Bay of the Dead (14 page)

'Love you too,' he said. 'Good luck.'

Gwen took another glance at the zombies, all of which still seemed to be focused on the café, then slipped around the corner like a shadow and ran in a half-crouch to the Citroën she had pointed out to Rhys. As soon as she had dropped out of sight behind the vehicle, Rhys followed her. Behind him there was another crash of glass, another scream. Then he heard a man shout, 'Get back!' Next second he was dropping down on to his haunches beside Gwen.

'They're getting in,' she said. 'We'll have to hurry.' She pointed to her left. 'Bus shelter next, OK? Same procedure as before.'

Again, Rhys gave a brief nod, and Gwen was off, silent and fleet-footed. In this way, moving swiftly but carefully from one bit of cover to the next, they circled around the thirty or so zombies clustered around the front of the café, and round to the alley at the back of the row of shops.

The alley was narrow, little more than a badly lit aisle, barely wide enough for a single car. It was flanked on both sides by the back entrances to parallel rows of retail units. Here were the emergency exits, the tradesmen's entrances, the discarded boxes and the industrial steel bins stinking of rubbish. It was an area of dark shadows and potential hiding places.

'We'll be like sitting ducks in here,' Rhys hissed, sneaking into the alley behind Gwen.

'The sooner we get this done the better, then,' Gwen replied.

Their shadows shrank and lengthened as they moved from one caged orange light to the next. Rhys gripped his golf club in both hands, head turning from left to right, heart constantly lurching as his overactive imagination showed him zombies everywhere – watching from windows, standing in alcoves, emerging from dark places where the light couldn't reach. In front of him, Gwen was swinging her gun from side to side, pointing it into every potential hiding place. They could still hear the commotion from the street – the wordless moans of the undead, the dull thumps and bangs as they tried to gain access to the café, the occasional shouts of the people inside. The sounds were faint at first, but became gradually louder as Gwen and Rhys crept further along the alley. This at least helped them to identify which building they were aiming for. From the back they all looked the same.

When they were a couple of metres from the arch in the high brick wall which led into the café's backyard, Gwen halted and raised a hand.

'What is it?' hissed Rhys.

'I thought I saw something move.'

'What sort of something?'

'I don't know. A shadow.' She smiled nervously. 'Course, I may have imagined it.'

Pumpkin-orange light bathed the wall, but this only made the darkness beyond the arch all the more impenetrable. Indeed, the blackness was so dense that it seemed almost solid. Gwen and Rhys stood motionless on the far side of the alley for a good thirty seconds, both of them holding their breath, their eyes trained on the narrow black entrance. They half-expected something to emerge from it, but nothing did. At last Gwen gestured with her gun and whispered, 'I'm going in.'

She crossed the alley, flattened her back against the wall and edged towards the arch, leading with her gun. Rhys watched, licking his dry lips to moisten them. Gwen was almost at the gap when a white hand snaked over the wall above her and grabbed a fistful of her thick black hair.

She yelled in pain, involuntarily rising onto her toes as the hand tightened into a fist and yanked upwards. Rhys ran across the alley, raised the club and brought it smashing down on the bony wrist. To his surprise there was a howl of pain from the other side of the wall and the hand loosened its grip, allowing Gwen to tear herself free. Without thinking, Rhys ran through the gap in the wall, and into the darkness of the café's backyard, drawing back the golf club for another blow.

The instant he moved out of the light, he knew he'd made a mistake. He blinked wildly, his head jerking as he looked around, but he might as well have been wearing a blindfold. He didn't need to hear Gwen hissing his name in fear and exasperation to know how stupid he'd been. He decided to focus on the patch of blackness where he guessed the owner of the hand must be, and eventually his vision cleared enough for him to be able to make out the long white face of a man cowering in the corner of the yard.

The man was keening like an animal, cradling his injured wrist. In the darkness he resembled a giant spindly insect, all bony knees and elbows. Rhys could smell rotting food from the bins, and now that he was in the yard he realised that someone was banging frantically on what sounded like a metal door over to his left. He sensed movement behind him, and whirled round, heart racing. But it was only Gwen, running across to the place where the thumping was coming from.

'Rhys,' she shouted, 'help me move these bins.'

Rhys peered across the yard at her shadowy figure, and saw what she was doing. She was struggling to move one of two stainless-steel bins, both of which were taller than she was, from in front of a metal fire door. He ran across to help, but as soon as he put his weight behind the bin and started to push, the spindly man struggled to his feet. 'No!' he cried. 'You mustn't!'

Gwen glanced over at the man. 'There's people trapped in there,' she said. 'Can't you hear them? We've got to get them out.'

Upright now, the man stumbled towards them, stretching out his uninjured hand. With his long black coat and thin white face, he looked like a phantom, Rhys thought; like Jacob Marley or something.

'If you let them out, they'll get us,' the spindly man wailed. 'Those dead things. They'll find out we're here.'

Teeth clenched, still struggling with the bin, Gwen muttered, 'If we don't get these people out, those dead things will get
them
.'

The man was shaking his head in frustration. Long stringy hair flapped around his face like rat's tails. 'But don't you see?' he whined in frustration. 'That's what's
meant
to happen. If the dead things get
them
, they won't get
us
. That's my
plan
.'

Rhys scowled, suddenly realising what the man was saying. 'You mean
you
put these bins here? To stop these people getting out?'

The man tilted his head to one side. Rhys wasn't sure in the gloom, but he thought the man was baring his teeth in a wheedling smile.

'Survival of the fittest,' he whined. 'Law of the jungle. Dog eat dog.'

Gwen's voice was low and dangerous. Rhys glanced at her and realised she was pointing her gun at the man. 'You sit down and shut up,' she muttered, 'or I swear to God I'll shoot you here and now.'

For a moment the man remained where he was, hand still outstretched, as though stunned into immobility. Then his arm dropped limply to his side and he crawled away into the corner, curling himself into a ball like a wounded animal.

Panting and sweating, Gwen and Rhys renewed their struggle with the bins. To Rhys it seemed to take an eternity to shift each one even a few centimetres. Throughout that time the pounding on the blocked door became increasingly frantic. A girl, clearly close to hysteria, screamed, 'Oh my God, Martin, get it open!
Get it open!
'

They heard a man snap back at her, his own fear making him angry. 'I'm bloody trying, aren't I? It's locked or jammed or something.'

Still heaving at the bins, Gwen glanced at Rhys, anguish in her eyes, and paused just long enough to shout, 'You in there, listen to me. There's something blocking the door, but we'll have you out in a minute. Try and stay calm.'

'We haven't
got
a minute,' the man yelled back, as if it was Gwen's fault.

'Oh God, hurry up,
hurry up!
' the girl screamed.

Gwen and Rhys attacked the bins with fresh impetus, Gwen's own yells of frustration and rage mingling with the terrified pleas of the girl. Agonisingly slowly, they managed to shift one of the bins far enough away from the door and turned their attention to the second. They had moved it no more than a couple of centimetres, their hands slithering and squeaking on the cold, wet metal, when the girl suddenly screeched, '
Oh God, they're here!
'

'
Let us out! Let us out!
' bellowed the man. His voice was raw and ragged, an animal-like scream of absolute, primal terror. There was a new and frenzied flurry of blows and kicks to the door as sheer panic overwhelmed the couple trapped inside the building. The door banged open, forcing Gwen to jump back. But it opened only a couple of centimetres before hitting the side of the second bin with a resounding clang.

Gwen looked down and saw fingers curling around the door frame as if in the desperate hope of dragging the rest of the body through the impossibly narrow gap. She hurled herself at the bin again, sobbing and swearing with frustration, straining every sinew, willing the damn thing to move. But, even with Rhys's help, the bin seemed to be stuck, its castors embedded in the muddy, cracked concrete of the yard.

And then in a broken, tearful voice, a voice too full of terror to raise itself to little more than a wheezing croak, they heard the girl say, 'Oh God, no. . . please, no. . .'

Next moment the
real
screaming began. High and terrible. Screams of unimaginable, unendurable agony. Rhys reeled away, eyes squeezed shut, hands clamped to his ears, his only instinct being to blot out the unbearable sounds from the other side of the door.

Gwen roared, '
No!
' and flew at the bin as if it was an opponent, punching and pounding, tears streaming down her face, teeth bared and eyes wild. When she felt a hand on her arm, she lashed out, missing Rhys's nose by a whisker. His face was bleach-white and slack with shock, his eyes haunted.

'Come on, love,' he said softly. 'Come on, it's over.'

She gaped at him in disbelief and despair, and then she fell into his arms, sobbing and shaking. She had seen death before, of course, many times, but this was so visceral and immediate, so full of terror and agony, that it made her think of Tosh and Owen all over again, made her think of Tosh's life ebbing away right in front of her, and of how utterly useless she had felt, unable to do a thing to prevent it happening.

The screaming finally stopped, and all Gwen and Rhys could hear from inside the building now were the sounds of feeding and the idiot moans of the zombies.

The door banged open and shut, open and shut against the bin. Rotting, worm-like fingers wriggled and writhed in the gap. Seeing them, Gwen bared her teeth in a snarl, broke away from Rhys's embrace and hurled herself at the door. It slammed into place like a guillotine, severing a dozen or so zombie fingers, which pattered to the ground like Saturday night chips dropped by a drunk.

It was a hollow victory. The creatures in there felt no pain, no fear. She whirled away – and her eyes fell on the spindly old man squatting in the corner of the yard, trying to melt into the shadows. Sudden rage overwhelmed her, and she stalked across the yard, drawing her gun, deaf to Rhys's attempts to placate her.

She walked right up to the man and pointed the gun at his face. He whimpered, raising his arms as a flimsy shield.

'You murdered those people,' she muttered, her voice low and wavering, full of revulsion. 'They died in agony because of you. I ought to blow your brains out.'

'Please,' the man whispered, 'please.'

'Gwen,' said Rhys calmly, 'put the gun away. You don't really want to do this. You'd never live with yourself if you pulled that trigger.'

'Oh, I
do
want to do it,' Gwen said. 'Believe me, I do.' Five seconds passed. Then she put the gun away. 'But I'm not going to,' she said. 'Because you're not worth the anguish that Rhys will go through, trying to come to terms with a wife who can shoot someone in cold blood.'

She shuddered, as though shaking off something cold and clammy, and then she said, 'Let's go, Rhys.'

He nodded, slipping an arm around her shoulder as they walked towards the gap in the wall.

Behind them the old man wailed, 'What about me?'

Gwen looked about to retort, but Rhys held up a hand. He walked back to the old man.

'If I were you, mate,' he said acidly, 'I'd find somewhere to hide, and I'd pray that lot in there don't sniff you out. I won't say good luck because I don't wish you any.'

Without another word he turned and walked away.

TEN

Jack sat up with a cry on his lips, and immediately began gulping at the air, with the intention of filling his lungs, re-oxygenating his blood.

He still didn't really understand the physical mechanics of his condition. What
seemed
to happen was that his just-deceased body was held in stasis while time ran backwards over it, repairing wounds and mending broken bones.

Then he became aware that his throat was hurting –
really
stinging, in fact – and that he had the mother of all headaches.
That
wasn't supposed to happen. He brought a hand up to his throat, and found some partly scabbed-over gouges there, and some
very
painful bruising. He cried out as his fingers prodded the tender areas, then sank back onto the bed, feeling dizzy. He realised straight away what had happened. He hadn't died. That zombie kid had opened his throat, and he had lost some blood, but the injuries hadn't been fatal. The long and the short of it was, Jack had simply slipped and knocked himself out.