4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas (30 page)

“I knew these men,” said Cutshaw. “They were in Camp 27 last night.”

“Where are their heads?” I asked, unable to keep a tremor out of my voice.

Cutshaw knelt at the front of the Humvee, studying the road’s surface and the crumpled bull-bars.

“Perhaps they hit another hummer,” I suggested.

“No they didn’t.”

“What did they hit then?” I asked, but Cutshaw made no reply.

We dragged the bodies out of the Humvee and piled them up at the roadside along with seven dead flesh-eaters, working safe in the knowledge that Franz would warn us if we were in any danger. I stood well back as Cutshaw set fire to the heap. Franz barked as we pushed the damaged Humvee off the road. Cutshaw peered into the dust-cloud, Micro-UZI at the ready. After a moment, he signalled to me and we hurried back to our Humvee.

“Jesus Christ. What happened there?” asked Jim as we accelerated past the funeral pyre.

I told what I knew, half-listening to Cutshaw trying to contact the nearest camp on the radio.

“But what the hell did they hit?” wondered Bob. “There’s nothing out here.”

“This is bad,” said Tommy.

“This is way beyond bad,” I said.

“What do you think?” Bob asked Cutshaw, who’d given up on the radio.

“I don’t know,” he said matter-of-factly.

There was a long moment of silence. For a second time in the space of three days Cutshaw didn’t have an answer. Once was bad enough. But twice! In my experience, such a thing just didn’t happen. I don’t mind admitting that I was shaken to my core. It was like the ground had shifted beneath my feet. I suddenly knew with absolute certainty that I’d been wrong not to follow my instinct and abandon the trip. Determined not to repeat my mistake, I opened my mouth to speak, but Bob beat me to it.

“How far are we from Camp 33?” he asked. I could tell from his voice that he was thinking the same as me.

Cutshaw knew what he was thinking, too. “We haven’t got time to make it back to Camp 27 before nightfall,” he said.

“Hang on, are you suggesting we give up and head home?” said Jim, frowning.

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” said Bob.

“But why?”

“Because there’s something happening down here that I don’t want any part of.”

“It was an accident, that’s all.”

“I don’t think so.”

Jim snorted. “Well, Bob, I never thought you were the type to buy into the kind of nonsense that whacko kid was spouting.” He turned to Cutshaw. “Go on, tell him how wrong he’s got it.” When no reply was forthcoming, his forehead wrinkled with uncertainty.

All this talk was too much for Tommy. “Oh man,” he groaned, covering his eyes with his hands. “This is great, just fucking great.”

“Take it easy,” I said. “Tomorrow we’re heading back north.”

“You too, eh, Mikey.” Jim shook his head at me in a self-righteous, pitying sort of way as if I’d admitted to something shameful.

I stared hard at him. “You just don’t get it do you, Jim?”

“The only thing I get is that I’m riding with a bunch of gutless wonders.”

Jim had no right to say such a thing, and he knew it. I bit my tongue to stifle an angry response, realising it wouldn’t do anyone any good if we had a big falling out. A year ago I’d have given him the hairdryer treatment, but since dad’s disappearance I’ve thought a lot more carefully about what I say to people in the heat of the moment. Besides, I could tell from Jim’s face that he was already regretting what he’d said.

“Sorry, Mikey,” he mumbled after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence.

“Forget it.”

“It’s just that we’ve all worked so hard for this, I can’t believe we’re going to give it up. We might not get out here again until next year.”

“At least this way there’ll be a next year.”

“I suppose,” Jim said grudgingly.

“There’s no suppose about it,” said Bob.

Jim flashed him an irritated look, then settled to staring out the window. I didn’t blame him for being so sore. I knew he needed this trip more than any of us after the year he’d had on Robertson Island.

A voice crackled over the radio. “Car 316, this is car 211, are you receiving us? Over.”

As Cutshaw reached for the handset, the Humvee emerged from the dust-storm into an eye of calm. A couple of hundred metres away a black SUV was parked at the roadside facing us. Cutshaw pulled up alongside it, winding his window down. “You’re looking for car 316,” he said.

The driver of the SUV nodded. “We got a call off them an hour ago to say they’d hit a tree that was blocking the road.” Rolling his eyes at the treeless plain, he continued, “I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what they said. We thought maybe they were having us on.”

“They weren’t having you on,” said Cutshaw, and he told the driver about our grisly discovery.

“Jesus,” murmured the man. “Where you headed?”

“Camp 33.”

“We’ve just come from there. I’ll follow you back in.”

Everybody who was anybody in the hunting world was in Camp 33. The place was as cramped as a battery hen’s cage. There was a tacit hierarchy as to who camped where, with grizzled veterans towards the centre of the site and ambitious young guns at its outer edge. We pitched our tents in the shadow of the perimeter-fence. As news of car 316’s fate spread, we found ourselves at the centre of attention. All those flint-faced men who hadn’t wanted to know us the night before last sidled over to hear the tale. By dusk I must’ve told it thirty times. There was a general consensus that it was the work of a thinker whose intelligence far exceeded anything previously encountered. As one wiry old dude put it, “We’re talking about the goddamn Einstein of zombies here.”

Hooch was there, too, whacked out of his skull on Christ knows what. As soon as I saw him I knew there was going to be trouble. He staggered over to us waving the biggest revolver I’ve ever seen and yelling, “Where’s that bastard who broke my jaw?”

“I think you mean me,” said Bob, cool as ever.

Hooch glared at him. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Here we go again, I thought, dropping my hand to the grip of my Beretta, but suddenly Hooch was grinning from ear to ear and embracing Bob like a long lost brother. “Man, it’s good to see you guys,” he said. “I was starting to think you’d pussied out.” He turned to me, wild-eyed. “Look at this place. Just look at it! Damn, this is gonna be good.”

“We’re heading back north tomorrow,” said Jim.

Hooch eyed him disbelievingly. “You gotta be shitting me.”

“Afraid not.”

Hooch scrunched his face up and scratched his head, then his grin returned. “That’s a good one,” he laughed, wagging his gun at Jim. He tottered off, shouting over his shoulder, “I’ll see you guys later.”

Pulling faces like a child that’s been told it has to leave a party early, Jim ducked into his tent and yanked the zipper down.

We sat silent beside our campfire. There was a buzz about the campground that was impossible to ignore, a feeling that something momentous was about to happen. Just being around it was enough to make your hair stand on end. I resisted it for as long as I could, but it was no good.

“Maybe we were a bit hasty back there,” I said.

“Maybe,” said Bob.

“Shall we make some dum-dums?”

“If you want.”

And just like that it was agreed. Both of us understood that we wouldn’t be heading north in the morning. We carefully began pulling handgun bullets out of their cartridges with pliers. I hammered the end of each bullet flat, before Bob carved a cross into the even surface with a hacksaw. This causes the bullet to split open on impact, blowing a hole about ten inches in diameter through your target. Very nasty and totally lethal. The only problem is the bullet’s effective accuracy is reduced to around ten metres—a hell of a lot closer than I’ve ever been to a live flesh-eater. Nevertheless, we always went through this ritual before a really dangerous hunt. I guess it’s kind of a psychological prop.

Tommy and Jim stuck their heads out of their tent at the sound of my hammering. Tommy went pale when he saw what was going on.

A wolfish grin split Jim’s face. “I knew you boys wouldn’t let me down.” He grabbed Tommy in a headlock and knuckled the crown of his head.

“Get off.” Tommy jerked free, jumped up and stomped away.

“Tommy,” I called after him.

“Go fuck yourself,” he retorted.

“Leave him,” said Jim. “He’ll get over it.”

As the light dropped, a swirling wind got up. Before getting into my sleeping-bag, I hammered extra pegs into the guide-ropes. The wind built until the tent quivered like a hovercraft about to lift-off.

“Do you hear that?” Bob said suddenly.

I listened hard, but heard nothing.

“There it is again,” said Bob.

This time I heard a faint, guttural moaning that gradually increased in volume until it formed an unbroken wall of sound—a sound more heart-rending and terrifying than anything I’d ever heard before. I fought an urge to pull my sleeping bag up over my head and plug my fingers into my ears. A scream sliced through the unholy dirge.

I lurched out of the tent and tripped over Tommy, who was curled into a ball on the ground, hands clamped over his ears, crying repeatedly, “I can’t stand it.”

Jim was knelt at his side, saying, “Calm down.”

The camp was a hive of activity. Everywhere figures were emerging from their tents, rifles gripped in their hands.

“They’re attacking the fence,” somebody shouted.

Figures wearing night-vision goggles streamed up ladders to lookout platforms. Within moments blue flashes were going off everywhere, the heavy boom of high-calibre rifles competing against the deafening rattle of automatic weapons.

I frantically rummaged through my kitbag for my Raptor S-63 night-scope. Bob was already busy attaching his night-scope to his rifle.

“Stay with Tommy,” I shouted to Jim.

“You stay with him,” he yelled back, snatching up his AK-47 and sprinting for the nearest ladder.

I slung my rifle over my shoulder and hurried after him. Four figures were already knelt on the platform, squeezing off volley after volley. The noise was enough to knock the wind out of you.

“Mother of God,” I breathed, squinting into my scope, “there must be a thousand of them.”

The flesh-eaters were about 450 metres from the fence, advancing in a thronging mass. Fear gripped me—the same kind of primordial fear the Romans must have felt when they looked out of their encampment at the Barbarian Horde. Suddenly, I understood what the great hunters like Jesus Martinez must have known all their lives: this wasn’t a game, it was war. Out there in the darkness was the enemy.

I shouldered my rifle, centred the cross-hairs and, tensing slightly in anticipation of the recoil, squeezed the trigger. A zombie went down. I pulled the bolt back and fired again, shooting with mechanical efficiency, relaxing a little more with every bullet that slammed home.

Jim was in his element. Every so often, as he slapped another clip into his AK-47, I heard him laughing crazily.

Zombies were hewn down like corn beneath a pelting hail-storm. But still they came on, slowly, irresistibly. It was like we were trying to hold back a river with our hands. A hundred metres, fifty, ten. Then they were right beneath us, converging on the gate. The stink of decomposing flesh was overwhelming. I bent double, retching.

“Keep shooting you sonofabitch,” screamed the man next to me.

As I swung my gun up, a series of explosions momentarily blinded me. Handfuls of grenades were being tossed into the seething mass below. Blood dampened our faces like spray from breaking waves.

Bob grabbed my arm. “Look what they’re doing,” he gasped.

My jaw went slack and, for a second, my brain refused to accept what I was seeing, but there was no denying it. The zombies were gathering their dead and stacking them against the gate to form a kind of crude siege-platform. They had no shortage of building material, either. The irony being that the faster we blew them back to hell, the faster the heap grew. In no time at all it was almost as tall as the gate.

The situation was getting desperate. Dozens of zombies, driven into a howling frenzy by the scent of our flesh, were clawing their way to the heap’s summit. We concentrated our fire on them, but for every one we picked off there were five more waiting to take its place.

It was only a matter of time before they broke through.

Jim wasn’t laughing anymore.

A jet of flame streamed down, engulfing the mound of necrotic flesh. Several years ago dad managed to get his hands on an M-9A1 flamethrower that’d seen use by US troops during The Vietnam War. The first sentence of the training manual stated that: ‘Flame has a powerful psychological effect in that humans instinctively withdraw from it, even when their morale is good.’ Well flesh-eaters are no different in this respect and they retreated from the gate with howls of pain and fear. The plain was soon lit up like, well, like the biggest goddamn bonfire you could ever imagine, as those zombies that’d been doused with the lethally combustible mixture of gasoline and diesel staggered about setting alight anything they touched. It was a scene worse than any nightmare you ever dreamed.

We continued firing until the horde was out of range, although the accuracy of our shooting was reduced by a thick pall of smoke. Jim punched his AK-47 into the air, whooping. I was too exhausted to do anything besides crouch down, wiping sweat out of my eyes. I gratefully accepted a canteen off the man at my side and took a swallow of water.

“I ain’t never seen nothing like that before,” said the man—a craggy-faced old hand of about fifty, not exactly the type to get easily excited.

“If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t believe it,” I said.

“We owe Hooch an apology,” said Bob.

“Where are you going?” I asked as Jim started down the ladder.

“To check on Tommy.”

A shout went up on the far side of the campground. “Here they come again.”

You didn’t need night-vision goggles anymore to see the amorphous mass of zombies shuffling towards us, the blaze at the gate illuminating their flesh-hungry faces.