Swarm (Book 3) (3 page)

The more she walked the stronger the metallic taste in her mouth grew. Laura was sure that she was going to faint again. But it couldn’t happen here. She took deep breaths. Stacy felt so heavy now.

The trees began to thin and she came to the end of the woods. She was able to see the sky fully now, a grey void that smothered everything. The transition from being in cover to having an open horizon felt wrong. Laura knew she could be seen from every direction.

Ahead, separated from her by a long stretch of grass, were more trees. She decided to cross the open field to enter them. Staying out of plain sight was her best chance. Laura began to stride forwards.

The air was thick and heavy. It was as if the landscape were holding its breath. Laura peered into the gloominess of the trees she was heading towards. She scanned the area around her. To her right were more empty fields and a descending hillside. To her left, a steep upwards slope. At the top, small figures began to appear, silhouetted against the sky. A chill passed through her.

She walked faster, sure that if she ran they would spot her. Her gaze flicked to the trees then back to them. The crowd on the hillside changed. Their shape altered. Some of them began to move down the slope like a slowly shifting wave. She broke into a run, coming halfway across the field and looking at them again. They were
running too.

Laura entered the trees, weaving in and out, her feet pounding uneven ground. Her body cried out for a hiding place. Stacy’s weight was pulling her down. It was too much. Laura threw the bag off and kept running. Her gaze swung around wildly, searching for some branch, some low reaching tree that she could scale.

The first groans reached her ears.

“Fuck,” she whispered.

She approached the closest one, jumping and wrapping herself around the trunk. Her body didn’t have it. She slipped down, scrapping her forearms against rough bark and falling onto her back. Getting back up, she ran once more. Her mind surrendered to something deeper, something primal. A current that beat against her chest and led her blindly.

Their noises grew around her. A slope came into view and instantly became all she had. She came to it, her hands digging into the loose soil, her feet struggling for grip.

She came to the top and found herself on a road. She saw a van to her right. The driver’s door was open. Hope flooded her. Her legs stabbed down at the tarmac, pushing her towards the red metal – bright and vivid against the trees and rock.

It grew in her vision. Each breath pulled her closer. Each step against the hard tarmac rushed her ever nearer. Until finally everything came together. And she was there.

Now she saw him.

A brown haired man sat in the passenger seat, turning his pale face to look at her: “HURGGGGGGGGHHHH!”

Laura glanced back the way she had come. The first of her pursuers emerged from the trees and onto the road.

Her eyes moved back to the vehicle. The man was sluggish, his movements laboured. Laura made a choice. She got in, slamming the door behind her, blocking off the outside world. Her hands moved to his neck and she bashed his head against the dashboard. Again. Again. Again. Outside the windows began to fill with pale faces and thudding hands — like a rapturous applause.

The man began to retaliate. He clawed at Laura’s face. His cold fingers caught hold of her wrist. She turned her head away, but didn’t stop. Each smash of its skull shuddered through her hands.

It stuck out its arms and legs and braced itself. No longer could she move its head freely. It tried to stand up and Laura stood with it, trying to get momentum, trying to push it back. Their struggle caused them to topple. They fell into the passenger side foot well. Laura found herself on top of him. She quickly climbed up onto the seat. The low roof forced her to arch her back. She stamped down on its chest. It tried to grab her leg.

She stamped again, keeping her foot pressed against its rib cage, keeping it down – wedged under the glove box. Pale hands gripped her jeans. She grabbed the headrest for balance. It bent its neck forwards, trying to bring its teeth to her leg. But in this position she had control.

Still the crowd outside filled the air with thuds. Laura felt everything spinning, felt herself getting dizzy. The metallic taste numbed her mouth, as the zombie’s nails dug deeper into her leg.

She noticed the key in the ignition and turned it.

Chuchuchuchuchuchu

It wouldn’t start. Dread rose in her.

I’m on a slope.

She pushed the handbrake down. The vehicle began to roll backwards. The crowd outside walked alongside it, awkwardly shuffling down the road. Laura could see an approaching corner through the back windows. She looked over to the steering wheel. For now, she could only wait, with her foot pushing down on the zombie’s chest, with the metallic taste stinging her mouth. The van trundled on, reluctant, heavy. Laura urged the corner closer… closer… closer…

She twisted, reaching over with her left arm to grab the wheel. Her focus split between three things; her leg pushing down, her hand steering and the approaching bend. Slowly she guided it around. They came onto another straight stretch.

The road was steeper now. The vehicle gained speed. Outside, the crowd began running. Some of them tripped and fell. She looked behind. There was another corner. Approaching much quicker than the last.

Again she reached across to the wheel, curving the van around the bend sharply. Once more the road straightened. The van was getting too fast. Her head burnt with pain. Laura reached across, yanked on the handle of the passenger door and pushed it open. It swung out. She saw an open space between her and the road side, a vertical rock face, a blur of brown as the van moved parallel with it — faster and faster.

Laura pulled her leg from the zombie and moved over to the driver’s seat. She braced herself, getting ready to kick it out. It began to climb back up.

But the road changed direction. Laura saw the blur of brown rock draw close.

Smash!

She was slammed sideways. The passenger door had come off. The impact deflected the van towards a steep drop. The windscreen pointed skyward as the vehicle left the road. Trees rushed past. Laura was back in her seat. She pulled her seatbelt across her body, but the van shook her hands.

If… she… could… just… get… it… in…

The van hit something and jerked sideways. Everything blurred and span. The vehicle rolled. She closed her eyes, her body stuck in a tunnel of broken glass and noise. An inner voice told her to hold onto something but it was impossible.

Then it stopped. Everything was still. The van had landed on its wheels. Laura looked around; she couldn’t see the zombie anywhere. She lunged towards the open gap of the ripped away door. Her seat belt locked and yanked her back. She fumbled with it and climbed out.

There was grass underfoot and a sweeping field ahead of her. She reached back into vehicle and pulled the keys from the ignition, everything swayed and blurred. Her aching legs carried her forwards, but she slipped and hit the cold grass, before quickly picking herself back up. She came to the vehicle’s back doors, and pressed the button on the keys. There was a beep, and a low click from the locks. She entered and slammed the door behind her, closing herself in. She pressed the button again, then let herself fall onto her back. Her whole body seemed to bend around her lungs.

Everything tingled and stuttered. She blacked out.

Noise. It was the noise that came first. Before Laura tried to understand where she was or what had happened there was noise. As she rose to consciousness, the noise rose with her.

Metallic thuds, like rain upon the earth. Groans, absent of thought, of soul. She could not see. Her hands touched her body – it was still there. She stood up and it all came back. She was in a van. She had locked herself in.

And they were outside.

“Shut up!” Laura heard herself shout. She covered her ears. They never stopped. Never. “Shut up!”

Laura fought against the urge to go out there. She just wanted to fight them. She moved to the side of the van and slammed her fists against cold metal. With all her gut, with every last bit of hatred left in her, she screamed, as if to fill them all with it, as if to drown them.

Her hands continued their fury, beating up a storm of noise and pain. The pain became a limit for her to smash. Like the walls. Like the undead. Limits. All of them trying to box her in. All of them trying to crush her.

She fell back onto the floor, inhaled sharply and screamed again. Trying to fill her mind with it, to annihilate everything. Then she stopped, and now she could hear nothing. Her eyes closed. She became still.

…

Laura woke to the sound of howling wind and heavy rain. And some other thing, something she could not name. She understood it only as a kind of chaos. She tried to see it. She tried to hear it. No… it wasn’t sensory. It wasn’t anything. It was just there. And it dominated. It pushed down on her, smothering her. She tried to stop it, to think about something else. Anything else. It wouldn’t let her.

She began to move. If she could just get out of this darkness, if she could
see
something maybe it would all go away. She came to the back of the van and fumbled for the lock. The doors swung open, caught by a wind that shook her clothes, and rallied against her. Ahead stretched a cloudy, rain-swept field. Below her, on the ground, lay a sight that made her whole body freeze.

Bodies… packed tightly together. A pile of limbs and skin and clothes. She hit a mental block. None of this meant anything to her. The sensation of chaos weighed down her thoughts, stopping them from joining and making sense.

Slowly, as the rain pelted the scene around her, something became apparent. There was not one face in this heap, not one skull or clump of matted hair, no eyes fixed on some final sight. All these figures, lying on bloodstained grass, shared one feature. They didn’t have heads. Only stumps of dried blood and disfigured flesh.

Then her eyes came to a small detail. A nose. Lying on top of a green t-shirt – still attached to a flap of skin that she now realised had once been part of a cheek. Their heads weren’t missing. They were just no longer intact. Tentatively stepping out, she found that these bodies surrounded the vehicle. Still the feeling of chaos swarmed within.

I did this
.

She looked around for a while, and felt strangely calm. A sound came out of her. Strange at first, then familiar. Laughter. She laughed, and laughed, until she couldn’t breathe. She laughed in-between snatched lungfuls of air until finally it passed.

She stood for a while breathing heavily. Her body flushed with a cold sweat. Her legs began to carry her forward.

…

In Laura resided a feeling of profound smallness. It was the rain, the way it swept along the fields and lay a thousand cold deaths upon her skin. It was the wind, making treetops sway, numbing the skin of her face and filling her ears with its howl. It was the heaviness of her own mind, this
thing
in her head. She felt the loneliness of her path and the weight of the landscape. Walking became all she could do.

A clump of trees stood in the distance. She found herself slowly drifting towards them. After what seemed like forever, she came to them and they loomed tall above her, fracturing the world around her. The noise of the wind became a cloak, under which all other sounds could hide. Under which
anything could sneak up on her. She checked over her shoulder, yet saw nothing.

She came to a break in the landscape. Ahead of her, soil and undergrowth were replaced by rock. She could see that there was a large drop ahead. Approaching it, Laura was granted an expansive view — more trees, more earth.

Then she saw them.

Two zombies, looking up, reaching up. Above them, sitting on a branch, a guy. He was middle aged, with a huge beard and long hair. Her soul cried out for him. She searched for a plan, and began thinking about finding a vehicle, getting him to jump onto the roof. But there was no road, not even enough space between the trees.

She thought back to the zombies outside her van. The way she had somehow hurt them. And now she tried to do the same here. She concentrated on the two figures, a man and woman — both young looking and similarly dressed, giving the impression that they were once a couple.

She felt their physicality, their heaviness, their substance. Two dead weights. It wasn’t clear what she should do next, she just imagined it happening. She pictured their heads popping like balloons.

Eventually Laura gave up. There was nothing she could do. Slowly, she backed away. That guy would have to handle his own fate.

…

After a short walk she came to the edge of the wood, once more coming to a field. In the distance, a figure drifted through the gloomy landscape. A lone speck of movement. He was human, Laura could tell. She watched for a while. Maybe he could help her.

She left the wood and walked quickly through the long grass. It felt impulsive. Risky. But on she continued. Her heart beat harder as the distance between them shrank, until finally she was close enough to call to him.

“Hey!” she shouted.

He turned around and flinched slightly upon seeing her. Now he stared. And so did she. He took a few steps towards her. Laura remained still. He came closer.

“Hi…?” said the man finally. He was medium height, well-built, with a thin beard. His clothes looked clean — a grey hoodie and some jeans.

“Hi,” said Laura.

More silence. The man looked at the trees behind Laura.

“Are you with anyone?”

“No… no it’s just me,” said Laura.

“… How did you get here?”

“I crashed my car.”

“Where are you going?”

“Um… I don’t know. I was, like, trying to find food,” said Laura, thinking that telling the truth would take too long.

“Oh… so you’re… just walking?”

“Yeah…”

The man quickly glanced at her body, then back to her eyes.

“You okay?”

Laura looked down at her front, but saw nothing, “Yeah, why?”

“No it’s just… I mean… are you okay? You hurt or anything?”

“No… I’m… I’m okay.”

“Can I see?”

Laura realised what he was thinking.

“Yeah… okay,” she lifted up her shirt, showing him her front and back — already knowing what he would comment on.

“What’s that,” he said, pointing at the wound on her front.

“It happened before the zombies, before, you know, the first day,” said Laura. Somehow she didn’t feel like he would believe that it had come from a grenade blast.

“What is it?”

“I was in hospital… I was stabbed,” the story sounded stupid in her head.

“Really?”

“Yeah… I know… It was… crazy. And now this… er, look there’s zombies back there,” she gestured to the trees, “and all around, we need to keep moving.”

Zack’s eyes widened. “What, you just saw them?”

“Yeah just over there. They didn’t see me but…”

Zack held her eyes for a while, and then began to nod his head slightly, as if convincing himself of something.

“You promise you’re safe?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay… I’m going this way,” he gestured behind him.

“Can I come?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay…”

“…walk ahead of me, please.”

“Where are we going?”

“A house… My grandparents’.”

…

Zack wanted to help, and he wanted her to help him. But he had to be careful. She looked pale, and seemed sort of out of it.

It was possible, despite what his gut told him, it was possible that she could be infected. But it seemed unlikely because, as far as he knew, if a person was bitten, then they turned into a zombie straight away. He had no proof for this, but he believed it. Still, just to be safe, he decided to keep her talking. That way, if she started going through some sort of transformation at least it would be easier to notice.

“Do you know anything about what’s happening?” said Zack.

“No… do you?”

“No… but you didn’t see nothing? Or nothing on the news?”

“No.”

Zack tried to think of something else.

“There might be nothing at my Grandma’s house. It might be empty… or no food…”

“Okay, that’s fine,” she said.

“I’ve not been since the zombies.”

“It’s okay. I just need somewhere to go.”

“Yeah… but… you want to know my story? How I got here?”

“… Yeah.”

The truth ran through the back of Zack’s mind, how Borys and Alicja had kicked him out, unable to trust him after he had failed to share his medicine with their son, who was also epileptic. Zack had seen their son have a few fits during his time with them. But he knew enough about epilepsy to know that the kid wasn’t at much risk. Borys and Alicja clearly hadn’t felt the same way, finding out he was epileptic was enough for them to search him. Upon finding his medicine, their minds were made up. It was a personal betrayal. He had to go.

“I was with some people, I had an epileptic fit and they said that I was slowing them down.” Zack regretted the lie slightly. It was too close to the truth. He didn’t want her to know about his epilepsy. Why had he put that in there?

“Oh…that’s hor— nasty” said Laura, impassively. The lack of empathy in her voice made Zack feel uneasy.

“Yeah… so that’s how I ended up here.”

“Well…" said Laura, but she trailed off and went silent.

…

Eventually they came to a downwards slope, at the bottom of which they could see a farmhouse with two expensive looking cars parked outside. A loose gravel road ran away from the house, up a hill and out of view. There were no other buildings in sight.

“This is it,” said Zack quietly.

Laura was exhausted. Zack’s constant conversation, the walk and the chaos in her head had all bled into one, overwhelming ordeal — she just wanted it to be over. She just wanted to lie down. She suddenly realised that she had forgotten all about food. Her hunger had gone… totally gone. It had been so long. She knew her body was surely close to starvation. And yet, it didn’t feel like it.