Among The Dead (Book 1): Shadow of Death

by Colley, Ryan

  “UNDEAD INSIDE”

  That would be sufficient … hopefully. If it wasn’t, I hoped the puddle of blood at the foot of the door would be. I tore off the gloves, making sure I didn’t get any of the mystery blood on me. And I left.

  Outside, there were only a couple of zombies. I quickly dispatched them with shots from my assault rifle. Most shots missed, often leaving a bloody and gory tear through the neck, or blowing apart shoulder blades. I did notice, however, that I was getting noticeably more accurate with each shot. The final one went down on the first attempt.

  I looked around at the destruction which used to be Victoria Coach Station. The floor was essentially a carpet of the dead. Nearly every inch was covered by bloody corpses. A lot had bullet wounds in their heads and were riddled with bullets. A lot were pale with jagged chunks missing from various parts of their body. I stepped uneasily over them as I tried to leave, aware that any could still be undead. The entire glass front of the station walls had been shattered and fire raged within. Given a day or so, Victoria Coach Station would probably no longer be standing, or gutted beyond recognition. I looked over to where survivors had made a last stand on top of the coach. They had put up one hell of a fight and would probably be considered pretty amazing if it was a movie. It wasn’t, however. It was brutal reality. Dead were piled around the coach, creating an uneven stairway up to the coach where the survivors had stood. The sheer amount they had killed probably led to their own downfall as they had created a way for the undead to climb up to them. There were no bodies on top, just blood and weapons. I wasn’t making an attempt to claim them. I didn’t want to climb the hill of dead to get to them. Instead, I moved on.

  I walked out of the coach station onto the main road. There was a surprising lack of undead. No runners, mind you, just a couple of walkers shambling about. Some just stood there, lurking. Lurkers, Walkers, Shamblers, and Runners. My undead vocabulary grew. Although there wasn’t any difference between the undead, it described their behaviour. I walked by a Lurker, assault rifle aimed at it. It made a swipe for me but didn’t make any further attempt to get me. It was the laziest zombie I’d seen. I carried on walking, stepping between the dead on the ground, careful not to get too close in case it was a zombie patiently waiting, although I doubted they were that smart to plan a trap. The further I got from the station, the fewer cars there were. It didn’t make sense, especially as the road was a main way out of the city. I continued onwards and just followed the road. I hid from most of the undead behind cars, or just waited for them to pass. I didn’t think the undead could feel, but they looked the same way soldiers looked: the “thousand-yard” stare, like they had seen the most terrible things. I really needed to stop humanising the walking monsters. Even though I avoided most of the undead, I had to dispatch the occasional zombie, using my spear-knife where I could. I avoided guns entirely. I didn’t want to attract more undead, especially in such a populated city where thousands more potentially waited.

  As I walked down the roads of London, electronic billboards watched me from overhead. When I first went to London and saw them, I was amazed. I had always thought electronic billboards were just in futuristic films; to find out they actually existed was amazing. Those same signs now loomed over the city like huge tombstones. The image of a woman smiling with door-sized teeth, which showed off her “movie star smile” she had so say gained from the toothpaste on the same image, was now eerie. The enormous face now looked down on the death, destruction, and gore with an almost monstrous grin. There were a few splashes of blood on it which added to its macabre. Is that all which would remain of London? What would the future people of Earth think when they found it in many years to come? How long would those signs display their adverts while the world fell apart? It would be a testament to our time as a species on the planet. It wasn’t much to be proud of. I moved on and ignored the changing images around me. Adverts were amiss in the new world.

  Eventually, I found the reason why there were so few cars leaving the city: a military roadblock. It wasn’t just a roadblock to check on people in vehicles. It was set up to prevent people from leaving or entering the city. There were sandbags, metal walls, and a stationary machine gun set up. Behind the roadblock, I could see a couple of structures. They weren’t quite buildings; definitely shelter of some kind. It was more of a small fort than a blockade. No one was getting through it, dead or alive; that phrase was too literal for my liking. It looked like the soldiers lived at the roadblock at all times. I carefully approached. I expected someone to appear and gun me down, although the scene I saw suggested it was much more likely that I would be chased down and eaten. There were a lot of bodies and a lot of shells, but nothing moved. I took a deep breath and climbed over the sandbags and into the blockade. It was the same in the blockade as outside: a lot of blood and a lot of shells. I noticed there was a distinct lack of bodies, however. That confused me momentarily until realisation hit. The lack of bodies probably meant that the soldiers had been killed and, eventually, rose as undead before moving onwards to kill others. Attack. Kill. Reanimate. Repeat. The way of the undead. Even though there was a lack of movement, I still had to be careful. There wasn’t much room to manoeuvre and if one of the undead decided to step out and attack, I wouldn’t have time to react. I had to move slowly through the blockade.

  As I got closer, I realised that the structures that confused me before were actually tents, albeit stronger and better than anything I had seen. They stood almost eight feet tall and more than ten feet wide. I moved the flaps aside on each one I passed to look inside. Most were filled with bunks and footlockers at the end of each bed. I checked each footlocker on the first couple of tents I passed, but stopped looking after the twelfth locker. I realised they were filled with personal mementos and nothing of use. However, I stopped looking, not just because there was nothing useful, but because it felt morally wrong to rifle through a dead soldier’s personal life. I carried on, only looking in each tent as opposed to a thorough search. There was almost nothing of use in the entire blockade. Weapons and medicines were gone. Probably looted. Food seemed almost absent, except some military packaged food called MREs (meals ready to eat). I picked a few up and rammed them into my bulging rucksack. It was almost at bursting point, but it was all necessary. I had heard and read a lot about how bad MREs were, often compared to old mud, but I didn’t care. Food was food, something which may become a rare commodity.

  I carried on through the blockade and out the other side. I didn’t encounter another being the entire time. It was almost a dull experience. However, outside the blockade I saw something amazing. What I saw was a godsend and, possibly, the second most exciting thing in my life. The first most had been the time I went to see the first Pokémon movie in the cinema. I had wanted to see it for months before it was even out, but my mum had told me we didn’t have enough money. One day, my mum took me out for a drive and pulled up to the cinema. I didn’t understand why we were there. Looking back, it was obvious. My mum bought us tickets to see it. I was so excited I nearly threw up. What I saw outside the blockade was nowhere near as exciting as that but, in the current situation, it was pretty damn amazing. It was a simple military Jeep which had been abandoned on the road. The Jeep was military green and it had a mounted General Purpose Machine Gun on the back. It had a closed cabin and was, what I imagined to be, reasonably bullet proof. I didn’t recognise it, as it wasn’t the standard military Range Rover; it looked more like an American military Humvee. I wasn’t complaining however. I always thought their Humvees were superior to our Range Rovers by a long shot. Perhaps the British Army had changed their design with the undead threat? It would be the perfect vehicle for travelling to Essex. What wasn’t perfect was that the door was open and there was blood on the floor, as if someone had been dragged out and killed. There wasn’t a body, which meant no keys. However, I remembered a random titbit of information I had heard years prior. Apparently, military vehicles didn’t have a ke
y for the ignition; that was to avoid loss of keys during a combat situation, or the keys being a hindrance of any kind. I jogged over to the open vehicle and checked the steering column. No keyhole. Brilliant! I climbed into the vehicle, checking it for other occupants as I did so. I wouldn’t fall foul of the horror film cliché where the driver is killed at a key moment, simply because they didn’t check the backseat. Nothing lurked in the vehicle. I chucked my rucksack and guns onto the passenger seat. I slammed the door and turned the keyless ignition. The engine started up without hesitation. I put my foot down and pulled away. I smiled. Things were finally getting better. Nothing more could go wrong! I had made it through hell and out the other side. Or so I thought … Had I known that London was only the beginning, I would have turned back on that day.

  TAO OF SAM – SURVIVORS: THE BASICS

  Other survivors are going to be more of a threat than the undead eventually. Living people are smart and vicious. They will threaten you for everything you own, and then kill you for it anyway. Do not trust the living. Our family is its own unit and we take care of our own. If they aren’t blood, they can’t be trusted. Defend your home. It is your fortress. Do not make deals. Be careful who you do trust. The people who you knew before the outbreak won’t be same people after it. The world is a bad place. Trust your instincts.

  Remember, people lie and kill when there is law and order. They become monsters without it.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Jeep drove amazingly smooth. It handled almost perfectly and responded to the slightest adjustments. I suppose if the vehicle was designed for off road travel in a warzone, then a well-maintained tarmac road should be even better. I cruised along happily. There wasn’t a single other person in sight. I doubted another human had ever been able to drive out of London without seeing another car. Every time I caught a coach out of London, the traffic was terrible. I’d spend more time leaving London than I did on the rest of my journey. The unadventurous drive was exactly what I wanted after what I’d seen. All I needed was some music and I could almost imagine it as a road trip.

  I cruised along slowly, unconsciously sticking to the speed limit. I realised that and pushed my foot down on the accelerator. The speedometer climbed another ten miles per hour. I watched my surroundings fly by; I could easily get used to it. I wound down the window and felt a cool breeze blow through the cabin. I noticed there was a radio with a transmitter connected to it. I flicked it on, almost as second nature, hoping to hear other voices. It was a lonely drive. Nothing but static. I flicked through the wavebands. Nothing on any of the channels. No military chatter. No music. No crazy religious leader preaching about the end of days … creepy. I never liked the radio, but no radio was worse than any of the modern rubbish that … actually, no radio was probably better than some of the noise they called music.

  There were very few undead on the road. The ones I saw just wandered aimlessly. As I passed, they tried to run towards me but quickly disappeared in the rear-view mirror as I sped onwards. They couldn’t catch me, and I enjoyed having the speed to not have to worry about them. The further out of London I got, I started to notice abandoned cars. There were an odd few which had swerved to a stop, signified by black tyre marks on the road. Others looked as though they had simply run out of fuel and the driver had abandoned it; doors had been left open with no sign of a struggle. I had to slow and go around the odd car. I would begin to build up speed again, and then there would be another car on the opposite side of the road, and further ahead would be the same. It felt intentional, like someone had tried to make a speed trap to slow people down. I even thought that I saw someone sitting in one of the cars. I felt paranoid and sleep-deprived. I dodged slowly between them. Everything blurred together. I almost didn’t see it, but as I swerved around one of the cars, an undead man in his birthday suit stepped out in front of me. He had probably moved to investigate the noise with a hungry curiosity. Before I knew it, I hit him. I slammed my foot on the brake. The vehicle slowed, but the momentum kept it moving forward. The collision didn’t go unnoticed as the metal grill slammed into the zombie. The jolt shook through the car. The Jeep kept going for a few more seconds and the brakes screeched. There was no doubt the man was undead. I could tell that by the blackened gore on the front of the vehicle; not the fresh red blood of the living. I waited a few seconds as I breathed heavily. I decided to keep going. I was fine, albeit shook up. Nothing prepared me for hitting something. There was no point waiting around though. It was just a zombie. I changed gear and put my foot on the accelerator. The Jeep moved forward, slowly at first, but picked up speed again. There was a grinding and a crunch as the wheels passed over the bones of the zombie. I learned my lesson and drove even slower than before to avoid any nasty surprises. I checked my rear-view mirror and could see the gory smear on the road where I had hit the zombie. I readjusted the mirror so I didn’t have to look at the mess anymore, otherwise I would have seen it crawl away, even with its shattered and splintered shin bones.

  I drove for another mile before I noticed the vehicle didn’t feel quite right. There was an odd noise and the vehicle pulled to one side. When I was confident there weren’t any undead nearby, I slowed down and stopped. I jumped out but left the vehicle running, just in case I needed to make a speedy escape. I walked around the vehicle, inspecting each tyre to figure out what was wrong. I realised what it was when I checked the front right tyre. It was flat. The cause? About six inches of shin bone lodged through the tyre at an angle. The wheel couldn’t be repaired; even if I got the glistening red shard of white out. I gave another look around for any zombies. Still none in sight. I checked the Jeep for tools and a spare tyre, all of which I found. I set my SA80 on the ground next to the busted tyre and put the car jack under the vehicle. I quickly turned it until it was high enough off the ground. I got to work undoing the bolts, surprised at how exhausting the task was. It was just so tedious! The tyre eventually came free. I lifted it off and let it fall to the ground. It thudded heavily and rolled a foot or so away before falling onto its side. The noise almost masked the sound of approaching footsteps. It took a few precious seconds for my ears to register it. I quickly grabbed my rifle and looked under the Jeep for the source of the noise. There were feet at the passenger door, just standing there. I heard the pull of the handle as well as the snap back into place when it failed to open. Luckily the locks had been set. The feet started to walk round to the driver’s side of the vehicle; my side. The feet moved with purpose, not the uneasy shuffle of the undead. Could it be a survivor? My heart leapt at the thought of seeing someone else. My heart just as quickly sank when I thought of the brutality the hands of the living had caused in London. I was probably in just as much in danger either way. I got into a crouch, assault rifle aimed at where the person’s head ought to be when they came around the front of the vehicle. I saw him before he saw me.

  “I suggest you go away, mate,” I replied, my face turned into a snarl. The man’s eyes widened at the sight of the barrel. He stared down the gun, and sweat begun to form on his forehead. He was a tall man, taller than me. He was bald; shaven. His arms bulged in his t-shirt, and his legs were the same in his jeans. He was very muscular. He could tear me in half with one arm. The expression on his face, on the other hand, said he wouldn’t. He looked afraid.

  “I don’t want any trouble, guy,” he said gently, almost apologetically. He held his hands above his head; one hand had a tyre iron in it.

  “Drop the weapon,” I demanded. I motioned with my gun for the action I wanted.

  “With all due respect,” the man said, obviously finding some courage, “you have the gun. You’re in charge. I’m not a threat. I just want to defend myself from any hostiles. You would easily win this, so there shouldn’t be a problem with me keeping it.”

  He was one smooth talker. I was half-convinced to let him keep it. My survival instinct kicked in and I reinforced my point with the gun. Someone that strong could do a lot of damage with just
a tyre iron. The guy sighed and crouched slowly, putting it on the ground.

  “What do you want?” I asked, gun still pointed at him.

  “Just a ride,” the man replied calmly. Now that he knew what the situation was, he seemed like he was more in control of himself.

  “And you didn’t see me get out of it? You didn’t think it was someone else’s?” I snapped, angry that someone would leave another for dead.

  “No. I didn’t,” he replied. “I literally just came from that way.”

  He pointed in the direction he had come. I found it hard to believe. At the same time, he had made no direct threat towards me.

  “What did you do in life?” I asked suddenly.

  “Huh?” he asked, clearly confused by my question.