Last Stand For Man

by Ryan, Nicholas

  The moon had risen high in the sky, beyond the skeins of the smoke-laden horizon, and now the nightmare world surrounding him was bathed in a soft pale glow.

  Ahead, the ground between the roadside and the walls of Avignon was littered with a carnage of dead corpses and milling hordes of undead. The infected trampled the bodies underfoot, clamoring and snarling in mindless madness at a section of the high wall where two gendarmes were firing indiscriminately into the dark swarming mass beneath them. Flashlight beams probed the night and the sound of assault rifle fire ripped the dark apart.

  Chuck lay perfectly still and cursed the gendarmes. He put his head down on the rough surface of the road and wept silent sobs of despair.

  Away from the horde swarming around the wall there were other undead ghouls, moving in the ghostly moonlight. They were going like feral thieves amongst the bloated corpses, pausing on their haunches to gnaw at a pale arm, or to bite off stiff lifeless fingers with their teeth.

  Chuck watched them from the corner of his eye, terrified that at any instant they might detect him. He cupped the bleeding mess of one hand over his mouth to muffle his wheezing breath.

  The undead beneath the blazing gunfire numbered in their thousands he guessed. There was no way he could crawl the last thirty yards to the wall through that savage horror and survive. Despair and desolation wrapped around him like a funeral shroud.

  He heard himself sob and blinked, startled at the realization he was weeping. The terror came back to him then on big beating wings; the nerve-shattering fear that he had held at bay through the endless hours of crawling now perched itself on his shoulders, pecking like a vulture at the last shreds of his sanity. He heard phantom sounds behind him and his body racked tight with dread.

  “Please God!” he prayed. “Don’t let me die. Not like this.”

  He had never believed in God and never attended church. He was too logical to believe the myth of the bible and its stories. He was a man of science… until death seemed suddenly inevitable. Now he prayed fervently and passionately.

  “Please God!”

  To keep a leash on his terror he distracted himself by thinking of Sherry. He remembered their first date, and the first time he had met her parents. Images came to him like snapshots; polaroids of perfect summer days and winter nights in her bed.

  He thought then about his parents and his sister back in Pennsylvania. Were they still alive? He doubted it, and the realization left him so overcome with sad bereavement that for long seconds he did not recognize the sudden far-away sound or understand its significance. It was only when the undead horde began to move, and the ground vibrated with thousands of stomping feet, that Chuck Gudinski looked up with sudden alarm.

  The infected were leaping and howling like a vast herd of wild animals at hunt. He heard gunfire then; a continuous clamor of machine gun fire, muted by distance. He shot a searching glance along the wall and saw the bright spitting orange flame of a muzzle flash. It was coming from several hundred yards further north, and the harsh sound drew the undead towards it, whipping them up into a fresh stampeding frenzy.

  Chuck waited. His lips were dried to white flakes and cracked through to raw flesh, his eyes gummed up with yellow clots of mucus and stinging with sweat. One by one the scavengers who had been picking through the bloated corpses nearby turned to follow the ripping sound of gunfire until suddenly the ground before him seemed deserted.

  Chuck stared at the dark arched doorway directly ahead of him. He could see no soldiers on the nearby battlements and that bothered him. Had they gone? Would anyone hear his gasping cry for help before the infected savaged him?

  He had no choice. He had to move now, or die where he lay.

  He groped for a handful of soft green grass and hauled himself forward. The sound of his body dragging itself off the road was so loud in the sudden silence that he clenched his teeth and cringed. He was lathered in nervous sweat. He crawled over bodies and through blood and guts. He scrambled over severed limbs and startled scampering rats.

  Ten yards from the small gateway he heard the sudden harsh sound of metal scraping against metal. He paused, wide-eyed and cocked his head to the side. The sound came again, chunky and vaguely familiar.

  He waited, his breath jammed in his throat. He could hear his blood thumping at his temples. He felt himself gripped by a sudden swoop of dizzy vertigo and a moment of terrifying blackness. Then he heard a piercing screech and a blinding needle of white light stabbed into the night.

  The wooden door within the gatehouse was opening. The torchlight jerked and shook erratically.

  Chuck began to cry huge fat oily tears of relief. He was saved.

  He lifted one aching arm and tried to call out for help. His voice croaked in his throat.

  He was going to make it.

  * * *

  Jacques Lejeune was sweating with fear; trembling under a cold clammy sense of terror that threatened to suffocate him. He thrust the torch out through the cracked open gateway and flashed the bright beam across the grass in front of the door. His hand shook so the light jerked erratically over the nightmarish scene of devastation.

  The ground had been trampled to dirt and blood-soaked mud by thousands of rampaging feet. Dark grotesque lumps lay scattered in attitudes of horrific torture. Flies buzzed in dark swarming clouds from the corpses. The stench of corruption coated his tongue and the back of his mouth with its oily, sickening tang. He heard himself gasp and choke back the urge to be physically ill.

  “I… I cannot go out there!” He turned, pale-faced with horror.

  “You must!” Paulette pouted. She stood close behind Jacques, her body pressed against his back. The heavy wooden door hung open just a few inches. She could not see past the man’s skeletal frame.

  “I cannot.” Jacques shivered.

  Paulette pulled the door open a few more inches. It screeched on rusted old hinges.

  The beam of the flashlight caught on a body just a few yards to their left. It had been a woman. Her arms were very thin and pale, spattered with mud. One of her legs was missing and part of her face had been gnawed away. Paulette gasped and covered her mouth – then shivered deliciously. A hot rush of arousal washed through her, so intense that she swayed on her feet and had to clutch at Jacques to keep her balance. The sudden weight against him pushed Jacques forward – he tripped out of the doorway and into the fear-filled night.

  The gun weighed heavy in his right hand. Jacques shivered spasmodically. He turned, silently pleading, back to the archway. Paulette stood wedged in the opening, her eyes wide and glittering with excitement.

  “Shoot one of the infected, Jacques!” she whispered. She felt her blood quicken and her heart begin to pound.

  Jacques’ lips parted and another fit of trembling overtook him. Saliva dribbled down his chin. His jaw hung slack and unhinged.

  Far away and lit by firelight he could see the silhouettes of thousands of undead in a howling knot under the city’s walls. Gunfire barked from the battlements and the sound of the clamor carried to him on waves of noise like surf breaking on a beach.

  He swung the beam of the flashlight across the ground at his feet and let it fix on another mud-splattered corpse. The emaciated, skeletal frame was covered in loose baggy skin and shreds of a dark woolen suit. The old man had been disemboweled. Jacques could see the rack of the ribs and the half-eaten organs of his stomach.

  Jacques took a faltering step closer to the maimed corpse and then froze. He had sensed movement somewhere close, not definite enough to pin-point and not so abrupt that he could be sure. It was a premonition that something lurked nearby in the dark. He choked on a breath and heard a sound like a wheeze of weak agony. A cold chill ran down his spine and his eyes flew wide. He slashed the torch from side to side in a frenzy of wild swatting strokes until it fixed on a figure laying on its stomach, about ten yards from the gate.

  It was a man, Jacques saw. He was covered in mud and slime. His hair lay mat
ted flat and stiff against the skull and his face was twisted into a tortured rictus of immense agony. But it was the eyes in the deep hollow cage of their sockets that struck fear into Jacques. They were wild and burning, filled with a look of insanity.

  He heard himself gasp in fear and revulsion. He heard Paulette’s sharp intake of breath from the doorway.

  “It is one of the infected!” Paulette thrilled. “Shoot him, Jacques, my brave hero,” her voice was husky with perverse erotic arousal. “Kill him for me!”

  Jacques took a faltering step closer. The figure seemed to be maimed, trailing a long slick of dark blood in the grass.

  Jacques lifted the gun and felt its dreadful weight, heavy as lead in his trembling hand.

  “Shoot the ghoul!” Paulette squealed.

  Chuck Gudinski made a supreme effort and gasped a desperate croak from between his bleeding lips. He reached up the bloody tattered stump of one hand in a beckoning plea for rescue.

  “He’s lunging for me!” Jacques cried out. Abject terror blinded him. He pulled the trigger and the gun hammered brutally in his grip, the recoil throwing his hand high in the air. The sound was an almighty roar that battered his ears and numbed his senses.

  He dragged the gun down and fired again and again. He heard the meaty sound of bullets striking flesh.

  When the echo of the sharp retorts had faded, Jacques stood over the dead body and let the violent thrill of the moment consume him. Savage emotion seemed to swell in his chest and turned his legs to trembling jelly.

  “I killed one of the undead,” the realization triggered some ruthless primal instinct, coarse and brutal, and he stared down at the corpse as if trying to burn the gory image into his mind. “I have killed.”

  Unseen from the darkness of the road, two undead ghouls emerged out of the night, moving towards the deafening sound of the gunshots like predatory panthers. One of then vaulted over the trunk of a wrecked car and came hunting towards Jacques, snarling ferociously.

  The tall Frenchman saw the danger too late. His eyes flew wide and began to bulge. The blood drained from his face.

  “My God!” he croaked. He turned to run back to the open doorway, his voice shrill and hysterical. “Save me!”

  Mud flew from the heels of his shoes. He slipped and went over on his knees. The ghoul launched itself and landed on Jacques’ back while the other infected beast charged at the open door where Paulette stood, suddenly white faced with horror.

  Jacques heard himself screaming and icy blackness filled his head. The ghoul clawed at his face with its fingers, slashing his cheek and gouging out one of his eyes. Jacques had the sudden unbidden image of a zebra being caught in the jaws of a lion, thrashing its hooves feebly while the great cat ate it alive.

  He felt the weight of the savage beast bear him down into the mud and then monstrous pain explode in pinwheels of color behind his eyes. He felt a sudden burning sensation and wondered if it was the spread of the infection through his bloodstream. He began to scream and died choking in his own blood.

  Paulette had just a split second to react as the other undead ghoul bounded towards her. She started to force the great wooden door shut, screaming in fear, her hysterical terror echoing insanely in her own ears. The ghoul slammed into the closing door and the impact was so violent that it flung Paulette off her feet. She fell onto her back on the cold cobblestones of the laneway.

  The ghoul threw itself at the door again. Paulette’s legs were wedged in the opening. The infected beast slashed at her with its hands, slicing the flesh below her right knee open. Paulette cried out and clutched at the wound. Her fingers came away coated with sticky blood. She held them up before her eyes and screamed even louder, the sound becoming breathless and shrill as a steaming kettle.

  Sixty yards away atop the wall, two gendarmes heard the wicked crack of three gunshots and came instantly alert. They ran along the parapet towards the source of the sound and then heard the high-pitched horrible screaming. Flashlights criss-crossed the ground. Bodies lay everywhere in the mud. Then they heard the sickening savage growl of the infected and they stopped in their tracks, suddenly chilled with dread.

  “Alarm! Alarm!” one of the gendarmes snatched the two-way radio from his webbing belt. He was breathless, his face pale and his hand shaking.

  “The undead have broken into the city. They have broken through the Poterne Raspail gate.”

  * * *

  Colonel LeCat was dozing fitfully in his office chair when the two-way on his desk suddenly burst into frantic noise. He snapped instantly alert and seized the radio.

  “Repeat!” he barked.

  “Poterne Raspail!” the voice shouted through a hiss of static. “The infected have broken through the doorway.”

  “How many?”

  “Unknown – ” the reply was drowned out by a sharp burst of gunfire.

  LeCat cursed. “Send the ready reserve!” he growled. “And hold your position. I am on my way.”

  * * *

  The two young gendarmes on duty had to sling their weapons and climb down ladders to get off the ramparts. They dropped to the cobblestoned ground and crouched side-by-side, their eyes wide with fear. The darkness was like a heavy blanket, but the sounds of the undead were unmistakable. The gendarmes could hear their ragged breathing, bubbling and hissing in their throats. One of the soldiers flicked on his flashlight and quartered the dark space around the gate.

  The beam of bright blinding light fell on a hunched, obscene figure, squatting over a woman’s body beside the open door. The ghoul was naked, its flesh grey, the cage of its ribs exposed through oozing bite marks and flaps of dead rotting skin that hung from the flank of its torso. It was a vile, disfigured creature with no hair, so wasted and gaunt that the knuckles of its spine and the bones of its shoulder blades showed clearly through tightly-stretched flesh.

  The infected ghoul had its hands buried deep within the dead woman’s chest, and there was fresh spattered blood on the beast’s arms, all the way up to its elbows. Struck by the sudden light it looked up at the soldiers. The ghoul’s eyes were enormous. It opened its mouth and snarled at them through broken teeth and purple swollen gums.

  The soldiers opened fire from twenty yards, hitting the infected zombie full in the chest. The impact flung the ghoul down on its back. It lay, twisting and writhing, howling and thrashing at the ground. One of the soldiers came upright, weapon pressed into his shoulder, and went cautiously forward.

  The sound of his footsteps scuffed on the cobblestones.

  He was breathing hard, pumped full of adrenalin and raw fear. He could feel his trigger-finger trembling. The beam of light stayed fixed on the infected body.

  The ghoul had been hit three times in the chest. Dark holes had been punched through the emaciated corpse. It still writhed on the ground, but now the movements were slow and drugged-like.

  The soldier stopped three yards short of the body and aimed at the hideous, monstrous face. Almost drowned out by the sound of his own hoarse breathing in his ears he could hear the second gendarme shouting into his two-way radio while he tried to keep the ghoul within the beam of his flashlight.

  “I think it is dead.”

  “Are you sure, Pierre?”

  “I think so,” the soldier standing close to the body squeaked. He had never seen combat action before. Sweat leaked into his eyes and his heart seemed to have swollen in his chest so each breath was an effort. “It’s… it’s stopped moving.”

  “Shoot it again to be sure.” The second soldier came out of his crouch and ran forward, but before he could reach the open door another undead figure suddenly burst through the gatehouse and lunged at him.

  Both soldiers turned and convulsed in terror. A burst of ragged gunfire buried itself in the ancient stonework of the wall. The second soldier went down under the weight of his attacker, flailing his fists and screaming.

  The undead ghoul was frenzied with the madness of its infection. It clawed at the s
oldier with his hooked butchering hands and tore long ribbons of bloody flesh from the gendarme’s cheek, then bit off his nose. The gendarme screamed a blood-curdling howl of agony. The sound seemed to enflame the zombie’s instincts. It arched its back and flared up like a coiling cobra, poised to strike. The soldier underneath it squirmed and coughed. Blood filled the young man’s mouth. The undead ghoul launched itself forward and latched its gaping jaws into the soft flesh of the writhing soldier’s exposed throat. The gendarme died gurgling and screaming.

  The men of the ready reserve saved the western wall. The two armored cars arrived in the laneway from different directions behind a blaze of blindingly bright spotlights and a roar of engine noises. They slewed the heavy armored vehicles to block the roads that ran like veins into the warren of nearby side streets, barricading the way forward for the undead.

  “Fire!” one vehicle commander, crammed into the open cupola of the cockpit roared the order, and beside him, his gunner swung the vehicle’s machine gun onto the wild frenzy of struggling shapes in the doorway.

  A long flickering tongue of flame leaped from the mouth of the weapon and the sound in the little laneway juddered and echoed against the walls of the surrounding buildings.

  Colonel LeCat arrived in a P4 jeep and came running past one of the APC’s just as the armed gendarmes were spilling out of the back doors of the vehicle.

  “Soldiers! Soldiers!” he shouted the word.

  He ran straight for the gateway. “Soldiers!” The men of the ready reserve were the most experienced troops from the barracks, veteran fighters who had seen active duty in many of the world’s trouble spots. “Soldiers!”

  LeCat snatched the sidearm on his hip from its holster and stared, fuming. How had the undead breached the doorway? A burst of assault rifle fire from behind his shoulder joined the hammering batter of the APC’s machine guns. LeCat could see just a jumble of thrashing bodies under the door’s stone arch, but he recognized figures in blood-soaked uniforms and understood that soldiers had been attacked and infected. He put that thought out of his mind an instant after it registered. His task, and the task of the ready reserve, was to contain the infected before they could wreck havoc in the nearby streets, and to close the open door before more of the undead could surge through the breach.