Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel (58 page)

“I am not like this,” he moaned. “It déjà vu all again.”

“Déjà vu means all over again,” Raj corrected him.

“Is what I say. We going to get shot.”

“You could have stayed back in the flat,” Raj said.

“And how I stay alive alone?” Tom asked him bitterly.

Wondering why they had not yet been fired upon, Tom peered through the downpour to see that there were no guards manning the scaffold tower that looked out in this direction from behind the wall. Though he should have been happy about that, it was in fact extremely disconcerting. What could cause the soldiers inside the compound to allow such a blatant gap in their defences?

Eventually
, the tall corrugated iron sheets stood just ahead of them. The razor wire at their base stretched off in both directions on either side. The trenches that had been dug just thirty feet forward of the metal panels had now been filled, the soft dirt standing slightly proud against the surrounding fields.

Though the lay of the land had concealed it, even from up in the tower, they now saw that the compound stood abreast the M1 motorway, using the road rather than the fields as a firm base for the camp.
Standing amid the six lanes were several helicopters and a couple of fixed wing aircrafts of various kinds. The military had evidently been using the road as a runway.

The rain seemed to become more insistent, soaking the dirt and making it difficult to stand, even while remaining stationary. With arms outstretched for balance, the group trod over the disturbed earth of the trenches.
On the other side, Tom and Raj raised the ladder over the coils of wire and leant it against the wall.

Still crossing the trench, Amy felt something far harder than the soil under foot. Stopping and lifting her leg, she saw, amid her own shoe print in the dirt, a man’s face all but buried. The chubby little woman screamed. As she did, a hand thrust up from the ground beside her and gasped tightly at her ankle, dragging her off balance. Pulling himself against the woman, the buried man rose up from the earth and fell upon her.

“It’s a grave,” Raj yelled in belated warning.

Over the past week, many people had tried to approach the compound. With their warnings to stay away having fall
en on deaf ears, the soldiers had killed them all. When the bodies had started to rot, they had piled them in the trenches and covered them over. Unfortunately, not all of those buried here were as dead as the soldiers had thought.

The undead cadaver pulled itself up Amy’s chest, the soft full form of her breasts looking like an attractive meal. The woman continued to scream, her arms and legs waving without coordination. She was so terrified that she couldn’t even begin to try
to protect herself.

Before the cannibal corpse was able to take his first bite however, Digby bit deep into his neck and dragged him away. The crazed man’s teeth continued to gnash feverishly, longing to sink them into the female’s fatty body, while the dog savaged him mercilessly.

Amy sobbed, not with relief, but in the realisation that her faithful friend must now be infected, his teeth and jowls smeared with blood.

“No, Digby,” she begged.

Raj ran at Digby on all fours, so hard and fast that the dog was knocked onto his back before he even knew what had hit him. He could not afford to let the powerful animal turn. With the dog pinned beneath him, he bit into his furry neck, tasting his hot blood. The dog yelled in a far higher pitch than the recovered zombie would have thought possible for such a large breed.

“Get off him,” Amy screamed.

She struggled hastily to get to her feet in the slippery dirt. When she finally managed it, she ran at Raj and kicked him in the face.

The Indian man sprang back from atop the dog and stood upright. As he composed himself and wiped the
dirt from his clothes, he once again appeared human, rather than the rabid animal he had briefly become.

Dropping to her knees, Amy lifted the dog’s head into her lap and hugged him. Blood clung to the thick fur of his neck.

“Why the hell did you do that?” she wailed furiously.

“I wasn’t attempting to kill him,” Raj replied with a calmness that only served to make Amy even angrier. “He got himself infected. I was trying to help.”

Digby lifted his head and licked Amy’s face before getting back to his feet. Shaking with relief, the woman realised that the wound to his neck wasn’t bad then.

“Help him? Help him!”
she continued to yell. “How is biting his throat out supposed to help him?”

“As I said, my intention was not to bite his throat out, as you put it,” Raj told
her. “If I had wanted to do that, he would already be dead. It’s only a hunch and a slim possibility, I admit, but maybe my amoeboid cells will do a better job at transforming his genetic coding than those of the animated corpse he bit.”

Amy saw his reasoning
, but she still glowered at the man, as she walked over to the wall with Digby at her side.

“Just think ho
w much overtime I’m going to get for all this,” Muz mumbled.

Raj looked at him with pity. By the time the doctor had awoken from his fight with the giant amoeba, figured out that the police officer was infected and checked him over, the cellular spread within him had already been too advanced for biting him to have any possible beneficial effect.

Tom, despite his reticence, was the first to scale the ladder, constantly looking up at the tower, expecting a soldier to appear and aim his rifle at him. It didn’t happen.

At the top, he cautiously lifted his head over the iron panels and looked down into the compound. Much of his view of what lay within was obscured by a large green tent standing only a few feet from the wall. He could hear
, over the chugging of a nearby generator, the sounds of people though, barking orders and running around. He wasn’t able to make out anything in particular of what was being said, but everyone sounded agitated.

A stack of wooden crates piled up against the panels
on the other side meant he was able to climb over easily. Standing atop the boxes, he leant back over the wall and gave a thumbs-up to the rest of the survivors, who were stood looking up at him with apprehension.

Muz and Sam were next up the ladder.

“May I?” Raj asked Amy, gesturing to Digby.

“Just don’t hurt him,”
the woman said warily.

Raj bent and putting an arm around the dog’s chest, scooped him up with little effort. The dog began to growl.

“It’s okay,” Amy told him softly, rubbing behind his ear.

Carrying the ten stone lump of a dog, Raj then scaled the ladder with ease and passed Digby over to the men on the other side, before deftly leaping over the top of the wall.

In last place, Amy climbed up. When she reached the top, she held onto the corrugated sheets for support and the sharp edges of the metal dug into her burns, causing her to hiss in pain. She struggled to clamber over and Raj had to help, catching the majority of her weight, as she flopped without control onto him. She felt a hot wet trickle down her back and knew her exertions must have reopened her bullet wound.

Together
, the weary survivors clambered down the crates, jumped into the mud, and looked out between the edge of the tent and a stack of drums.

There were many other tents, laid out in orderly rows. The numerous soldiers that were running around in various directions appeared just as worn and tired as Muz’
s motley band. Full of haste, some ran into each other and shouted angrily in passing. One man was almost decapitated by the prongs of a forklift truck, as he ran out blindly into its path from behind a tent.

There were various uniforms to be seen, English Marines in green berets, USMC soldiers
wearing what looked like camouflage baseball caps, a few blue United Nations helmets, and some others that none of the hidden observers recognised.

“Okay, this is it,” Muz said, the adrenaline being released into his bloodstream allowing him to pull his thoughts together. “Nobody do or say anything stupid.”

With that, he stepped out from behind the tent onto the crisscross rubber matting that had been laid out as flooring to keep the mud under control. The others were right behind him. They couldn’t have taken more than four or five steps before they were spotted.

A nearby soldier did a sw
ift double take as he ran by, struggling to carry four metal ammo boxes. Eyes widening, the young man came to a stop and dropped the boxes, unslinging his rifle and pointing it at the group.

“H… hey,” he shouted nervously over his shoulder at anyone who might hear.

“It’s okay,” Muz said, putting up his hands.

“Hey,” the jittery man shouted even louder. “We’ve got a problem.”

Others in the camp heard him then, and it was only a few moments more before the survivors were converged upon and found themselves staring down the barrels of in excess of thirty rifles.

“What’s going on?” a Marine Sergeant with a massive chest and thick arms demanded to know, as he came sprinting over.

“Please,” Muz said. “We had to get out of there. We’ve lost so many people.”

The Sergeant looked him up and down, taking in the filthy police stab vest and kit belt he was still wearing.

“How the hell did you manage to get in here?” he asked aggressively.

The muscular man then looked up the scaffolding of the south facing watch tower.

“Who in the name of fuck is meant to be manning that friggin’ post?” he yelled at the soldiers around him.

“Ferguson, Sarge’,” someone piped up.

“If he’s sleeping on watch, I will personally fuck him with his own bayonet,” the Sergeant snarled. “Someone get up there.”

A soldier broke away from those massing around the
survivors, ran to the base of the scaffolding and began to climb the ladders.

Seeing the commotion and the soldiers gathering by the edge of the camp, a man of rank came running over then. Having been making his way back to the accommodation tents from the showers, he was wearing nothing but a pair of combat trousers and a pair of flip-flops. The cold rain against his naked torso didn’t seem to bother him.

“What’s going on?” he barked.

The Sergeant turned and looked him up and down with a scowl. He didn’t know the man
, and from those three words alone, had already decided that he didn’t like his superior demeanour.

“I’m Colonel Grieves,” the officer said forcefully. “Now tell me what the problem is.”

So many top brass had been dropped in and lifted back out of the camp over the past few days that the Sergeant had given up trying to remember who everyone was.

The Colonel was a physically diminutive man, standing a good head shorter than the Sergeant at his side, but he more than compensated for his lack of height with his stern manner. Out of earshot, his troops referred to him as ‘The Chihuahua’ or ‘Napoleon’, because like so many small men, he had a ridiculously overbearing manner and a louder than necessary bark.

“Sorry, Sir,” the Sergeant said. “We’ve been infiltrated.”

“What? How?” Grieves snapped back.

“I’m just looking into that.”

The Colonel looked at each of the trespassers in turn, attempting to give them his most steely stare. They were standing instinctively huddled tightly together for mutual protection.

“Line them up,” Grieves shouted. “Let’s see exactly what we’ve got, shall we?”

The Sergeant barked at the survivors, relaying the little officer’s orders. Amy jumped in response and Digby barked back. The nervous civilians did as they were told, forming a line in front of the soldiers. Raj kept his head hung low, hiding his eyes, knowing that their light concentrating membranes would betray him. Sam, however, who had been concealing himself at the back of the huddle, could not so readily hide his strangeness.

“Jesus. Look at that,” a soldier cried out
in disgust on seeing him.

All the soldiers stepped back fearfully and trained their weapons on the deformed man.
He cringed in response and lifted his arms defensively, which only served to show off his weird child’s limb.

Just then, there came a scream from almost directly above. Everyone looked up to see the soldier who had been sent up the scaffolding come tumbling over the edge of the wooden boards, interlocked in  a wrestle with another man.

They hit the rubber matting and wet mud with a hard slap, bouncing back into the air a couple of feet before coming to rest. One of the two men lay unmoving, probably killed outright by the fall. The other however, appeared completely unfazed and began feeding on the first, tearing hungrily into his neck.

“Fergusson’s infected,” someone shouted.

“Shit, not another one,” the Sergeant said wearily, shaking his head. He’d lost too many men to those rats with wings. “Do them both,” he ordered sadly.

The various soldiers opened fire on the two men sprawled in the dirt, riddling them both full of bullets. Amy wanted to cover her ears
, but had to hold onto Digby’s collar with both hands, as he went berserk. Only when both heads had been completely reduced to mush, did the volley stop. The soldiers’ attentions then quickly turned back to the survivors, Sam in particular.