Last Stand For Man

by Ryan, Nicholas

  “Fort Saint-Andre,” Camille said.

  * * *

  “The only way out of the city is through the same gate the undead broke in,” Tremaine found he had to shout to make himself heard above the rattling cacophony of noise inside the APC. “There’s no chance we can push one of the barricaded buses aside at any of the other gates.”

  “I know,” Camille kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead, wrestling with the vehicle’s steering wheel. The armored car broke through the wall of infected that had overwhelmed the gendarmes and rumbled along Rue De La Republique. Hundreds of zombies crowded the ancient city’s main thoroughfare; Camille ran them down and crushed the ghouls under the huge tires. The windscreen splattered with gore and guts.

  “But you’re going the wrong way,” Tremaine’s voice betrayed his confusion and alarm. “This isn’t the way to the university.”

  “We can cut the corner when we reach the plaza,” Camille said, inadvertently taking the same route that Kane had driven the stolen APC filled with his religious followers.

  Tremaine sat back. Camille knew the city; she had lived in Avignon all her life, and he trusted her judgment. But that didn’t stop him frowning his concern as the APC reached the city’s cobblestoned plaza and then jounced over the guttering to turn right. He clung to a hand-hold and everything loose in the steel cabin rattled.

  Behind the APC followed a trail of running undead, drawn by the loud revving diesel engines like rats behind the Pied Piper. They came howling from buildings and crashed through glass windows. They crawled from litter bins and staggered from the shadows. Camille put her foot down on the gas pedal and let the speed build up to distance them.

  Suddenly she swung hard left, catching Tremaine and the young gendarme off guard. Tremaine was thrown against the steel door as the APC rounded the corner like a boat in rough seas. Camille cried out and wrenched hard at the wheel. The armored car responded slowly, leaping the sidewalk then crashing down again. Tremaine braced himself for the impact.

  “Christ!” he flinched. “What are you doing?”

  “My parents,” Camille shot him a glance. Her lips were pressed into a thin bloodless line. Tremaine saw the stubborn resolve in her eyes. “They live in an apartment on this street.”

  She slammed on the brakes and the APC juddered to a halt in front of a three-story building beside an old church. The stone façade of the apartment block had been spattered in blood. Behind grilled iron bars, the ground floor windows were all smashed, and the front double-doors hung broken on their hinges. On the footpath was sprawled a naked woman’s body. She lay on her stomach in a pool of blood. Her back had been ripped open so the ribs showed like a row of jagged white teeth through shredded flesh. A swarm of black flies rose into the air for a moment and then re-settled over the body like a blanket, crawling across the dead flesh and laying eggs in the wet warm cavities of her bloating corpse. The street was deserted but strewn with a debris of loose stones and broken glass. Camille kept the armored car’s engine running and threw her shoulder against the door.

  “Wait!” Tremaine grimaced. His face filled with alarm and consternation. “Let us go instead,” he groaned. “Just keep the engine running.”

  Camille nodded. “Apartment 107, on the first floor,” she said.

  Tremaine and the gendarme scrambled out of the APC and stood wary and tense on the sidewalk, listening for threats. There were screams and shrieks of agony and terror, but they sounded far away. Tremaine scanned the street in both directions then went through the broken doors into the building at a run.

  The foyer was shrouded in musty gloom. Tremaine saw a crazy pattern of blood spatters on the carpet. He took the steps two-at-a-time. At the top of the landing he turned back to the gendarme and whispered, “Stand guard here. Shout if you see anything.”

  Tremaine crept along the passageway. Doors on both sides of the corridor had been broken down and were smeared with streaks of blood. A litter of papers and rubbish lay strewn on the carpet. Rats scampered into the shadows.

  The door to apartment 107 hung wide open. Tremaine felt a sudden sickening lurch of foreboding squeeze his guts.

  “Henri?” Tremaine stood in the open doorway and whispered. All his senses were heightened to straining. His breath sawed in his throat and his blood sang in his ears. He licked dry, cracked lips and called out again.

  “Henri? It’s Tremaine,” he called hoarsely.

  Nothing.

  Tremaine drew a deep breath. He felt vulnerable and exposed without a weapon.

  He took two steps through the open door and froze.

  The apartment was in semi-darkness and he hesitated long enough to let his eyes adjust, aware that above the eerie silence was a low hum of noise that made his skin prickle.

  “Henri?” Tremaine took three more steps around a teak wood display cabinet and into the living area. The hum of noise became a buzz of disturbed sound, and then an odor jagged like broken glass in the back of his throat. It was the stench of death, now so familiar that it no longer made him choke or gag. He went to the nearest window and drew back the curtains.

  Henri Pelletier lay on the living room floor, and if it had not been for the gruesome spatters of blood splashed against the wall and the dark brown stain around his head, Tremaine might have thought him asleep. His face looked peaceful, his eyes closed, his body stretched out, but somehow serene and composed. Flies crawled over the corpse in a black swarm of buzzing noise, dipping and feasting delightedly in the shattered contents of the man’s skull.

  Sitting in a chair beside the mayor’s body slumped a middle-aged woman in a crumpled dressing gown. She had been shot in the head. A rivulet of blood trickled from a hole between her eyes, down her sagging face.

  Tremaine stood, unmoving for long seconds. A pistol lay on the carpet beside Henri’s dead body. The mayor had evidently shot his wife, and then committed suicide. Tremaine felt no grief; he barely knew the man and had never met his wife – but he felt an unaccountable sadness for Camille.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  He went through to the bedroom and stripped the blankets off the mattress. The room smelled of perfumes and powders. He draped the blankets over both bodies and stepped back into the corridor. The young gendarme stood anxiously on the top step of the landing. His face was white.

  He pointed at another open apartment door. “I… I think I heard something.”

  A chill ran down Tremaine’s spine. He crept like a cat burglar to the landing, holding his breath, with his eyes fixed on the threatening door. The gendarme hopped anxiously from foot to foot, impatient to flee. Under one of his boots a floorboard creaked.

  The sound slashed across the silence. Tremaine froze in mid stride. The gendarme sobbed a startled gasp.

  Suddenly the door across the corridor flew back and a hideous blood-drenched ghoul stood growling in the threshold. It had once been a middle-aged man. The shreds of a tie still hung around its neck, and the scraps of a white business shirt draped in tatters off its rotting, decomposing skeleton. The ghoul’s grey greasy flesh was covered in a disease of livid swollen blisters and from its jaw and throat dripped drooling blood. The zombie saw the two men. Its face turned ugly and enraged, its mouth a dark pit as it snarled.

  “Run!” Tremaine cried. The word barely escaped his lips before the zombie lunged. It exploded across the narrow passageway in a howl of noise, seizing the gendarme by the throat. The young soldier lost his balance and the two bodies crashed and tumbled down the flight of stairs. Tremaine heard the gendarme scream in agony. The infected ghoul had the soldier on his back, pinned and helpless. Its clawed hands were tight around the gendarme’s throat. Tremaine started down the stairs and kicked his foot into the ghoul’s ribs. It had no effect. The zombie reared back and then lunged for the gendarme’s face. Its jaws latched onto the soldier’s face and bit through his chin, growling like a dog until it tore off a bleeding chunk of the soldier’s flesh. Blood spattered Tremaine’s legs a
nd sprayed across the staircase. The ghoul turned its head, spat the mouthful of warm flesh onto the ground, and lunged again, biting off the soldier’s nose. One of the gendarme’s eyeballs popped from its socket and dangled on his bloody cheek from the end of its nerve stem.

  Tremaine fled through the doors and into the bright sunlight, sweating and shaking with fear. The APC was where he expected it to be. Camille sat hunched behind the wheel, staring impatiently. Tremaine sprinted to the passenger door and threw himself inside.

  “Drive!” Tremaine cried in alarm.

  “Where are my parents?” Camille instinctively put the armored car in gear and began to pick up speed. “And where is the gendarme?”

  “The soldier was attacked by a ghoul. He’s infected.”

  Camille’s eyes widened. She noticed the fresh wet blood on Tremaine’s pants. “And my parents? My mother and father?”

  “They weren’t there,” Tremaine told a compassionate lie. His heart was racing. He could feel his hands shake. A hot flush of blood burned on his cheeks.

  “They escaped?”

  “It seems that way,” Tremaine could not bring himself to tell Camille the terrible truth.

  Camille went very quiet for a long moment, frowning with concentration until she steered the APC onto the wide road that would take them to the university. Finally she said softly, “My father told me there were secret tunnels under the Palace of the Popes that ran beneath the old city walls,” she muttered. “I never believed him.” She gave a wry shake of her head. “But that must have been how they escaped to safety, right?” When she turned her eyes to Tremaine’s he saw the desperate silent appeal in her gaze.

  He nodded his head. “Right,” he said. “They’re probably miles and miles away from here now. They might even have found a boat…” He was about to say more when a sudden noise startled him. He jumped with fright. It sounded close by.

  “Christ!” his nerves jangled. He heard voices. He shot a glance out through the blood-smeared windows and saw nothing, then turned and peered over his shoulder. In the rear compartment of the APC he saw two white-faced grubby children and half-a-dozen cowering adults.

  “Who are they?” he heard himself shouting.

  “They are refugees and survivors, just like us,” Camille said reasonably. “I saw them run from the church. They’re coming with us.”

  * * *

  The undead roamed in the thousands across Avignon, wandering in packs as they hunted down the last of the city’s survivors. When the APC bumped over the broken wire fence that bordered the university campus, there were still hundreds of the infected milling on the grounds.

  Camille steered the armored car straight for the gatehouse. She could see that the ancient stone fortification had been damaged; the structure had a precarious lean to one side and several of the great stone blocks had been gouged by heavy impact. The steel gate that once held back the undead now lay folded and broken on top of crushed, mutilated bodies.

  Camille shot a quick sideways glance at Tremaine. He sat hunched forward, peering through the blood-smudged armored glass of the windscreen, gripping tightly at a hand-hold to brace himself for impact.

  “Don’t slow down!” Tremaine sensed Camille’s eyes upon him and the question they contained. “You have to keep the speed up. If you slow down and the undead overwhelm the vehicle, we’ll never make it.”

  In response, the engine note of the APC changed and became a determined throaty growl. A plume of dust rose up from behind the big tires. Camille wrestled with the steering wheel until the vehicle was lined up with the open gate. Beyond the wide arched opening she could see the shape of another armored car, slewed across the footpath with its doors open and the blue paint splattered in blood.

  The surrounding undead spilled from the university buildings and came at a frenzied run, drawn by the roaring noise of the diesel engine. Camille stole a glance through the driver’s side window and saw one of the infected throw itself at the APC as it rumbled past. The ghoul had its face pressed to the glass, howling at her. Its face so disfigured by lacerations and the awful ravages of decomposition that it hardly looked human. She swung the steering wheel and the APC began to swerve and slalom.

  “Concentrate!” Tremaine barked.

  The APC shot through the stone arch and then jounced over the crumpled steel gate. Inside the vehicle, everyone screamed in alarm as the armored car rose up on its offside wheels and the world tilted for a long sickening moment. The vehicle swerved, out of control, then righted itself. Camille cried out in fear and snatched at the wheel.

  “Lookout!” Tremaine thrust a finger ahead.

  The other armored car had crashed into a felled tree trunk and was slewed across the footpath, broadside to the road. Camille watched in horror as the vehicle filled the windscreen. At the last second the steering responded. The APC’s nose clipped the rear side of the other armored car in a screeching jolt of steel on steel and a feather of grinding sparks. Camille was thrown forward by the impact, and her foot came off the gas pedal. The vehicle rocked from side to side and the view through the windscreen lurched drunkenly.

  “Keep going!” Tremaine shouted. “Keep going!”

  In front of them stretched the wide road that ringed the old city walls; a wasteland strewn with abandoned burned-out cars and debris. Camille could see no way through. She swerved hard to the right and the armored car responded sluggishly. The steering felt suddenly heavy.

  The APC mounted the curb and the big wheels churned at the blood-soaked grass beneath the walls. Behind her she heard the baying howls of the undead, following like a pack of hunting dogs.

  She reached the Porte De La Republique gates. Thousands of dead bodies littered the ground, scattered across the grass and the sidewalk in mounds. It looked like the gruesome aftermath of a battlefield. The dead lay, swollen and bloated, staring up at the sun while the scavenger birds perched on their corpses and pecked at the flesh. For some reason they did not understand, these victims of the undead had not caught the contagion. They had been slaughtered but had not turned.

  “What do I do?” Camille balked. The road was jammed with cars. She could see no way through.

  “Drive over them,” Tremaine said flatly.

  Camille had never heard that tone in his voice before. She snatched her horrified gaze from the gruesome spectacle and saw the fixed, stern expression on his face. His jaw was clenched, his eyes black and terrible.

  “I… I can’t!” Camille quailed. Her foot came off the accelerator and the APC began to lose momentum. Behind the vehicle, the horde of undead quickly closed. “They’re not infected. They were murdered.”

  Tremaine reached across the cabin of the APC and seized Camille by the arm. His face was swollen, his voice brutal as he shook her, burying his fingers deep into her flesh.

  “Do it!” he snarled. “Do it or we will die too. Do it or else every life that has been sacrificed will have been wasted for nothing.”

  Camille’s grip stiffened on the steering wheel and her face drained of all color. She heard herself gasping short sharp pants of breath. The APC rolled forward and then hit a bump. Camille heard the big tires breaking bones and crushing bodies. The sound coming up through the vehicle’s steel hull was gruesome. She began to sob, steering over the piled corpses through tear-misted eyes. The APC lurched and jolted.

  “Keep going,” Tremaine’s tone became crooning and sympathetic. He could hear undead howls coming closer. He licked his lips, judging the corpse-strewn distance still to cover and then stealing a glance through the vehicle’s side mirror, still attached to the door. The undead were a solid wall of looming horror, bearing down on them like the onrushing malevolence of an avalanche.

  “Just a little longer,” Tremaine coaxed Camille. “Keep your foot on the gas. Don’t slow down.”

  The fastest, most ferocious zombies reached the armored car and pounded their fists against the steel walls of the vehicle. Someone in the rear compartment sc
reamed with shrill fear.

  “Faster!” Tremaine’s voice became edged. “You’re almost through.”

  A rotting, hideous face slammed itself against the side window of the APC and he flinched in shock. Half the ghoul’s face had been torn away, and the jaw hung slack over exposed bone and bare gums. Its dead flesh had begun decomposing: the empty eye-socket crawled with fat white maggots. The ghoul snarled at Tremaine, then retched across the windscreen.

  “Faster!”

  Finally the ground ahead of the APC cleared of bodies and the vehicle gathered speed. Ahead, Camille could see the burned out remains of the Grande Hotel, still smoldering on the far side of the wreckage-strewn road. A rush of traumatic memories overwhelmed her. She remembered the horror of defending the stairwells, and then a vision of Eve’s dead body flashed across her mind. She remembered Mr. Goldstein’s murder and the sight of his frail broken body on the grass. Tears rolled unashamedly down her cheek. When she reached the southwest corner of the wall, her lips were quivering and she sobbed.

  Camille turned right, following the road along the bank of the Rhône, swerving onto the footpaths and grassy verges to avoid abandoned cars. Street signs drifted by, and on the river she saw the charred remains of boats tied to their moorings, burned down to the waterline. A bridge loomed in the distance behind wandering packs of undead. The ghouls emerged from the carparks and the riverbank and ran screaming towards the APC. Camille stared fixedly ahead and did not slow down again. The undead thumped and bumped beneath the chassis as the big tires ran them over.

  She turned left onto the arch of a bridge and changed down to low gear. Away in the distance, and smudged by a haze of drifting smoke, Tremaine caught his first glimpse of Fort Saint-Andre. The ancient stone battlements sat perched high atop a hill.

  “How much further?” he leaned across the cabin and asked Camille. It was the first time they had spoken in several minutes. Tremaine stole a surreptitious glance at the APC’s fuel gauge. The needle showed half-full.