Tag

by Everheart, AJ

  Out? That was an understatement. I’d be dead. D.E.A.D. We couldn’t just play another round or go again. “Tag?” I stammer.

  “You know how to play Tag, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  He points to the end of the garden. “The far wall is going to be base, and you need to make sure you get there in one piece. Just to let you know, I always win at this game, so you’re going to need to run like a bloody gazelle to beat me.”

  I shake my head. “I hate how you’re treating me like a child.”

  “Is it helping?” he asks with a head tilt, and I nod. I can feel my fingers loosening on the window frame. I move my legs, ready to throw myself forward.

  “Yes,” I shout as I jump. He catches me and quickly helps me right myself.

  With a peck on the lips, he laughs, “Then shut it, my saucy little sixth former.”

  “Oh Christ, I’m an adult! Stop making it sound so obscene.” I roll my eyes as we start trying to navigate our way across the rotten shed roof and onto the next one. The others are already gone, and Alex told them not to wait for us. We were all alone now as we dodged decaying hands and grinding teeth reaching out for us. We finally get to the wall, the group of zombies who had been following us trapped in the garden as we climb over and into the forest.

  Chapter Eleven

  Alex

  We run. We run faster and further than I ever have in my life―and I used to be a little shit in my former life, stealing cars, bobby knocking on elderly people's doors, and leaving my tag on every bridge in Brixton. My body was used to running, but it was different when you were running from monsters.

  Donovan had the map for Litchfield in his backpack, but I didn't need it. I'd spent months pouring over it, as more rumours came back to base about the army camp still operating. A zombie-free zone, they said. Trying to find a cure even, others had whispered, but I never believed unless I saw it with my own two eyes. We were about two days away from a small village that sat just on the Welsh border called Marwton. From there to the army base was only half a day’s walk, we just had to survive until we could get there.

  The good thing about the countryside was that there were less zombies hanging around, the population was sparse, meaning that when they turned, it was a little easier. It was the cities that caused problems, too many bodies crammed into small spaces. Hopefully, we would be able to hide and stay safe until we got closer to the town.

  For once in my life, it's like my prayers have been answered as we manage to avoid any trouble right up until the village comes into focus. It's another countryside town, with a small church, a tiny school, and a handful of houses. I spot a park with a pond, an off-licence, and in the distance, I can see a pub, but that's it. Mia does a quick head count, and there are four zombies that we can currently see just wandering around the deserted town. Can they even think for themselves anymore? How much damage had the virus done to their brains? Did they remember that this was once their home? If they saw someone they once knew, did they recognise them?

  Mia's soft sigh brings me out of my dark thoughts, she's tired. We both are. We've barely slept for longer than thirty minutes at a time for the last two days as one of us always needed to be awake.

  “Hey,” I whisper, just in case there are any zombies nearby that we missed. “Do you want to find somewhere to sleep in town tonight?”

  She nods. “If we can create a barricade... I just need a few hours.”

  She doesn't have to explain it to me, I can feel the exhaustion down in my very bones. We've been rationing our food, but even that was running low now. The least I could do was come up with something so we could start for the army base tomorrow not dead on our feet.

  “Pick a house,” I say, and for a moment, I imagine us as a normal couple looking at buying a house. I shake my head, it's just another thing the apocalypse has stolen from us.

  Mia frowns a little as she thinks about it, biting on her bottom lip as she weighs up the pros and cons of each building. After a moment or two, she finally says, “That one,” and points at a detached house on the edge of town. It is a Victorian-style house that stands tall and narrow with large windows looking out over the town. I can see why she chose it, it's far enough away from the other buildings to not draw attention but should anything go wrong, it's also close to the road that leads to the army base on one side and the forest lies on the other.

  We stick to the tree line as we move to the left of the town. We hear something behind us, so I signal for Mia to move faster, which she does. We reach the back garden of the house. While it does have a fence, it's only a flimsy one made of chicken wire with wooden posts. I push my foot against one of the posts and half the fence moves with it, dipping enough to let us climb over. We look around again to make sure nothing has crept up on us and that we haven't drawn any unwanted attention before we make our way through what used to be a herb garden. There are several large pots and huge planters all around the edge of the garden, which is now overgrown. I stop and look for a moment, in its own way, it's a beautiful mess with splashes of colour and greenery.

  Mia smashes a pane of glass in the back door and slips a hand inside to unlock it. She grins at me, and I wonder what else that army father of hers taught her. Nothing comes out of the house disturbed by the noise, so slowly we enter and lock the door again behind us. I tell Mia to wait while I check the downstairs rooms are all empty, which they are. It's another lovely house with high ceilings and expensive furniture. The mantelpiece is decorated with pictures thick with dust, but I can see they're filled with lots of smiling faces. I wonder where the owner is now?

  “Look what I found,” Mia chuckles, her arms full with tins. I pick one up and read the label, peaches. I'd never liked peaches as a child, but now I wasn't so fussy. I go to the kitchen and grab two spoons out of a drawer under the sink. When I turn, I spot a bottle of wine and a bottle of water on the side. The water was probably slightly stagnant, but I'd drunk worse in the last year and grab them both anyway.

  With her bow and arrows, Mia had cleared the upstairs and chosen a bedroom for us to hide in. It was the master bedroom, painted a deep shade of blue with a massive four-poster bed. She’d torn down the musty curtains around it and found some less dusty sheets in a cupboard to the right. She disappears for a moment to rig some traps and alarms on the stairs before returning and pushing the dresser in front of the door. Finally, she kicks off her shoes and flops on the bed, tired was an understatement.

  I go to hand her the water, but she shakes her head and motions for the bottle of wine in my other hand. After digging out the cork with a penknife, she takes a long swig.

  “God, that’s disgusting,” she says, handing it back to me, wincing.

  “Then why did you drink it?” I laugh as I put my pack down and pull my own shoes off. There’s a small fireplace opposite the bed, and I take a minute or two and get it lit.

  “Because I thought it would taste better than stagnant water, but it’s like bloody vinegar,” she grumbles as she stands and closes the curtains. Tonight was ours, and no one was going to disturb us.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mia

  I peel off my clothes and change into a fresh―fresher―oversized T-shirt before sitting next to Alex on the floor. He opens a tin of tomato soup and hands it to me with a spoon. I eat the cold liquid, shovelling it into my mouth without complaint, and when I've had half, I pass it back to him. He opens the peaches, and while he finishes off the soup, I dig into them with my fingers, syrup dribbling down my hand before I hand that back too. Once we're both fed and the wine is all gone, we crawl into bed and hold onto each other as if we're all we've got left in this world. His leg threads between mine while my arms snake up his back, we are all we've got. We never would have gotten this far without each other, the others would have killed me back at the school and the zombies would've killed us otherwise. I rest my head on his chest, the steady rhythm of his heart beat lulling me to sleep as I forget ab
out everything that exists outside this room just for tonight.

  When I wake, the fire has gone out and there's a slight chill in the room. I move out from under Alex's arm to take a quick peek out of the curtains. It's still dark out, and everything is deathly quiet, so I crawl back under the covers with him. It's crazy how quickly he was worming his way into my life so that whenever I was without him it felt like a part of me was missing. In the forest, I'd hated sleeping without him, even though it was only for short periods of time, my body still missed his. I pull him closer, and half asleep, he kisses my forehead. This is what made my days bearable.

  Alex doesn't stay asleep for long, it seems as though the last few days have messed with our ability to sleep through the night, not that we got to do that often anyway. His lips on mine are a welcome distraction from the restlessness I feel taking over. I dig my fingers into his shoulders as his hands skim over the skin on my stomach, pulling me closer to him. His leg comes up higher between my thighs as I deepen the kiss, desperate for his touch.

  "Mia," he whispers against my mouth. "We have to stop."

  His words don't match his actions as he squeezes my ass before pulling me on top of him. I discard my T-shirt quickly before he can stop me this time. I can feel his hardness pressing into me as it bulges against his boxers. He feels so good.

  "Mia," he says firmly this time. "I don't have any protection, do you?"

  I move myself against him with a soft groan. "No."

  "So we need to stop."

  Why must he always be the voice of reason? I take his hands and place them over my breasts, and he growls as he runs a thumb over my nipple.

  "I know," I whisper as I lean down and kiss him. He moves his hands down my body, fingers lightly tracing shapes into my skin before grabbing my hips and pushing me away.

  “God, you’re like a horny teenager.” He laughs when he realises what he’s said. I am a horny teenager, deprived of human contact for months, deprived of normal teenage experiences while holed up in an all-girls boarding school. I was a bundle of nerves on the edge of exploding every time he touched me.

  He sees my disappointed face and places a hand to my cheek. His thumb runs along my bottom lip, which is sticking out slightly as I pout.

  “Look, I’ll keep an eye out for condoms on our next raid,” he promises as he kisses the tip of my nose. “But for now, let’s try and get some more sleep.”

  I nod and settle back down next to him, determined to dream filthy things if I wasn’t able to have the real thing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Alex

  This girl was going to kill me. It was taking all of my control to get her to keep her pants on, and I was so tempted to say ‘Fuck it’ every time she flashed me. But we had to be sensible, we were barely managing to stay alive, let alone risk adding a baby into the mix. Besides, we needed to find a permanent home first, somewhere safe for all of us.

  I get dressed and pack up my shit before she wakes, opening a tin of beans, ready to share for breakfast. As she wakes, I pull open the curtains, and my eyes practically bulge out of my head at what I see. There’s a tank, a big fuck-off army tank, just casually rolling through the centre of town. An army jeep follows closely behind, and I call Mia over quickly. We need to get out of here, now. We need to run. If we could get to the tank, they could take us back to camp with them.

  She throws her clothes on, and we both grab our stuff and run. We don’t even look around us, all our focus solely on the vehicles up ahead. That’s why I never heard it sneak up behind us. I never heard it growl or moan. What I heard was Mia falling, and when I turned, she was being dragged back by this creature. It was barely even human anymore, with sunken features and skin that seemed to be sliding off the bones. She kicked at it hard as it tried to pull her closer to its gaping mouth.

  “Help us!” I shout, as I grab my knife and go back for her. I’m hoping that by now we’re close enough for the trucks to hear us. “Over here! Help!”

  They seem to slow down, but they don’t stop as I manage to kill the thing attached to Mia’s leg. I help her up as we see other zombies emerging from buildings and the woods. We’d been too loud. Drawn too much attention. Fuck.

  “Alex, we have to keep running. We can still reach them,” Mia says as she tries to pull me forward.

  I look around us, my feet stuck. There are too many, and they’re coming from all directions. Just bodies, mangled, decaying bodies with snapping teeth everywhere.

  She pulls me in and cups my face. “What’s the first rule of Tag?” She kisses me on the lips softly and whispers, “Don’t get caught.”

  After a few seconds, my brain returns to my body and we run. We seem to spend so much of our time running, and every time I think I can’t take another step forward, somehow I do. We dodge outstretched hands as they reach for us and push forward. We’re so close now. The tank has rolled to a stop and fires at the zombies who’ve herded together. Two men jump out from the Jeep and begin offering us cover fire as we keep running towards them.

  “Please don’t shoot us, please don’t shoot us,” I hear Mia chant breathlessly as we get nearer. I can feel her flinch every time they fire, and if we had time, I’d comfort her, but this was about survival. We had no other choice but to keep going.

  “Quickly, get in the back!” one of the men shouts as he grabs me by the arm and pushes me into the back of the vehicle. Mia is close behind.

  He jumps in and thumps on the side, yelling, “Move out!”

  The Jeep speeds off, sending mud everywhere as we escape the zombie hordes.

  I don’t see anything else until we get unloaded at the base. There are people, alive and uninfected, everywhere, and it almost makes me want to cry. We’d made it.

  As we stand there waiting to be told where to go, a large man approaches. He’s got greying hair and wide shoulders, he looks like he could easily kick my arse with his massive arms, but it’s the green eyes that make me stop. My suspicions are confirmed a second later when Mia throws herself at him.

  “Alex, come and meet my father!” She holds tightly onto him, and for a split second, I feel jealous. Will she still need me? I ignore the feeling, the bond we have is something formed out of need, it is something much more primal and cannot be ignored.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Hazeldine,” he announces with a deep, gruff voice.

  Mia’s surname was Hazeldine? Mia Hazeldine, I repeat in my head, it’s a cute name for a gorgeous woman. I shake his hand as he thanks me for helping his daughter, but I see him sizing me up. He says nothing else as he shows us the living quarters, Mia will be staying with him while I’ll be with the ‘civvies’ or civilians.

  The base isn’t quite what I expected, as it is also bloody massive. Large metal sheds and bunkers stand on concrete, and Colonel Hazeldine explains that there is a whole underground component too as they are also a research facility, but he doesn’t elaborate. I frown when he says that, does that mean he had something to do with the zombie virus and its creation? Why is there a research facility built underneath what was only supposed to be a training base?

  He takes us to his quarters and makes us all a cup of tea―how very British. Bad day at work? Cup of tea. Feeling down? Cup of tea. Messy breakup? Cup of tea. Zombie apocalypse? Fucking tea.

  “How many people have you got here?” I ask, as I sip at my steaming mug.

  He sits at a small desk as Mia and I sit on a tiny couch. “We used to have six hundred and fifty military, but now, we’re down to under three hundred. Our civilian numbers are growing as more people find their way to us. We last logged almost eight hundred.”

  “That seems like a lot…” Mia says, sounding hopeful.

  “A year ago, the British population was almost 67 million, it’s barely a drop in the ocean,” her father replies gently, placing his hand over hers.

  We sit contemplating that for a moment. So many lives were lost, stolen, destroyed. And for what? So the country could cut its unem
ployment figures? Pay less out in benefits?

  I can feel my anger growing the more I think about it. There has to be something we can do. “What happens next? Is there a cure?”

  “A cure for rotting corpses?” He lifts an eyebrow at me. “No. But we have been working on a vaccine.”

  Mia tilts her head. “What’s the point if there’s not a cure?”

  He sighs and takes a gulp of his tea before placing the tin mug down. “We believe that the virus is mutating. We expected the zombies to eventually die off, but it seems that the tenacious little fuckers are finding a way to survive. If we don’t protect ourselves from the current strain, then we’re just going to keep dying out while it keeps evolving.”

  There’s something in the way he says ‘We expected’ that sits uneasy with me. I snort, this is sounding like a fool's errand the more he talks about it. “How’re you going to vaccinate a country torn apart? People are spread out everywhere, in hiding just trying to make it through the night.”

  “I know that!” he shouts. “We’re going to go to the cities and start the way the virus did, with the water supply. I’m part of the mission to go to London.”

  I’d heard that there were survivors trying to get the water plantations up and running in the major cities, but I wasn’t sure whether to believe it. Clearly, the military were planning on utilising it, so there may be a grain of truth behind the rumour. I stand, stretching my legs out and cast my eyes over the paperwork pinned to a corkboard near the bed. I grind my jaw as I look at the mess this country has become, the people involved were scrambling to fix it, but was it too late?

  “Will it work?” Mia asks, voicing the question we were both thinking. There’s a fire behind those eyes of hers, and I know how much she needs this.