Blood on the Floor: An Undead Adventure (37 page)

The plan is already formed. She will stop with Paco to hold them off while Becky runs on with the children. She knows Paco can fight many but also knows there are
too
many this time. The first action will bring the others in from the sides. They’ll be flanked and overwhelmed but they can make noise and buy time. She gets ready to give the order, her eyes lingering on Subi then to Raj and up to Amna.

‘Take them and hide,’ she gasps the words out. Subi’s looks round with fresh fear etched on her face.

‘No…’ Becky’s voice almost incoherent for the pain she’s in.

‘Hide…wait till you can….can get out…’

‘No,’ Subi whispers with tears pricking to fall down her cheeks.

Heather nods. Firm and resolute. ‘Stay with Becky…hide, Subi…’ She looks to Paco, ready to summon the words as the end of the lane comes into view. The white lines across the road gleaming so bright and clear. A fallen tree on the left, a huge thing that crashed down during the storm smashing through the power lines overhead, bringing telephone poles down. It gives obstruction to the view. On the right the main road bends sharply away. Ahead are the first houses at the edge of town. They can make it.

‘Run,’ Heather growls the word out, the plan changing as fluid as the new sights are processed. The view of the houses gives them a finishing line. New energy dragged from the depths of guts to be forced into legs that run and arms that pump. They can make it. They can get there. Find one of the houses, get inside, hide.

Past the fallen tree they go. Infected behind them. Infected on both sides but hidden from view.

That promise of refuge grows closer. It becomes a beautiful thing of brick walls and windows covered in net curtains with water pipes feeding taps inside. They will get there. They will hide.

The first house is sealed tight. The doors and windows locked. To break in will make noise. They go to the next. Locked and sealed. They go on, running further down the street past cars and vans, past motorbikes and trees uprooted. Past decaying bodies and debris swept along by the rains that surged through here. The doors are locked. The windows intact. The promise fades. Hearts sink. The noises of the infected grow closer on all sides. Feet running on roads. Fences being smashed down. A howl sounds from somewhere followed by the piercing scream of a woman being taken down. Glass smashes. Doors being hit hard. Noises that grow louder. A man shouting. Children crying. They keep running seeing nothing that can aid their plight.

They reach the end of the first street and run into a crossroads. Left and right thick with infected streaming across at the far ends. Someone running screaming from a house only to be taken down by two that peel away from the horde. They run on, staggering and gasping for air into the street ahead. More houses. More doors locked and sealed. On and on. Running and running. Raj trips and sprawls face down. He cries from the shock and impact but gets pulled up and held under one arm by Heather refusing to give a seconds worth of pausing.

Another junction. Infected ahead down the end of the street. They go right, veering sharply with every movement a reaction to the environment. The screams that shred the air tell them there were survivors here. Windows smashing over and over. Bangs and thuds and all the time that awful rhythmic drumming of an army marching.

An alley mouth. They take it to avoid the horde attacking a house further down the street. They run flanked by high fences to gardens. The alley twists and weaves. Narrowing and widening with dog shit everywhere. It ends on a side road feeding the town centre. Smaller commercial shops on both sides of the road. Dry cleaners, shoe repairs and charity shops. They go left in response to the sounds of screaming coming from the right.

There. In the distance. A secure yard accessed by a gate hanging open. High brick walls topped with razor wire. A small road next to it. The yard to a store that fronts the town centre. She sees it. She spots the refuge. That is the end game. That is the objective that can be reached.

Pure aggression takes over. Aggression that grows to surge and fuel her muscles to ignore the utter agony searing within her. She forces Raj to go faster. She snarls at Subi and Tommy. She harries them, badgers and harasses. She becomes worse than the infected for the ferocity she gives to make them go and never stop until they reach that gate.

She looks back to the bend in the road seeing infected that disappear from view as she propels past the curvature of the road. They have to reach the gate before the infected reach that bend.

Becky sees it. The gate, the bend in the road behind them and the distance they need to cover. She sees Paco running with Oliver in his arms. She swallows the fear and flicks her eyes to Tommy running with the bag on his back. Her sons. Tommy and Ollie. Her boys. They have to survive. She is older and calculates the distance with a more experienced eye and knows they won’t make it to the gate before the infected reach the bend. She looks to Paco, at the size of him and the ferocious loyalty he has to Heather and finally she looks at Heather. A woman unknown to her but one that projects an aura of utter ruthlessness to do what must be done. That’s what this world needs now. It needs people to fight back and withstand the pain. It needs that which Heather has. Becky has it too. She knows she does, but she also knows she has lived and loved and now is the time to pay that back.

She stops suddenly and watches them run. She stops unseen to watch her boys being taken to safety. She stops to swallow and spit to the side while her heart soars to break with a rush of pure emotion. She stands straight. Her chest rising fast to breathe. Her red hair plastered down her face and neck. The meat cleaver gripped and held at her side.
Don’t turn and see me. Run. Keep going.
Every step they take is closer to the gate. Her sons will live. Her sons will grow to become strong and fight back to protect others that cannot defend themselves. They’ll grow around people like Heather and learn the brutality of survival.

Heather watches Paco burst through into the yard with Subi and Tommy close behind him. The other children get through as she turns to check behind and sees Becky standing further down the road. Her stomach heaves to twist and drop. A scream threatens to fall from her lips but that instinct for survival keeps her silent. She takes it in. The meaning of it. The sacrifice of it. Becky turns and twitches the meat cleaver in her hand,
go now.
Heather takes a step out, gripping her machete to stand with the other woman.
No.
Becky shakes her head. Eyes imploring.
Protect them. Go.
A surge of energy floods Heather with every instinct straining to run and fight and stand with Becky but if she goes then Paco will come and the children will be left alone in a town full of infected. Instead she nods. Once and firm with an action that lifts Becky’s head.

Heather steps back through the gate that she closes firmly with cold emotion showing on her face. Tommy rushes forward to call out but finds his mouth clamped by a hard hand and a pair of eyes glaring deep into his soul. Heather wills him to be quiet and silent with a power in her gaze that terrifies him to the core. He falls silent. Unmoving and unblinking. She leans in close to his ear,
‘not a word.’

Becky watches the gate close, sealing her in the street. She turns back to face the infected without fear or regret. It is what it is. Mothers do what it takes. She watches them come, smiling at their stupidity of a trick played and a point already scored. The end of her nose itches. She rubs it. Her legs ache from running so much. She grimaces and shrugs. Her back hurts. Her head hurts. Everything hurts. Fuck it. She lets the first one come with a message conveyed that she will be taken without a fight. Then she lashes the meat cleaver out and takes the head off with a vicious smile and the yell of a woman full of life and laughter. She takes the next one down with a hard swing into the guts. She steps out, moving back with a speed that defies the fatigue in her legs. Another one slashed open to fall bleeding and broken. She gets another through the neck before seeing the dense horde coming closer. At that point she runs. She runs as a mother to draw the hunters away from her cubs. She is the fox chased by the hounds and given fresh speed for the blessed thing she does. She runs hard down the small road next to the yard with a hundred or more infected snarling behind her. She sprints with everything she has to draw them away knowing she doesn’t have to preserve energy now. She cries and laughs as she runs. She sobs tears and prays for Heather to live so her children will live. She runs from the road into the central square of the town to greet the thousands of infected waiting there. She sees them in all their massed glory. Tens of thousands. Thick lines and hordes and faces mottled with greying skin. Thousands of red bloodshot eyes. Greasy hair hanging down. Open wounds on some that fester with maggots. Others look clean and healthy with strength bunching in muscles. She drops the meat cleaver and runs with everything she has. They react with a growl rippling through them. She dodges one, weaves another and makes gains. She dances and spins to duck and veer through them reacting from instinct only.

He takes her from the front while she glances to the side. A heavy built male slamming so hard she’s sent sagging back with the wind driven from her lungs. They close in from all sides. Swarming to engulf in a frenzied mass of mouths biting and nails raking to open skin to pass the infected. Her senses become overwhelmed. Pain erupts in her body. Her blood runs as she looks up to see a drone passing by in the sky above their heads. She watches it almost idly, her body shunted and knocked left to right as they feast and rip the organs from her body. She watches it glide and the lens on the camera rotate to watch her as it goes overhead. It brings peace into her mind. The pain eases. Her body is not hers now. The drone becomes an angel watching down that brings peace to her soul. There are others out there. Others that will come here and fight back. She knows they will win without knowing the reasons for that belief. Only that they will. The Living Army will come here. Her children will live.

Thirty Six

She doesn’t wait for Paco this time but rams the door with her shoulder the second Becky gives voice to yell in the street outside the yard. The door yields, shunting open with the lock snapped. Pain explodes in her shoulder but it just joins all the other sensations of agony in her body.

‘In…get in,’ she ushers them through into the hallway at the bottom of a wooden flight of stairs fitted with a threadbare carpet. They cram inside. Tommy weeping silently with Subi staying close to him. Heather pushes the door closed, cursing that she can’t now lock it.

‘Up…not a sound,’ she hisses the whisper, terrifying the children to comply. She pushes in front to lead the way, not waiting for Paco to take the lead. In the frenzy of the moment she doesn’t notice him holding back to protect the rear.

She goes fast to the first landing. Two doors to flats. She tries the handles. Both locked. Up again to the second floor. Two doors. Both locked. Up to the last floor, two more doors, both locked. She drops to a squat to open the letterboxes to sniff the air. The one on the right stinks of death. The one on the left smells musty. She tries the handle again, pushing into the door knowing it will have to be forced in as a thought strikes her whirling mind. She snaps over to look at the other door.

A hard kick slams the door open, busting the lock that pings from the frame to scatter down the laminated hallway. She charges in at full speed ready to kill anything in here. Kitchen clear. Bathroom clear. Lounge clear. Into the bedroom she goes, snarling to cut and slice and kill. The corpse lies in the bed, one hand still clutching the bottle of pills that were taken in suicide to avoid the horror of a world imploding. Flies everywhere. Maggots writhing in the liquids that voided from the body as death came. She closes the door and heads down and back out. Emotionless. Hardened. She doesn’t hesitate but shoulders into the door with a grunt. It holds. She does it again, bunching to slam the door in while gripping the handle to prevent it whacking into the wall like the last one did. She goes in first. Machete gripped. Standing to sniff and listen. Dust on the floor thick and undisturbed.

‘In,’ she whispers the command, standing back to get them through to manipulate the damaged lock on the frame enough to close the door. Bolts on the top and bottom are rammed home. A five room flat. Kitchen, bathroom and one bedroom at the back. Lounge and the other bedroom overlooking the front. ‘Wait,’ the utter coldness in her voice makes them hold still. All eyes on her. Chests heaving, faces flushed but no longer sweating for the lack of fluids in their bodies.

She checks each room, working out a mother and child lived here from the female clothing and the child’s bedroom. She closes the doors to the rooms facing the front and makes the seven children crowd into the kitchen. She stays low, ducking at the sink while her mind processes the fact they are on the third floor. Any water going into the plug will feed into the wastepipe that drops three stories to the ground floor into a drain and that will make noise. She puts the plug into the hole in the sink then the washing up bowl to catch any overflow. Glasses and cups are taken from cupboards to be filled and passed round.

The noises outside are terrible but indistinct. Thousands of people in one place, shuffling feet, walking, running, breathing, hissing and growling. She can hear them and hopes their noise will cover any made in the flat but she stays aggressively careful. Glaring at the children if they speak or make a sound. To survive is to be brutal. To survive against any odds is to match the violence of the threat and surpass it with extreme aggression.

The children drink. They drink until their bellies fill and the pain in their heads starts to ease. Colour slowly comes back to cheeks. Sweat starts to come again, shining and dripping down faces. She keeps going, giving them as much as they want.

She finds a cloth, soaks it with cold water and starts wiping faces to bring temperatures down. She wipes the grime and sweat away. She rinses and cleans necks, squeezing the cloth to let it run down backs.

‘Anti-bac,’ she whispers the words to Subi who slides the bag from Tommy’s back to get the gel out that’s squeezed and rubbed into hands and arms. ‘Do them,’ Heather gives it to Subi to take over while she sprays her machete with detergent then goes to clean Paco only to see him holding his hands out to Subi for her to squeeze the gel on him.

Instead she goes through cupboards, finding multi-packs of chocolate bars and snack food that gets dumped on the side. The children need energy. Glucose is energy. Sugar is energy. It’s a quick fix but it will be needed if they have to run again.

‘Subi…make sure everyone eats something…’

‘Okay,’ Subi nods, terrified but coping with every instruction barked at her. Heather pushes through them to the door. ‘I’m going to look….not a sound…hear me? Not a sound from any of you…’

She stops in the doorway to the lounge, staring at the windows while listening to the noises coming up from the street below. Sensation behind her. She knows it’s him and slides back to press her body into his. Arms come round, wrapping tight round her waist. For a second she closes her eyes and stops the flow of aggression. Fear surges into her heart. The hopelessness of it all. The sheer odds stacked against them. Every turn taken has brought them close to the danger she’s been trying to avoid. He senses her disquiet and pulls in with his arms to embrace and hold. She exhales slowly, wishing they were back in the barn. Remembering the perfect days of just being with him and nothing else. Her hands come up to his fingers. She lifts his arm to rub her cheek along the hair, feeling it the way she did before, remembering it the way she did before. A moment captured in time. Death and danger surround them. Two thin bolts protect them from the horrors outside. She kisses his arm to feel the bristles on her lips. She can feel his heart beating through her back. She can feel his strength in his arms and the heat from his body. The tears threaten to come but the resolve comes in faster. She stiffens, opens her eyes and pulls from his embrace with the image of Becky standing in the street holding in her mind.

‘Stay there,’ she whispers at him, motioning for him to stay put before ducking to approach the windows. She stays low, going wide to come in from the side using the hanging curtain as cover. The sky is hinting at night outside. Thuds and bangs start to come clear through the clamouring noise. Individual sounds that mean nothing without a view being gained. She rises to gently ease the curtain aside until she can see down into a square that stills her beating heart.

She almost laughs at the sight. A rush of ridiculous humour at believing it couldn’t get any worse. What she sees isn’t hundreds or even thousands but tens of thousands. The whole of the big square is thick with infected. Men, women and children of all ages and all states of decay. A dense crowd packed in like an audience at a music festival. So many. So so many. She scans without seeing. Eyes flickering to try and absorb what shouldn’t be seen. The square is the town centre. Bordered on all sides by shops with flats over the top. A road leads out on the northern side. She tries to see if there is a road coming in but the ground is lost from view for the density of the horde. As her brain processes so she starts to make sense of the details and the difference in the infected. Some are like they have always been. Mottled dying skin. Straggly hair and sunken cheeks with hollowed eye sockets and skin tight against skulls. Hands clawed and looking monstrous for how inhuman they are in appearance. Others look normal. Less dehydrated with skin retaining some hues of colour and they’re the ones that look more dangerous than the rest. Activity everywhere. Bursts of running as her eyes spot a man running from a doorway aiming to run down the front of the buildings. He’s taken down in seconds and ripped limb from limb in an action that makes her realise these infected are not here to take hosts but to kill. They’re ramped and charged up. She can see it in their stance and the way they move. The lips all pulled back showing teeth. Faces contorting with intense rage. Her brain still works to process and understand, to give context and focus. She spots most of them are facing towards the buildings opposite. She looks up to the windows of the apartments above the shops, seeing people inside and faces coming close to look down. She sees people running inside the rooms, adults clutching children, men shouting at each other. Two old men with grey hair trying to calm a group of people in the lounge through one bay window. Movement catches her attention. Something flitting along from the right to the left. What is that? She squints to see. A white plastic thing like a robot gliding along at window level. A drone. That’s a drone. She watches it hover, rise and drop as it sweeps along to the edge of the building line then it rises fast to go over the rooftops out of view.

That sensation comes again. That feeling of things happening that she has no knowledge off. Town after town has been laid to waste and now the infected are massing here, waiting for whatever is coming. It was one army truck and one van. There are tens of thousands here. They can’t fight this many. They must see that. If they’re using that drone they must know how many are here. They won’t come. They can’t come here. Only a bloody idiot would come here.

They do come. Five minutes later she hears the roar of an engine and risks moving further to see down to the right side. The roar grows louder, throaty and full of bass. A blink of an eye and the army truck is there, ramming into the edge of the horde. She gasps at the sight of bodies bursting open as the hard metal front of the truck smashes into them. It keeps going too. Ploughing deep through the square to rake down the edge of the building line clearing them from the doorways at ground level. As it hits to drive in so a man pops up through the hole in the middle of the roof. A small man that grips the big machine gun fixed to the edge of the hole that he starts firing with strafes left right and ahead. The sound is immense. A solid thrumming beat of a heavy machine gun filling the air. The control the man shows is incredible. Burst firing with precision that slews bullets into the hordes ripping bodies apart and sending more flying back.

‘Oh my god,’ she mouths in shock, her blood running cold in her veins. She grips the window frame to keep her balance and watch the truck score a path from one side to the other.

The whole of the horde react as one. Surging in to attack and fling themselves at the vehicle. They dive for the wheels, the sides and the front. They try and vault the bonnet but slide off or get shot by the machine gun on the top. The huge wheels bounce and jolt but keep turning to spray blood from bodies squashed to pop open like ripe fruit. The wake behind them is a slick mess of broken bodies that is filled within a second by more infected rushing forward. The truck goes long to turn and drive through the crowds, killing tens at a time. It turns wide to aim back to gain the front. Too many things to see. Too many sights to understand. Pink mists keep hanging in the air like small fireworks exploding at head height. She can’t make sense of it. Her eyes flick from the truck to the man on the top and the muzzle flash of the machine gun then down to the infected being run over or shot down. Then she spots it. A head bursts apart to leave a pink mist hanging for a second. The man on the truck. The one firing the machine gun. He’s shooting into their heads from the top of a truck weaving and jolting through a whole square of people. The connection is made. She looks ahead to where the man will aim next and sees the heads go poof one after the other. Whole lines of heads that burst like melons. Staggering. Beyond comprehension but utterly devastating in effect. It’s not possible. What she is seeing is not real. A truck cannot do that. A man cannot fire a gun like that.

The infected react again. Screeching with such primeval noise it makes her skin crawl and the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Tens of thousands all giving voice at the same time amidst the roar of the engine and the machine gun firing. The infected charge harder, flinging themselves at the wheels to try and jam the forward momentum.

She can see they’re impacting on the steerage of the vehicle now from the way the truck slews and slides. Losing grip for a second before going hard the other direction. It powers on heading back the way it came. She looks over to see more infected people pouring in from alleys and side streets. Coming and coming with seemingly never ending numbers. The army truck reaches the edge. They can’t risk another run through. She can see it. The infected are reacting too fast. They’ll get bogged down like in the mud on that green. It does though. It turns to face into the square and starts the charge. She shakes her head, cursing them for the folly of what they do. It comes in hard, faster than before. Charging to batter them aside. Ahead she can see the infected compressing to prevent it getting through.

It comes to a slewing stop with brakes applied that anchor on as the rear doors burst open to men and women jumping out with machine guns already firing. Again the infected react and surge in with a message passed that the people in the truck are ready to be taken. She can’t see how many get out from the vehicle. Maybe a dozen. With a thrill she spots the huge bald man jumping clear of the back doors with the machine gun taken from the top of the vehicle now in his hands firing from the waist that shudders his body with the recoil. She sees young men firing quickly without panic. A blond lad, two with dark hair. Another smaller one with dark skin. Women too. Several of them. All working together to form a small line that gets beaten back towards the building line.

‘D…’

She flinches, startled and turning to stare at Paco now at her side. His face contorting with expressions that flood across his features. His head lunging forward in tiny motions as he tries to form words. ‘D…D…’