Meadowside (10 page)

“How?” Kylie asked. She wanted to look at Tom, question him further, but her eyes were firmly rooted to the grisly scene at the escalator.

“Dunno. Whatever we can find, I guess. And we need to be quick too, because that’s not the only way up here we need to worry about.”

The man’s axe sliced down into a crazy’s back with a wet thud and a crunch of bones. He tugged on the axe handle, but it was stuck fast in the crazy’s ribcage, and all he succeeded in doing was to drag the crazy closer to him. The crazy reached out and grabbed the man’s ankle. The man cried out and raised a boot to stamp down on the crazy’s wrist. Bones splintered and the hand fell away. The man bent down and struggled to free his axe while the crazy snapped his teeth at the man’s feet. The man with the shovel stepped forward and kicked the crazy in the face, lashed out with the shovel, then bent down to help pull out the axe.

“Kylie, wait here,” Tom said.

Kylie finally managed to tear her eyes away from the carnage on the escalator and look at Tom. “What? Where are you going?”

“To see if I can find something to block the escalator off with. Here, take this.” He held out the golf club, and Kylie took it without thinking. She held it upright before her with both hands and turned back to the escalator. “I won’t be long,” Tom said, “but if any of those fuckers break through just leg it, don’t wait for me. Head for the toilets and lock yourself into a cubicle, I’ll come and find you when I can.”

Kylie watched Tom sprint for a nearby DIY shop, and suddenly felt very alone and very vulnerable. A golf club would be no defence against hordes of crazies. If the combined might of four men with sharp garden tools couldn’t hold them at bay what hope would she have on her own?

“Tom, wait,” she shouted, and ran after him.

The man with the garden rake spun toward Tom and cried out. He swung the rake over his shoulder like a very long baseball bat, ready to strike with vicious-looking sharp prongs facing Tom.

Tom skidded to a halt and raised his hands. “Wait, I’m normal,” he shouted.

The man stared at Tom wide eyed for several seconds, the rake still held in a striking pose, then relaxed. “Fucking hell,” he said, “I fair near shat meself then, kid. I thought you were one of them fucking zombies.”

“Nah mate, we’re cool. So’s she,” Tom added quickly when the man spun to face Kylie. “Look mate, we need to barricade the stairs, there’s too many of them fuckers coming up for you to deal with them all like that.”

The man frowned, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, probably. Good thinking. Oi Dave, here a minute.”

The man with the garden hoe looked around. “What?”

“I’m gonna go and get some shit to block the stairs off, you guys be okay while I’m gone?”

The man looked at the escalator, which was slick with blood and gore, acting as a lubricant to slow the crazies’ ascent. Unable to find purchase, they slipped and slid back down, crawling forward slowly like babies on a greased treadmill. Any that reached the top were hacked into pieces with the axe and then sent skidding back down with the shovel.

“Yeah, good idea. Don’t be too long though.”

Tom and Kylie headed for the DIY shop. The man with the rake followed them, and when he saw where they were going he told them to get some hammers and nails and meet him in the furniture shop a few doors down. When they got there he was already pushing a heavy oak dining table toward the exit.

“Give us a hand with this,” he said.

Tom gave Kylie the bag with the nails and hammers, and helped the man carry the table out of the shop and back to the escalator. They put it down and tipped it onto its side, with the legs facing away from the escalator. The man with the axe continued slashing at the crazies while the others pushed the table closer, then jumped out of the way just before it slid into place to block off the escalator. They held the table in place while Tom and Kylie nailed its legs to the wooden flooring, then ran back to the furniture shop.

When they returned, two carried another matching oak table between them, while the others pushed a trolley containing a large, heavy-looking stone garden statue. They hefted the statue over the table blocking off the escalator and dropped it onto the crazies below. Bones crunched, crazies hissed.

Kylie ran to the balcony and watched the statue tumble down the escalator, leaving behind a trail of mangled bodies sliding down after it. When she looked back, the men were lifting the new table over. She expected them to toss it down like they had with the statue, but instead they held it there, resting on the escalator’s handrails with two of its legs flush against the underside of the first table. She saw Tom hammering a nail into one of the legs and hurried to secure the other leg herself.

“We need to sort the other escalators out too,” Tom said after they finished. “And the stairs.” The man with the axe nodded, his eyes wide as if he hadn’t considered any of the other routes upstairs. “Then there’s the big shops that use both floors, I reckon it’d be easiest to just pull down the shutters on those.”

“Yeah. Yeah, good thinking, kid. You do the shutters, we’ll sort out the rest. There’s other groups fighting back, I’ll let them know too. Stay safe, yeah? You’d better get yourselves some better weapons though, that golf club of yours won’t be much use.” He looked down at his bloody axe and smiled. “You want something like this instead.”

Tom’s face paled, but he nodded nonetheless. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

After the men left, Tom and Kylie looked down over the balcony. Crazies were already starting to clamber over the statue lying at the foot of the escalator. Tom pulled Kylie away, back into the DIY shop.

“Go and get me a few rolls of gaffer tape,” he said when they walked through the door.

Tom wandered further into the shop while Kylie looked around for the adhesives aisle and located the gaffer tape on its shelves. She scooped up a handful of rolls and headed in the direction she had seen Tom go, toward the back of the shop. When she found him he was spinning a broom handle around like a giant cheerleader’s baton. On a workbench nearby lay a small woodcutter’s axe and a large carving knife with a twelve inch serrated blade.

“I found them,” Kylie said, putting the rolls of gaffer tape down on the workbench.

Tom nodded, then picked up the axe and held its short wooden handle overlapping the end of the broom handle. “Wrap some tape around these for me.”

Kylie picked up a roll of gaffer tape and removed its cellophane packaging with her teeth. She pulled out a long strip and wound it around the axe, securing it to the broom handle. Tom took the roll from her and finished the job, wrapping it around the full length of the axe’s handle several times until it was completely covered. He wiggled the axe’s blade, then seemingly satisfied it was securely attached he swished it through the air. He picked up the carving knife and held it in place at the opposite end of the broom handle while Kylie wrapped more gaffer tape around it.

Kylie looked at the finished weapon while Tom practiced with it. She had seen something very similar in the Armouries Museum in Leeds on a school trip, and guessed that was where Tom had got the idea from. She couldn’t remember what it was called, but it looked deadly.

“We need to make something for you too,” Tom said, putting the weapon down on the workbench.

Kylie nodded. She still didn’t know if she would be able to use anything like that herself, but she didn’t want to be left defenceless against the crazies. Tom handed her the golf club and she held it grimly while he grabbed another carving knife and taped it to the club’s head so that it stuck out like the grim reaper’s scythe.

Tom downloaded the Meadowside App on his phone, and Kylie peered over his shoulder while he consulted a list of shops displayed by category. He narrowed it down to major stores only, and brought up a map showing a suggested shopping route with each store marked with a red dot.

“We’re here,” he said, pointing at the DIY shop on the map, “so it looks like House of Fraser is the nearest. We’ll start there and work our way round.”

Kylie nodded and they left the shop together. She looked over the balcony as they passed the escalator, and saw crazies slipping and sliding on the blood-drenched steps. Others were climbing over them, just as they had done when the escalator was moving. She hoped the tables at the top would stop them from spilling over onto the upper floor, but that seemed unlikely. Once the top of the escalator was full of writhing bodies again they would be able to climb over easily. She pointed this out to Tom, but he told her not to worry about it.

“It’ll take them hours to get that high,” he said. “With a bit of luck they’ll just give up, but if they don’t we can throw another statue down at them.”

Kylie nodded, hoping it would be that easy.

When they reached House of Fraser Tom reached up with the broom handle and hooked the corner of the axe onto the rolled up shutters above the door. He pulled them down and Kylie crouched down to slide bolts into place to hold them secure.

“We need some padlocks for the bolts,” Kylie said.

Tom was reaching up, trying to hook the shutters over the display window. He shook his head without looking down. “They’ll be okay as they are, we need to stop people getting out, not getting in.”

“What if there’s someone trapped in there?”

Tom grunted as he pulled down the shutter. “They would have come out when they heard that copper.” He bent down and fastened one of the bolts while Kylie walked to the opposite side and fastened the other. “Don’t worry about anyone else, we’ve got enough to deal with ourselves.”

“But what about the people still trapped down there?”

Tom didn’t reply. He shook his head and looked down at his phone. “Come on, let’s go. The next one’s down this way.”

They had to cross an intersection to reach Marks and Spencer, where the upper floor branched off in three different directions. Tom checked the map on his phone and took them right. They passed a lift shaft, the lift itself stuck on the ground floor. The remains of eviscerated bodies lay strewn around its open door, the glass walls spattered with blood. But of the crazies who were responsible there was no sign until they rounded another corner into another section of the shopping centre.

They heard the shouting first, and it took Kylie a few seconds to locate where it was coming from. She looked down over the balcony, saw dozens of crazies crowded around the opening to a stairway. The shouting was coming from somewhere out of sight, but could only be from the stairway itself.

“Fuck,” Tom said, running toward the sound. “Come on.”

Kylie wanted to get away from there, but she couldn’t leave on her own, so she followed Tom with the golf club held grimly before her. They reached the stairway just as three men backed out of it. Kylie couldn’t be sure, they were unrecognisable under a thick coating of blood and gore, but from the garden tools they carried she assumed they were the same men they had met at the escalator. One had obviously fallen victim to the crazies since then, most likely on the stairway. She felt sick to her stomach at the thought of what had happened to him.

Two of the men held a garden rake horizontally between them across the stairway opening, trying to hold back the snarling crazies crowded up against it, while the other hacked and slashed with an axe. Tom rushed toward them, swinging his own axe over his shoulder. He swung it down into the crazies again and again, slicing through outstretched arms, shattering through skulls, showering himself in spurts of blood.

But the crazies were too strong, too numerous to be held back. Inch by inch, the men with the rake were pushed back as more crazies swarmed up the stairs and joined in the scrum. Tom and the other man were forced to step back so they could maintain their attack on the front line, but for every crazy that fell, more climbed over their bodies and took their place.

The gap between the stairway and the garden rake increased under the combined weight of the crazies, until it was big enough for a few to squeeze out either side. Tom jabbed one in the eye with the carving knife taped to the end of his broom handle, then ripped it out and swung the axe at the opposite end into the face of another. The man with the axe backed away toward Kylie, slashing wildly at the crazies approaching him.

One of the men with the rake stumbled and fell backwards. Crazies swarmed over him and he screamed pitifully while the other man wrenched the rake away and swung it at the legs of the crazies before him, bowling them over like snarling skittles. The fallen man stopped screaming. More crazies swarmed out of the stairway, blocking Kylie’s view of Tom. She could hear him shouting, telling her to get the fuck out of there, but she couldn’t see where he was. All she could see were the crazies heading toward her, the man slashing at them with his axe doing little to halt their progress.

The man with the rake screamed, surrounded by crazies who got too close for him to bat away. One bit into his cheek and shook its head like a dog until the flesh ripped free. The man fell to his knees, still screaming as others bit into his shoulders, neck and back. One chewed off the fingers of the hands he held before him in a futile attempt to protect himself. Another grabbed his hair and pulled him down. He continued screaming as they swarmed over him, fighting amongst themselves for prime position around his body, until he gave out a final gurgling cry and lay silent as they tore him apart.