Savage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel

SOMETIMES BEING ALONE IS BETTER…

The world has crumbled and the dead
walk the earth, but all is not lost, yet.  A group of survivors seek
salvation at an abandoned pier where the dead can’t get them.

But the dead are not the only
threat.

The people on the pier are not the
only group of survivors.  There are others out there: bigger, nastier
groups.  And one just turned up right on the doorstep…

The world may have changed, but
people haven’t.

This novel has been written using UK ENGLISH.  Spellings in other
territories may vary.

SAVAGE

(Special
Edition)

BY

Iain Rob
Wright

Dedicated
to Nub
Nub
.  Can’t wait to meet you…

With
thanks to:

Dawn
Cummings

Lorraine
Lanier

Serisa
Macfayden

Paul
Blanchfield

Michelle
Roper

Nev
Murray

Sonic
the Hedgehog

Veronica
Smith

Matthew
Young

Mark
Castles

Paula
Limbaugh

Caroline
Doyle

Kim
Wilkins

(Sorry if I forgot anyone.  IRW)

“No one can confidently say that he will still be living
tomorrow.”

–
Euripides

“If you don't have any fight in you, you might as well be
dead.”

–
Scott
Caan

“Zombies, what are you going to do with them? Just keep
chopping them up, shooting at them, shooting at them.”

–
Martin Scorsese

F
ungus sprouted underfoot.  It
covered everything lately.  With each lumbering step that the dead took
they shed flesh, which melded with the earth and gave life to all manner of
strange flora.  Even in death things grew. 

But the world had not died yet, not really: it had
just changed – tilted in such a way that the lowly fungus was better
sustained for life than the once mighty human race. 
Perhaps we were
never cut out for ruling the earth in the first place.  Maybe it was
always intended for the mushrooms and the insects.  They’re the only
things thriving.

Garfield was one of the last humans left alive and, as
he crested a muddy hill, his steel toecap boots sank into a muddy puddle left
behind by a recent drizzle.  Winter was still winter in England and the
heavens still enjoyed a good downpour.  One thing the dead could not
change was the weather. 

“There’s a garage over there,” Kirk informed Garfield,
a fellow member of the foraging party.  The younger man pointed his gloved
hand off to the east, at an old petrol station with shattered windows.

Garfield nodded.  “Checked it out last week with
Lemon and Squirrel.  Empty.”

Kirk grunted and stomped off to continue his search.

Garfield shook some of the wet mud from his boots and
glanced around from the top of the hill.  He thought about all that had
been lost, as he gazed across the barren landscape, which had once hosted
horn-blaring lines of gridlocked traffic and rushing ambulances.  Nothing
moved anymore, though: the cars on the highway were relics, rusted bumper to
rusted bumper, long abandoned and forever unable to get where they were
going.  It was like a twisted oil painting of what life used to be like
– all murky greys and decaying browns.  Garfield missed all of the
vibrant colours that no longer existed: the bright reds and greens of Christmas
decorations or the gleaming yellow of a sleek sports car.  Now there was
only rusted metal and faded cloth.

The nearby petrol station held little use, the fuel in
its pumps useful only for starting fires (and there were many simpler ways to
do that).  Food and drink were valuable, not oil and petroleum, and
Garfield knew that the modest forecourt contained none of the former. 
Very few places did any more. 
We’re going to have to trek
further.  There’s nothing left around here anymore.  We’ve picked it all
clean.

The area around basecamp was relatively safe.  It
was a rural area and mostly deserted.  There were, of course, packs of the
dead wandering around from time to time – that was true anywhere –
but their presence could be spotted early and avoided easily.  Even now,
half a mile away, Garfield could see a shambles of perhaps a half-dozen dead in
the distance.  The rotting men and women were bumping and clawing against
a chest-high wooden fence meant to keep horses contained – now it
contained them.  Garfield knew their clumsiness would keep them there
forever – eternally penned in by an obstacle that would have been easily
surmountable had they still been alive.

The sprinters would have leapt that fence easily,
Garfield thought.

Since the last of the sprinters (infected people,
flooded with rage and the desire to kill) had died out and become slow, rotting
zombies, it had been much easier to survive.  Garfield and the group of
foragers had now only to contend with a foe that was clumsy and stupid –
still very dangerous, but predictable also.  There had even been rare
words spoken around camp lately of hope – fantasies that things might one
day go back to normal.  Garfield was not so childish to believe such
notions.  There was no coming back from what the world had become. 
It was irreversible.  
The best any of us can hope for is to
survive.  The time of feeding ducks in the park with ice cream in hand has
slithered from our grasp forever.  There are no more children’s parties,
no more fireworks, no school holidays or trips to Disney.  It’s
gone. 
All of it.

A sharp yell from behind Garfield made him spin around
on his toecaps.  Immediately he yanked a long screwdriver from a pocket
inside his black woollen overcoat and held it out ready – ready to pierce
skull and brain.  So used to fighting was Garfield that the slightest bump
or thud could prompt him to uncoil like a spring. 
And now it’s time to
uncoil once again.

At the bottom of the hill, one of the foragers had
slipped in an oil puddle leaked from the chassis of an articulated lorry. 
Beneath the vehicle’s rusted axels crawled a rotting corpse.  The dead man
held a firm grip on the forager’s ankle and was clambering towards him through
the oil slick. 

Garfield reached the bottom of the hill in a flash;
with a speed he’d never possessed in his previously sedentary life as
mechanic.  He leapt towards the struggling forager and wasted not a single
second in driving his long screwdriver into the side of the dead man’s skull,
piercing the temple with a loud
crack
! 

Like the sound my old ma used to make taking apart a
crab.
 

The corpse stopped its attack.  The screwdriver
stuck out of its head like a lever.  The frightened forager lay frozen
beneath the corpse, panting and moaning for help.  Garfield kicked the
dead body away and helped the forager to his feet.  His name was Marty, a
nineteen year old lad who had survived the early days of the infection by
locking himself inside the pet shop in which he worked and living off the
animal feed – then eventually the animals themselves.  He often
spoke with a smile on his face about how good chinchilla meat was compared to
chipmunk.  Despite the grizzly admission, Marty was a good lad, friendly
and helpful. 

“Thanks, Garfield,” Marty gushed.  “I thought I
was a goner.”

Garfield smiled.  “You’re welcome.”  Then he
pulled a claw hammer from a hidden compartment up his sleeve and smashed it
into the top of Marty’s skull.  The other foragers backed away, staring at
Garfield like he was a murderous lunatic.  Perhaps he was. 
Is
anybody sane anymore?

Garfield wiped the bloody hammer on his black woollen
overcoat, adding to the darker patches already staining the fabric, and then
replaced it up his sleeve.  He shrugged his shoulders at the other
foragers and pointed to Marty’s body.  “I did him a kindness.”

The other foragers glanced down at Marty’s ankle and
saw the wound there, clear as day: a bright red gash in the shape of a human
mouth.  The corpse beneath the lorry had doomed Marty the moment its
mouldy teeth had broken skin.  Garfield had done nothing but put an animal
out of its misery. 

The other foragers sighed, but they nodded also. 
Each understood the way of things.  A bitten man was a dead man. 
Nobody wanted to become a zombie
.

“Come on,” said Garfield.  “Let’s get back to
camp.  We’re going to have to plan a new route for next time. 
There’s nothing left around here anymore.” 
Probably nothing left
anywhere.
 

The men shuffled their feet, picked up their
backpacks, and got moving.  Garfield had just turned away when a banging
inside the articulated lorry’s container alerted him.  The foragers turned
back around, various makeshift weapons instantly at the ready.  They were
well trained for battle. 

Garfield pulled a small hand axe from his belt and
joined them.

The banging continued, weak but
obvious.

“It’s just one of
them,”
said Kirk.  “We
should just leave.”

Garfield knew it was stupid, but his mind kept turning
to the half-dozen men and women forever trapped inside the horse paddock half a
mile away.  The thought of a creature, which had once been human, trapped
inside a rusty container for all eternity, brought him a peculiar
sadness.  “Open the doors,” he grunted.  “There might be supplies
inside.  If there’s a dead man, it means nobody has checked it out
recently.  We can’t afford to ignore what supplies we might find.”

The foragers sighed.  As experienced as they all
were with handling the dead, nobody ever took it for granted.  They had
just lost a man to a bite, and they knew it could happen again to any of them
in an instant.  A dead man’s jaws closed fast, and taking unnecessary
risks made the possibility of being bitten far greater.  Garfield stood
firm in his decision, though.

Kirk crept around to the back of the container and
took a firm grip on the release handle.  The other foragers readied their
weapons and waited. 

Garfield stood in front of the container’s doors with
his axe ready.  “Soon as the doors are open,” he told them.  “Keep
back.  If it’s anything we can’t handle, make back for camp
immediately.  If I’m still intact I’ll come with you.”

Kirk nodded, then shoved the steel lever down and
pried open the locking bar.  He yanked open the left-side door.

Creeeeeak
!

Garfield stared into the black rectangle of
darkness.  The banging inside the container had stopped, replaced by a
delicate shuffling.  He grabbed a hold of the right-side door, which was
still closed, and began edging it open.  Soon both doors were hanging wide
and the black rectangle of darkness grew in size.

The shuffling continued.

Garfield glanced at the foragers.  All of them
stood ready, primed to attack, but so far there was nothing to alert them other
than the shuffling noise. 
At least it sounds like there’s only one
dead man inside.  But it only takes one to end you.

Garfield placed a gloved hand onto the lip of the open
container and heaved himself up onto one knee with one leg still hanging down,
ready to carry him backwards at the first sign of danger.  Once it was
clear that nothing was going to lunge at him, Garfield gained some confidence
and pulled himself fully up inside the container. 
Into the darkness I
fade.  May my light lead me
through.

It was a quote Garfield often told himself.  He’d
first seen it almost a year ago, written in blood on pavement outside a
mosque.  He often wondered who had written it and what had become of them
– and whether or not the blood had been their own or someone
else’s. 
I’ll never learn the answer.
 

As Garfield entered the shadows of the container, his
eyes began to adjust and the blackness turned to grey.  The container was
almost bare, save for a few loading pallets stacked towards the back.  The
contents towered up towards the ceiling and blocked any view of what lay behind
them.  Something moved ahead of him, a brief shift of the dusty air.
Garfield took a slow step forward.  The thud of his heavy boots on steel
echoed around him. 

The shuffling resumed.

It knows I’m here.

Garfield took another step, his axe out in front of
him ready to split open a skull.  His eyes gazed up…down…
.up
…down….

Can never tell where they’re going to come at
you.  Just as many chomp on your ankles as those that face you head on.

One more step was all it took for Garfield to spot the
squirming body on the floor.  His eyes had now fully adjusted to the dim
light and he could see clearly.  The
discovery
was pretty much what he’d expected.  The dead man wriggled between two
pallets stacked high with toilet paper rolls.  A grubby brown blanket
covered him and two steel crutches lay on the floor nearby. 
A
blanket?  Crutches?  Guy must have been injured; came in here to die
in peace.

Garfield raised his axe, ready to bring it down on the
man’s exposed head.  It was hard to tell in the dim light, but the zombie
may have had a rusty crop of ginger hair matching the colour of Garfield’s
own.  That was a strange thing.  Most of the dead had nothing left on
their heads but dirty grey clumps laced with maggots. 
Being trapped in
here must have kept him in better shape than being out in the open.  Maybe
he died recently.

Garfield placed his boot on the dead man’s chest and
squeezed the shaft of his axe.  “I never asked for this,” he whispered,
“and I’m sure you didn’t either.”

Garfield swung his axe.

The zombie reached up a hand.  “Please.”

“Shit!”  Garfield managed to divert his swing at
the last moment.  The axe buried itself in a roll of toilet paper and
ensnared itself in the plastic wrapping that secured the rolls to the
pallet.  “Jesus Christ!  You’re alive.”

The man was weak, skinny, and in obvious pain, yet he
was undoubtedly alive; though the stink of him was as bad as any dead
man.  Garfield could see sweat on his forehead and upper lip.

“You’re bitten.”

The man managed to shake his head.  “No. 
No…”

Garfield snorted.  “You’re not bitten?  You
sure about that, because you don’t look too perky.”

“I…I’m sure.”

Garfield felt he was being lied to; and that made him
angry.  He flicked aside the man’s blanket with his steel toecap and was
vindicated by the blood that caked his t-shirt.  “Not bitten, huh? 
Looks to me like something took a good chunk out of you.”