Diaries of the Damned (34 page)
The first thing Paul heard as he found his way through the fog that had settled over his brain was the strange hissing sound as the door he was lying next to released its lock and opened. The light outside was bright and a harsh wind was blowing. The howls through the open door only served to further heighten the screams of the other passengers.
Scrambling to his feet, Paul made a dash for the gun, which lay further inside the plane. His fingers brushed the metal, when a shadow fell over him and a heavily accented voice spoke up.
“I would not do that if I were you.” The Russian voice was deep and gravelly, the accent only making it less hospitable.
Paul got to his feet and turned to look at the man that addressed him. His legs wanted to buckle, but he forced himself to stand tall. The man was dressed in military clothes, his jacket adorned with pins and medals which, while shiny and impressive to look at, probably meant much more to someone from Russian heritage.
“What is going on here?” h
e demanded, looking at the bodies on the floor. Blood still dripped from the ceiling of the plane from where Jessica had taken her own life. A deep red drop fell and landed on the tip of the man’s boot which, contrary to the popular image, had not been shined to a mirror-like finish.
“You will answer me.” The Russian fought hard against the desire to attack. His defenses and mistrust for the English seemed to be greater than the media would have people believe.
For a while it was as if the plane was empty. That only he and Paul stood there. The Russian soldier’s gaze never faltered. He didn’t even blink.
“She…
there was a fight. The stewardess…whoever she was, shot and killed that man there, before taking her own life,” Paul explained, feeling his own steely resolve begin to weaken. Three more soldiers stood in the open doorway of the plane, armed with heavy duty automatic weapons. From the way they held them, they were not averse to the notion of following Jessica’s lead and wiping out the plane. They were going to die no matter what, so did it really make any difference where?
“That is most unfortunate. But there is no time. Come. You must now all come with me. We will take you to the holding camp where you will live until your government finalizes the evacuations and your lives can begin again.” The man turned and left the plane without another word. The three remaining soldiers entered. Two stood by the door, while a third rounded up the passengers, helping them from their seats and through the aisles.
Outside, two large busses waited on the tarmac, surrounded by military vehicles. Every soldier that Paul saw was armed, and each wore a facial expression that said anything but welcome home. The air was hostile, and the niceties forced. Paul realized that knowing the truth changed their viewpoint on things, but didn’t think it mattered much. The Russians, however helpful they wanted to make themselves look, were far from pleased at being used as a mass grave provider.
The air was colder than any had expected, and by the time they had made it to the waiting busses, the winter air held them all in its thrall. Unsurprisingly, there was no heating on the vehicles – or suspension – they would later come to realize. Nobody spoke as they pulled away. The bodies of both Jessica and Neil were removed from the aircraft and thrown rather unceremoniously into the baggage compartment of the final bus.
The scenery around them changed the moment they pulled out of the airport, which was tiny and made Paul wonder how on earth the aircraft managed to land on such a small runway. By the time he looked back, as if he needed to reaffirm his sizing suspicions, the airport was gone, and they were surrounded by trees.
The road that they followed was unpaved for the most part, and was certainly not on any map Paul could conceive.
“Where are we?” He heard a middle aged man whisper to the younger man that sat beside him. It was a common question; one that bounced around the bus like an echo. The vehicle felt like an old school bus. Iron framed, worn out seats, the padding long since gone. The driver sat behind a semi partition, which obscured him from view; also from any projectiles that may be thrown his way during whatever journey he was making.
At the front of the bus, standing beside the driver were two armed guards. They stood motionless; their bodies immobile even as the bus bounced down the pothole strewn road. The stared at the group, but nobody dared approach them, or even call out to them. Paul looked around, trying to find something to occupy his mind. He had left his notepad on the plane. Or
rather, he had put it to one side when he went to retrieve Jessica’s gun. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much. They were being taken to their execution after all. As his eyes roamed the bus, they came to settle on the graffiti that littered the wooden paneled back of the seat before him. It was, he had no doubt, the standard fare: declarations of love, and numbers offering the same for a decent price. The Russian text made no sense to his eyes, and he wondered how anybody could read it. He had mastered several languages during his years, but never one so complicated at first sight.
It was then that his eyes fell upon something, scribbled in the top corner of the seat, hidden beneath a loose flap of cloth. It was not much, only a name and a date, but he doubted many people in Russia would have the name of Charles, nor would they have been riding in the bus only three days earlier.
There are others,
he thought to himself. Paul was unable to remove the smile from his face, and the nudge he got from Leon, who had taken the seat beside him made him feel far more at ease.
“I’ve got your notebook,
” Leon whispered after a while, timing his words so that they were covered by the din of the heavily revved engine.
“Thank you,
” Paul managed in response before the glare from the guards silenced him.
After driving for what felt like days, but was in actual fact not much more than an hour or two, they came to a stop. Before them was a tall wall, its top wrapped with barbed wire. Spaced every hundred meters or so, was a small pillar, equally decorated with the wire, but topped with a security camera.
The guards muttered something into their radios, and then left the bus. Even with them gone, the silence remained.
After a few seconds, the guards from the other bus arrived and the sound of their chatter filled the air. While none could understand their words, the tone of the conversation was unmistakable: apprehension, confusion, and even an undertone of fear.
“Something’s gone wrong,” Leon whispered, to the bus as a whole. The soldier’s voices escalated to the point of confrontation, and only stopped when one of them appeared on Paul’s bus. His face was pale, his eyes wide, and as he surveyed them all, there was a distinct trembled in his hands. His eyes fell on a young girl; she couldn’t have been more than eighteen.
“You… come,” h
e managed in strained English.
The girl, who refused to make eye contact with the man, didn’t move. The soldier reached out and grabbed her by her long dirty blonde hair and hauled her from the bus, his own Russian growls almost as loud as her cries. A protest went up inside the bus, but fell silent the moment the soldier pulled a pistol from his hip and waved it at them all. He shouted a warning in Russian and then disappeared, pushing the still shrieking girl before him.
“I don’t like this,” Paul took the chance to whisper to the bus.
The girl continued to scream and fight, until the ear splitting wail of a heavy gate being opened on hinges no longer fit for the task drowned her out.
Looking through the front window, Paul saw the complex they had been brought to appear from behind the heavily fortified entry. Even the gate had been covered with brick, to create the illusion of no entry. The inside was overgrown. Tall weeds and grass loomed large. A single path ran straight as an arrow through the complex. On either side of the path were single story wooden shacks. The construction appeared as stable as the European economy. The thing Paul didn’t see was signs of life.
“Go, go,” One of the soldiers ordered, jabbing the whimpering blond girl in the small of the back, forcing her over the threshold
and into the compound. “Walk….Walk, you walk,” he ordered.
Small shuffling steps took the girl deeper and deeper beyond the walls. After a few moments, the soldiers began to relax. Their chatter started once more. They turned and ordered the busses to empty. It only took three shouts and a wave of their rifles for their orders to be understood and obeyed.
It took less than five minutes for them to empty the busses and stand in a shambolic line up.
“Where’s the girl?” Paul asked while the soldiers were busy taking a headcount, and recording something on a series of clipboards. They all had their backs to the compound, and even though Paul’s question was more a voicing of a thought that dawned on him than anything more direct, each guard heard him. Their heads snapped to attention and they spun around on full alert.
The scream came a few moments later, and the first zombie stumbled into view not long after. Panicked, the Russian soldiers all fired their weapons into the creature. Clearly, they had all been briefed on what they were doing, and what had happened to bring the United Kingdom into such a condition. Yet, Paul also noticed that none seemed to know how to stop the zombie. Blood filled the air as the body collected the bullets fired into it and fell to the ground.
The soldiers started shouting amongst themselves, their captives forgotten. The figure on the ground stood back up and started tow
ard them once more. Its shirtless body was a mess of bubbling meat. The upper torso seemed to move at a slightly different tempo than the legs; twisting from side to side as it moved. The bullets had all but cut the creature in half. Only the spine remained intact. The creature gave a growl but a final explosion forced a bullet between its eyes and it fell on the path once more.
Paul stood with the gun in his hands, having grabbed it from the belt of the solider nearest to him.
Spinning, the Russian military contingent aimed their weapons at Paul. They shouted at him in Russian, their own voices and actions driven not by fear of rebellion, but by fear of being whatever lurked in the camp.
“You need to shoot them in the head. In the head!” Paul spoke slowly, pointing into his own forehead. The Russians didn’t seem to pay him any attention, but when the next group of zombies arrived, they seemed to show a modicum of restraint. Their aim was terrible, but the bullet
s were at least directed toward the head. One fired off the lower jaw of a woman who looked as though her final moments of life had been spent on her back. Her underwear was still wrapped around her ankles, and one sagging breast hung from her bra.
“Everybody on the bus,” Leon shouted. The Russians turned to look at him, and shouted their response, firing into the ground near Paul and their group. “We need to move
. Those things will kill us all,” Leon shouted at the Russians. Even as he did so he saw a group of at least forty zombies appear from behind the huts within the compound. “There are too many of them.” He tried, but the Russians refused to listen, and as if to show their defiance, they swiftly put a number of bullets into Leon’s chest. Blood frothed from his lips as he collapsed to the ground. He reached out both hands, taking his daughter’s hand in one and Paul’s in the other.
Everybody screamed, apart from Leon’s daughter. She stood in silence, her face pale. Her eyes rolled into her hea
d and she collapsed to the ground.
Paul moved to catch her, but the rifles, (which were not trained on him, for he still held the pistol in one hand), stopped him. The zombie crowd had increased, and they descended upon
the Russians, who never saw them coming. Paul would later wonder if they knew all along, and merely refused to look their deaths in the eye.
The first wave of zombies numbered fifty, and they overpowered the Russian soldiers; descending on them in a snarling fury which ensured that not enough was left over for them to come back from the dead. While the zombies, consumed by their hunger, oblivious to the presence of the others, continued to gorge themselves on the military grade meat, Paul rallied his own troops. Scooping Leon’s unconscious daughter into his arms, he led them into the compound.
“We can’t go in there,” a voice called.
“It is our only chance,” Paul said. There is a cabin right here. We head th
ere, and barricade the doors,” he called.
“He’s right
. We need to be able to regroup,” Monique called out. She appeared beside Paul, and looked down at the young girl in his arms. “Poor thing,” she whispered.
“Why not the bu
s? I’m going to wait on the bus,” a strong sounding male voice called from the back. “We can drive away,” he added, hoping to convince a few of the others to go with him.
The first of the zombies had finished their allocated body part, and raised their head looking for more; their hunger never sated. Their eyes fell upon the man standing by the bus, the others having fled away from the undead crowd – moving along a horizontal plane. It came for the man, who fled onto the bus, along with the five people who had decided that his advice had been the best. The
y closed the doors and immediately the man began to turn the key, which still sat in the ignition.
