Family Matters: Season 2 Book 3 (Killing the Dead 9) (13 page)

“Ha, bloody ha.”

I left him shaking his head and muttering to himself and walked back to the others. I watched Charlie carefully. Once she had shown me to where I would find the medicines I required, she could be then used as a distraction if needed.

She looked up at my approach and frowned at my grin. “We all set?” I asked.

“Sure thing dude, fence panels off and we’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

“Then let’s get going.”

Chapter 14 – Ryan

We moved carefully across the once well-tended lawn. Gregg moved alongside me, each step placed carefully to put it between the bones before sweeping out to the side to brush a path through them.

Behind us, Reece helped push his friend in her chair, their few belongings in the large duffel on her lap. They at least managed to keep their flow of constant muttering to an acceptable level. The canine kept pace with me and ignored the two former students as much as I tried to.

Gregg grimaced as he kicked aside a small skull and there was something behind his eyes when he looked at me, something I hadn’t seen in him before. Even at his lowest, he’d still held out hope that things would get better, but somehow, that field of bones was leeching that away from him.

I glanced back to the two youths and saw something similar reflected in their expressions. Distaste, despair and perhaps a little fear. It was interesting and something I’d need to discuss with Lily when I got back.
If she’s still alive,
a dark little part of my mind said.

“Did you bring your drone?” I asked and smiled a little at the way they all jumped at the sudden noise.

“I’ve got it dude,” Charlie said. “Not much use until I can recharge it though. Used most of its battery helping you two.”

“Shame, it would have been useful,” I said and turned back to watching where I was going, as well as the hospital.

The stench that seemed to follow and hover around the undead was something you never really got used to. There were times though when it faded into the background as just a part of the new world we lived in. It was there, noxious and ever present, noticed only when it was absent.

As we approached the hospital and the edge of the landing field, the stench began to grow to the point where we couldn’t ignore it. I glanced to Gregg and saw understanding on his face. For it to be that bad, it would have to be a hell of a lot of the undead.

I waved the others to stop and took a good look at where we were going. Behind us were the few houses and the road beyond while to the west were a few scattered administration buildings for the hospital and behind them the road that we were originally travelling along. It was likely that that road was packed with the undead but the buildings prevented them seeing us.

Straight ahead of us was the end of the hospital. The tarmac path that led from the landing pad with its helicopter carcass went all the way to building with a several metre long concrete bridge when the raised area of land we were on ended.

According to the signs, that bridge led to the A&E department and from what Charlie had said, the road beneath the bridge was used by the ambulances to reach the same place which put that one department on two levels.

The area of land we were on, ended rather abruptly with just a wooden fence to prevent us wandering over the edge and down the slope to the car park beyond. Before that fence were several mounds of tarpaulin-covered bodies, many of which had been spread across the grass.

There was little sound to speak of, other than the flap of the tarpaulin in the distance, moved by the light breeze and the cawing of the carrion birds. No moans, no screams of terror, nothing to say the undead were just out of sight.

“I can’t see any movement,” Gregg said and I glanced at him. He had one hand over his eyes to shade them as he scanned the side of the hospital. I followed his gaze and saw little to warrant attention. A few open windows, occasional smear across the glass.

“Something’s not right,” I said and had the others attention immediately. I smiled mirthlessly.

“What do you mean?” Gregg asked.

“There’s five storeys to that hospital,” I said. “That we can see, which means another two below this level.”

Three sets of eyes watched me intently and it seemed I had their full attention. Their fear was palpable.

“A hospital full of them, the car parks packed tight with them and mounds of corpses,” I continued. “Yet none here.”

“What’s your point dude?”

“My point, is that why eat half the bodies and scatter the bones then wander off?” I looked from one to the other, settling finally on Gregg. “We’ve seen ourselves that they only wander off if they have a reason to.”

“Then they had a reason?” Gregg said. “What though?”

“Look around,” I said, quiet and insistent. “There’s buildings all around us, this landing area is pretty much enclosed and the chances of anyone having come to this hospital since it began is ridiculously low. These bones were picked clean over time, likely over the winter.”

“What you trying to say?” Reece asked with a quaver in his voice.

“I’m trying to say that something used this area to feed over the winter and then when most of the bodies were gone, moved on. That’s not typical behaviour of the Shamblers, but it is of the Ferals.”

“Ferals? What the hell you on about dude?”

“Shit,” Gregg said and tightened his grip on the baseball bat as he turned his head this way and that, almost as if afraid something would jump out on him.

“But there’s still bodies stacked over there,” Reece pointed at the tarpaulin covered mounds and Greggs eyes widened as he finally realised what I had.

“This is their feeding area,” he said and I nodded. “Oh fuck, fuck me.”

“Feeding ground? What? They don’t have feeding grounds…” Charlie said.

“It looks like these Ferals do,” I said as I considered what I would need to do. “I’m going to have a look. Stay here.”

“I’m coming with,” Gregg said and I shrugged. The other two looked at each other but didn’t volunteer. I put them from my mind as I set off at a brisk walk after waving for the dog to remain where she was.

As we moved closer to the tarpaulin covered mounds, the stench if anything, grew greater and I noticed the ground was stained almost black with the fluids that had oozed from the bodies. I gestured for Gregg to duck low and did the same myself.

When the bodies had been first stacked there, many had been in body bags, then when those ran out, wrapped in cloth sheets. The top handful of layers of bodies didn’t even have that. Instead, they had just thrown a tarpaulin over the lot and tied it tight.

After the Ferals had begun dragging bodies from the pile to feed, they’d created a gap between the top of the pile and the tarpaulin. It wasn’t huge but it was enough. I caught a muttered curse from Gregg as he realised what I was about to do and I held back my laughter as I lifted the edge of the tarpaulin and ducked under.

With normal decomposition, within a couple of months, even in the winter, most of the flesh would have rotted away. In the six months since the world had ended, I would have imagined even the stacks of bodies at the hospital would be little more than bone.

Whatever had started this whole thing had killed those bodies though and while they might not have returned to life as undead, it had slowed the progression of decomposition much as it did for the zombies.

Which meant that as I crawled over the stacked bodies, my hands sank into putrefying flesh, releasing fresh odours to assault my senses. Gregg gagged behind me and I hoped he’d have the sense not to be noisily sick where we could be heard.

I had to move carefully in that dark space. I had no idea if the virus or whatever was still active, but if I pierced my skin on a jutting rib bone, if I scraped my skin on bone or teeth, I could become infected. So I moved at a snail's pace, each hand probing before gripping.

“Fuck!” Gregg whispered furiously as a rat squealed in the darkness. A low litany of curses came from him as I pulled myself forward and found the way blocked by the thick tarpaulin.

It was loose enough that I could grasp a handful of the material in one hand and push my combat knives blade through with the other. I cut horizontally to make a six-inch hole that I could see through.

Gregg crawled up beside me and leaned close, our heads almost touching as he peered through the hole I had made. His shadowed form moved as he turned to look at me and I didn’t need to see his expression to know he would be as puzzled as I was.

Hundreds of zombies stood, packed tightly together in the carpark before the hospital. Cars, ambulances, and trucks with military colouring were still parked there and scurrying around the zombies were Ferals.

Some crouched in small groups, others moving between them, they were fast and alternated between two legs and dropping to all fours. As we watched, zombies would separate from the larger group and one or more of the Ferals would dart over to growl and snap at it until it returned to the herd.

“Animals,” I said to Gregg in a voice little more than a whisper. “They’re acting like animals, keeping the herd together.”

“Why though?” he whispered back.

“Food perhaps,” I mused. “The zombies are slowly dying. The Ferals are getting stronger, faster and to do that they need energy which comes from food. With less living people around, they need to eat something.”

“All these dead bodies?” he said with a pat on the body he lay upon.

“They prefer live flesh and these corpses won’t last forever,” I said. “This isn’t a good sign.”

“No shit.”

“These bodies beneath us are proof the dead aren’t decaying as fast as they used to,” I said. “The undead down there, even the Shamblers are still up and about after what has probably been months without food. The Ferals are feeding of a sort and there’s nothing to say they need to consume food in the same way we do.”

“Wait, you mean that…”

“They’re going to be around for a long time? Yes,” I said. “That the Ferals are growing in number and will be a bigger threat than the Shamblers? Definitely.”

“Bugger,” he exhaled slowly and leaned closer to the gap. “How many are down there?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Fifty or more Ferals and that’s way too many, let’s head back.”

The crawl back was as slow and unpleasant as the first time and we climbed out from under the tarp, covered liberally in the fluids released from the bodies as they putrefy. Even after six months fighting the undead, being covered in all manner of disgusting bodily fluids, it was a new level of disgusting.

We wiped our hands as best we could on our already ruined clothing and jogged back across the field to where the others waited. I realised that we needed a change of plan. If it had just been Shamblers, then we could have managed. With the Ferals down there, it would be immeasurably more difficult.

“You look and smell like crap dude.” Charlie wrinkled her nose at our approach and I shrugged. Not much I could do about it. Even Jinx seemed to look at us with disgust which likely meant we smelt really bad.

“New plan,” I said without preamble and pointed at Reece. “You need to head back to the road.”

“Why?”

“We’re going to need a car,” I said.

“And what the hell am I supposed to do about that? Do I look like a mechanic?”

“Seriously dude, if those cars worked they’d have been used to get far from here.”

Gregg looked at me and gestured for me to let him speak. I settled for glaring at the two young idiots and contemplated how I could kill them instead.

“The roads are narrow,” Gregg explained to the others in a far less condescending tone than I would have. “Which means that when the first few cars stopped for whatever reason, the ones behind couldn’t go anywhere. They likely have petrol, power in their batteries and whatever else is needed to make them work.”

“A lot of those cars were abandoned because the zombies were getting close and not because they’d broken down.”

“Alright, I find a car and get it working, then what?” Reece said. His tone was more than a little petulant and I had to resist the urge to drive my knife into his chest.

I’d never once considered that having friends would ever have any benefits and the idea of missing people was inconceivable but, I missed Pat, Cass and of course Lily. I could trust them to do what was needed with minimal questions and to accomplish what they had to.

“If we manage to get what we need, we’ll need to move quickly to get back to the sanctuary,” I said. “That’s if it works out, if things go wrong and we have a great many undead chasing us, we don’t want to have to walk back.”

“Fair point,” Reece muttered. “I’ll do what I can but I could use help.”

“Don’t look at me dude,” Charlie said with a grin and a wink to me. “I need to help this guy find the drugs.”

“I’ll help clear the way to the hospital,” Gregg said to me. “Then if you think it’s okay, I’ll go back and help sort a car.”

“Fine,” I agreed with an absent-minded nod. While he would be useful in there, at least if it was just me and the girl, I had no need to try and keep her alive at the cost of my own life. “Let’s move.”

      
      
      
      
      
****

Gregg jogged back across the landing field, keeping as low as possible to avoid any possibility of notice. He didn’t look back, nor did I expect him to.

A low concrete wall, rough and weathered with the years, sat at either side of the bridge we were on and provided a place for me to crouch as I waited. Beneath us, a group of undead were being herded from one car park to another by a handful of Ferals.

Jinx lay on her belly beside me and Charlie did the best she could, almost bending double at the waist to stay below the level of the wall as we waited. The stench was such that I had long since given up trying to breathe through my nose, though that had the added disadvantage of leaving a disturbing taste on the tongue with every breath of fouled air. The dog didn’t seem to mind, her tongue hung from her mouth as she panted gently.