him that bread knives would be practically useless. The tire iron would have to do, for now, but Peter knew that against a sighted zombie like the beggar or a group of Blinds, he would be screwed.
It was then that Peter noticed something strange about the rooftops. He had always noticed that these buildings were not too far from each other, but till now, he had not noticed that they were, in fact, connected by wooden ramps. This confirmed one thing for Peter – he was not alone in this world, or if he was, there had been survivors before him.
Seeing no other choices, he approached the ramps. They looked neither new nor old, but Peter had to admit that he had no knowledge of wood to identify it either way. He placed his one foot on it, held his arms out to steady himself. The plank gave a resistant creak but then steadied.
Peter took in a breath and crossed as fast as he could without falling off. He got to the other side and thanked the planks. He had never been one to trust the materials of carpenters – they always loitered – but this creation grew his appreciation for the craft.
This new rooftop was not unlike the old one. He went to the edge and peered down. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, just some rubbish bags torn asunder. But, before attempting to get down from the roof, he had a brainwave.
The roof he was on was scattered with the usual concrete debris that you would find on such a cheaply made office. Picking a piece of this debris up, he dropped it off the side of the building, just to be met with the sight of not one, but three zombies rushing into the alley from their previous hiding places. These were sighted zombies.
They looked at the dropped rock and then began glancing around for the source. Peter lowered himself on the rooftop.
These zombies didn’t hiss but did gurgle occasionally, accompanied by a last minute grunt which was followed by the sounds of them leaving. Stunned, Peter realized something.
These zombies were unlike any that humans had surmised. They weren’t like that of the movies and games, all due to one trait. They could communicate
Peter couldn’t be sure, and would have to observe more closely and for longer, but from what he had already seen and heard, the zombies had more meaning to their primal noises than what people already thought. This was indeed terrifying news, as it meant that zombies would not only work out of mutual benefit, but could work cohesively too.
After he was sure that it was safe, he left his prone position and went into a crouch. He would have to go further, and hopefully find a safe area to dismount the rooftops and head to a shelter of some kind.
While crouched, he crossed the ramp to the next rooftop and the next after that. For every rooftop, there was always a reason not to go down, and on every other one, he would find something useful: shredded paper and charcoal for a fire, a pair of broken binoculars, a packet of cigarettes, for trading. He was glad of his finds, but it still needed something else. He needed weapons, and a place to call temporary home, both of which he was yet to find.
It was while Peter was scavenging in a roof mounted dustbin that he heard the crash. First, the sound of engines, and then the screech of breaks, just to be answered with a crash and shake as it collided with the building Peter was located on.
He fought to keep his balance, but after a quick vibration, he no longer needed to. Cautiously, he walked towards the edge of the building, clutching the tire iron.
Looking over the edge, he saw the culprit of all the noise. Mangled into the wall, smoke starting to rise from its engine, was a BMW. Peter swore - this would no doubt attract zombies to his position.
‘Why couldn’t the bastard crash into another building?’
‘Life doesn’t work out the way you want it to, Peter,’ he replied, ‘You gotta make the most of what happens in the moment.’
As he watched the smoking crash, he soon noticed something. A particular lack of hisses or gurgles.
‘You’re not going to get this chance again. Search it!’
Peter didn’t have to tell himself twice as he mounted the ladder and slid down.
At the driver’s window, Peter could see what he surmised to be the cause of the crash. The driver had been coughing up blood, similar to what the other zombies had splattered on their shirt. He must have succumbed to infection while driving. At closer inspection, he could see a bite wound on the man’s arm, marring what probably once was an expensive business suit.
Peter slowly opened the door, and then allowed the body to push it the rest of the way open as the body slid out. He didn’t want to risk anything, so he used the tire iron to break open the man’s head. Then he noticed something that in all his time here he didn’t expect to ever acquire. A tool which had allowed humanity to persevere, to become dominant above all species as well as each other: in a holster, on the waist of the man, was a pistol.
Peter looked around warily and then bent down to detach the weapon from the man’s side. This was one thing that even during a Zombie apocalypse he was not expecting. Just a year prior to this, the national government had instated a mass disarmament of the population. Guns in the hands of anyone but the military were illegal. It didn’t stop crime but everyone knew deep down what the real reason was. An unarmed society was a slave society, and that’s what the government wanted.
Taking the firearm in his hands, he examined it. He had never really taken an interest in firearms but knew enough to guess that this was a 9mm, police issue. He knew that he didn’t know how to use it properly, but no one passed on something as valuable as a gun. He attached the holster to his own belt and placed the pistol inside; making sure it lay by his side.
Then it was time to check the rest of the car. The gun was an amazing find, but he still wanted more. After opening the boot of the car, he found what he was looking for. It seemed this guy had been busy, as the trunk was filled with odds and ends. One greenish box caught Peter’s attention and he opened it to find extra cartridges for the pistol, six in total. Pleased with himself, he placed one in an appropriate pocket on the holster and the others in his bag. Other things also lay in the car: a lighter, a bottle of fuel and a first aid kit. Peter took the lighter and first aid kit, but had to leave the fuel, his bag was already close to bursting.
Just as he was wrapping up his scavenging, he started hearing the familiar and unpleasant sounds of hissing and growling. Zombies, a lot of them, were heading his way.
Luckily, he had planned his escape route from the start and quickly dashed to a nearby ladder. He climbed to the top and then proceeded to utilise the planks to move over more and more rooftops.
It was finally getting dark by the time that Peter stopped. The car crash was far away now and the planked rooftops were getting fewer and fewer; this building, in fact, was the last one on the trail.
The sun was setting, leaving an eerie glow over the city. He was glad that he had managed to find this place before the sun had completely fallen asleep, as he didn’t feel content to try and cross rooftop
s in the dark. He decided he would sleep here.
After crossing onto the final rooftop, he lifted up the plank and made sure that no uninvited guest could disturb him. On the opposite side was a utility ladder, already brought up to prevent anyone from climbing onto the roof.
Peter smiled, he would most probably get a peaceful night tonight. He would need one after a day like this.
The roof was flat, but also had an extra addition. This building was, most probably, a factory shop of sorts, as it had need of a large roof mounted ventilation system, and as Peter was pleased to find, a sheltered area for the ventilation module.
Bending down and entering, Peter found that without the danger of electricity, it was perfectly safe within and even provided cover for a fire, which he was even more pleased about.
Taking his heavy bag off, he assessed his finds and took out the kindling from earlier. With the cover protecting him from prying eyes, he started a small fire which he used to warm himself and cook a potato which he had stuck to the end of one of his bread knives.
It was surprisingly delectable and with a pleased stomach, Peter lay down next to the dying fire and slept.
6. Survivors
Peter awoke as fast as he had fallen asleep. The fire had gone out by now and the sun was rising. As he had hoped, he had managed a good night’s sleep. It was not this reason that he was awake, however. For most of the night he had managed to sleep quite deeply, something he would have to break, but as the sun started to rise, his slumber lightened and now even the smallest noise could wake him. These noises, in particular, were voices.
He could only hear mumbling from his current position, but as he silently left his cover, the voices became more distinct. Eventually, he could hear the details.
‘…cache eight was also missing its binoculars. I was not too worried about that as the Grandmaster called off that incursion, but it is worrying. I doubt zoms got to it, but could be some survivors.’
Cape Zero- the Fall Page 3
