Blood on the Floor: An Undead Adventure (34 page)

Thirty Four

Motorways tend to run straight with good signage that tells you where you are and where you are heading. Motorways are, to modern times, what Roman Roads were to old times. The quickest route from point A to point B.

Country roads are not motorways. Country roads follow the contours of the land and have evolved over thousands of years to weave round fields and lakes, up hills and through villages and farms. Country roads are not resplendent with good signage as the general consensus in the highway departments of councils was that drivers were either local or had a satnav. Heather is not local and she doesn’t have a satnav. There is a satnav in the Toyota but seeing as it’s the end of the world and there is no one to press the buttons and turn the dials in the satnav office then the bloody satnav doesn’t want to work.

Heather is lost. Hopelessly lost and that adds another pressure which translates through her body to her foot pressing harder to drive faster. The hedges are too big. The fields too wide. The lanes too narrow. The junctions feed into other roads that all look the same. The clock in the Toyota says it’s late afternoon. The sun is going in that direction so that must be west as the sun sets in the west. So if that’s west then that way must be south but the road doesn’t go that way. None of the bloody roads go that way. How the hell did anyone ever get anywhere in this world?

‘Seriously, how?’ she asks Paco again who looks back with what she takes to be a sympathetic expression. ‘Oh look…another junction. Are there any signs? Oh yes! Yes we have a sign to a bloody town that means absolutely nothing to anyone unless THEY BLOODY LIVED HERE…sorry for shouting but Brookley? Where the hell is Brookley in relation to everywhere else? Sod it. Looks like we’re going to Brookley then seeing as the other direction is unnamed therefore we can only assume it disappears into a pit of boiling larva or a hedonistic cult of sheepskin wearing farmers.’

She huffs, sighs, grips the wheel and shifts position while leaning closer to the air blower that is turned on to waft more warm air about. ‘And the bloody air con isn’t working,’ she tells him again while jabbing at the air con button that isn’t working. ‘No air con, no road signs, no idea of where the hell we are and I just killed people…’ she blinks at the words being voiced that she didn’t know were coming out until it was too late. ‘We’ll ignore that for now and focus on the air con not working and there being no road signs and…’

She hits Brookley village green at a speed too great to react. A rough jolt from the wheels hitting the kerb. The Toyota powers deep into the churned grass with an instant loss of traction on the tyres. She brakes and steers hard to the left with her view ahead filled by the Volvo wedged in the mud with the doors left open. The anti-lock braking system kicks in, the four wheel drive system tries to give power to spinning wheels but it’s like a stone thrown across an ice rink. The Toyota sliding across the mud while spinning round and round. The back end hits the Volvo with a bone jarring impact. Windows implode. Metal buckles and airbags explode out to meet faces coming in towards the dashboard. The Toyota snatches round from the collision, the driver side wheels hitting a rut that dip the vehicle to down to start the roll. It goes over once. From wheels to roof to wheels then over again, still sliding and spinning. Side impact airbags go next. Noise everywhere.

Four seconds after hitting the green it’s over. The Toyota comes to rest on its roof amidst a sea of churned mud. The engine cuts out. Liquids drip from damaged containers. Fuel and oil. Lubricants and coolants. Lights flicker then die. Clunks sound from things shifting as her mind blacks out.

She wakes. Pain everywhere. In her head, her neck, her legs and arms. Smells seep into her noise. Death and engine liquids. Everything is wrong. Her senses struggle to compute and gain location in time and space. Why is the seat above her? She grips something to pull up and feels it turning in her hand. She gropes in confusion then recognises the feel of the steering wheel but it’s up there instead of being…being where? Where should it be? What just happened? Where’s Paco? She tries to speak to call out but finds her chest constricted by her knees pushing into them. Panic starts building. She’s trapped. She can’t breathe. Her mind races wildly. Someone will call the fire service and an ambulance. Just wait. No. They won’t come. Nobody will come. Got to get out. What about spinal injuries? They say to remain still in case of spinal damage. There is nobody coming. Nausea rises. Her head reacting to the sickening motion of spinning and rolling. She wants to vomit but she can’t draw enough air in. What if she chokes on her sick and dies here. She’ll die in the apocalypse from a car accident and drowning on her own spew. She starts hyperventilating, snatching rapid breaths that aid the panic growing. Adrenalin kicks in. Fight or flight. Stay here and you will die. Get out. Find Paco. Find Subi. Find the children. She’s upside down wedged in the footwell of the car with its crumpled roof just inches from the top of the seats.

She gives strength to her legs to try and move out but she’s trapped on all sides, crumpled in a ball. Get out. She has to get out.

‘Paco?’ she grunts the word and hears a shift of motion within the car that creaks the chassis. ‘Paco?’ she fights the panic, forcing calmness that doesn’t want to come. Motion again. A grunt. He’s in here. He’s alive. She can’t see him. ‘Paco?’ Another grunt but he sounds different. He starts thrashing with hard movements that vibrate the car. His voice grunting with effort. Her heart rate goes back up, hammering hard at listening and feeling him trying to get free. He goes harder. Ramming into something that rocks the car side to side on the roof. A wrench of metal being buckled and torn. Loud impacts. Grunts of his voice straining as she hears things being shorn from fittings then a ping as his seat breaks from the joint. More light floods in. She catches glimpse of his legs and body writhing to kick at the door. Glass smashes. The car bounces and lurches. Mud slides in through her open window that splashes on her face wet and deliciously cool. An arm above her, heavily muscled with veins bulging as he grips the steering wheel and starts straining to pull it free. He twists and writhes again, getting his other arm into the work. A grunt and a dull crack as the steering wheel is snapped off to be flung away. Hands reach to find her. Groping her head and shoulders until they find her face. She sobs at the touch of his calloused hands and her sound makes him shift to push beneath her, his red bloodshot eyes full of worry. His scalp cut, blood on his forehead and down the bridge of his nose.

Still she can’t move. She can’t budge or do anything but the sight of him gives a surge of confidence that make her start trying to thrash and gain motion. She goes side to side but something sharp digs in her back. She feels her skin being cut open, gouged and the feel of hot blood running down her ribs.

She gasps in pain and panic. His fingertips stroke her cheeks, pushing the stray strands of hair away with such tenderness it makes the tears fall down through the space between them to land on his bloodied head. She closes her eyes, knowing she can’t move but knowing it’s okay because he is there. He will always be there. He will never leave her. If the car sets on flame and burns her alive she knows he will stay and hold her head to the last breath. An acceptance of death comes over her. An acceptance of what is. Calmness spreads, relaxing her tensed limbs. She breathes deeply, turning her head to push her cheek into his hand.

‘HEATHER…’

Her eyes snap open. Subi’s voice.

‘GET IN THE HOUSE…MOVE…’ Becky’s voice roaring. A snarl in the air. A howl. She hears a door banging shut in the distance. Screams and shouts.

‘Get me out,’ she growls the words in the confines of being trapped. Finding his eyes, locking on, expressing her will through her look and the tone she brings. ‘GET ME OUT…’ she starts rocking again side to side, ignoring the pain in her back and the blood pissing out. She thrashes, grunting as his hands leave her face. ‘GET ME OUT…LEAVE THEM ALONE…DOWN HERE…COME DOWN HERE…’ she screams to draw them. She heard the snarls and howls. ‘GET ‘EM PACO…PACO GET THEM…’ She draws what air she can muster and screams until her face turns red and her chest hurts. She sucks air in and does it again. She screams to draw them away from Subi and the others. She screams to bring them while thrashing and hammering to free her body.

The sound and the sight do something. The realisation that she is in pain, frightened but angry all at the same time. Paco watches her. The equilibrium swings on the pendulum. Images come back strong and fast. A life lived. He had a life. Concepts and understanding of details and situations. Social awareness comes and goes. Emotions flood with knowledge attached but flee soon after. She screams again. The noise of it, the sight of it, the meaning of it drive into his mind. She isn’t screaming because of the pain. She isn’t screaming because of the fear but it is fear. Not fear for her. Fear for what? Fear but for something else. She screams to bring them here. Concepts. Visualisations. Neural connections sizzle in his brain. ‘PACO…PACO…PACO…’ she says his name while screaming words he can’t understand. That’s his name. He is Paco. She says other words but he knows that one. He gains self. An awareness of being. He remembers a dog. He remembers being frightened and running. He remembers places and things that mean something that don’t mean anything. He looks down at her. His eyes wide with that struggle to grasp the concept of cognitive thought. To connect single things to form the realisation of the situation. To go beyond instinct and have an idea. She can’t get out. She wants to get out. His eyes flick to the chair that holds in her place. The chair needs to go. He makes the chair go. He explodes out to ram a shoulder into the soft material of the backrest while his feet find purchase to lock his legs out that drive forward to make the chair not be there. It snaps on the fittings and flies back. Space is given and she drops down to land on his body that is already turning to receive her. Strong arms soften her landing, pulling gently to slide her out to guide up and over his body now lying against the inside of the roof. She gasps and sucks air, wincing at the pain while her hands find his face in a frantic moment of life and death. Blood everywhere. Smeared down her face and arms. On his face and on his hands that pull her up. They wriggle and writhe to clamber through the ruined interior to the back windscreen that gives light where everything else is crumpled and squashed.

They struggle together with limbs entwining like lovers, gasping as though the same thing is happening and degrees of emotion that give the tiny separation between the extremes of joy and peril surge through her. Heads touch. Pressure builds. They’re out there. The infected are out there. Subi, Raj and Amna are out there. Got to get out. Got to fight. That instinct makes her stop to search for the machete to grasp the handle that is taken with them. The ripped off front seats get in the way. The space to crawl through becomes tighter. They go closer together to wiggle through. Hard breaths blast each other’s faces. Sweat mixes. Blood mixes. Everything they have and are mixes to be one entity that refuses to take death and instead inches towards life.

They reach the rear windscreen in such a tight space there is no room to gain swing to lash out and break out. She scrabbles with her feet to find grip, pushing her toes into something hard that holds her weight so she can power the top of her head into the glass. She grunts and does it again. Exploding up a few inches to crack the glass with her skull. She feels him writhe to gain traction under foot to lower and do the same. His head hits the glass that holds in place. ‘Together,’ she whispers, pain everywhere, pain in every part of her body but pain is just a sense like all the others. It can be ignored and used to fuel the rage to keep going. She lowers the few inches. He drops with her. She nods, ‘now.’ They surge up to slam skulls into the glass that fractures but holds. They drop, hold and punch up. It cracks and flexes but holds. Down again and up. Up harder with eyes locked on each other to smash through the screen that shatters into thousands of shiny crumbs that cascade gently down past their eyes. Freedom seen but not yet gained. They go together. Inching and wriggling with legs pushing and bodies twisting to get free. They slide from the car into the mud that coats their faces. They slide further out to get free and draw clean air. Legs still inside the vehicle, torsos twisting side to side to get arms free. Her machete dropped for fear of slicing him or herself. Drumming sounds out. They’re coming. She can hear them. Good. Let them come. Let Becky get the children away. ‘COME ON,’ she roars her challenge, telling them she is alive and here to be taken. She hears them running and slipping through the wet mud while they wriggle and gasp to get out while fighting to gain traction through the mud.

The first one comes. Diving in with a mouth open and teeth ready but a hand shoots up to grip his throat and send him on into the hard back end of the car. Paco rears up, hammering the head into the metal body until the bones crunch and the blood pours. With a last big effort she gets her legs out to pivot round and reaches back in to grasp the machete handle. She gets it out and pointed up as the female infected drops to bite. The blade takes her through the throat with an act of pure chance instead of aim or calculation. Her tainted blood pumps hard to spray as Heather twists to keep her face clear. Paco lets go of the one he was ramming into the car to lash out with a hard punch that sends the dying infected woman sprawling off to the side.

No time to wait. No time to process the panic or pain but only to move or die. Together they scrabble in the mud. Feet sink down and slip out. They rise and fall to trip and sink. Holding onto each other to gain feet to hold firm. The third one charges in. They lean back to let it sail between them. Heather bringing the machete down onto its back as Paco drops to land to grip the head that is wrenched to break the neck.