The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 4) (40 page)

“Fuck that hurt,” he groaned. “You’re a butcher, Stan.”

Without warning Stan snatched the bottle of surgical spirit from Mark and doused the wound. Kyle’s body arched as he let out a silent scream, unable to form any sound as the pain swept away his breath and his voice. His eyes bulged as the liquid flowed into the open wound and attacked the raw flesh. The pain was worse than the knife, and he kicked at the gravel beneath him while Taff and Bull continued to hold him down.

Stan began packing the hole in his shoulder, shoving in clumps of gauze and then holding a field dressing over the swollen, bloodied tissue. Kyle slumped back, the sting of the alcohol subsiding and being replaced by a sickly churning feeling in his stomach. He gasped, finally able to regain his breath.

“You could’ve warned me, you cunt,” he scowled. 

“Where’s the fun in that?” Taff sneered from beside him as he released his grip on Kyle’s arm. “We wanted to see you act like a pussy.”

As Stan finished up dressing the wound the veteran sat up and inspected his throbbing shoulder, still wincing from the dissipating sting. He rotated his arm, checking his mobility and grimacing. Bull was kneeling beside him and shining his light into his palm as he studied the shard of bone that had been removed from the gash. Kyle leaned across to take a closer look. It was roughly ten centimetres long, white, and with a few strands of sinew still clinging to it. Otherwise, it was impossible to tell what part of a body it had come from. It could have been from Sebastian, or Ron, or maybe even one of the dogs. They had all been caught in the centre of the blast and instantly torn to pieces and scattered in all directions.

Kyle’s face suddenly paled and his eyes grew wide. He realised that the bone could even have come from one of the infected. If they had made it to Sebastian’s position then they, too, would have suffered a similar fate, and it could have been a fragment of one of their bones that had whizzed through the tunnel and embedded itself into the shoulder of the veteran.

“I don’t think it’s from one of the pus-bags,” Stan reassured him, reading his thoughts and seeing the fright in his eyes.

“How do you know? It
could
be. It could’ve been…”

“Looks too fresh to me. The marrow is still pink.”

“Can the infection be passed on through something like that? If their blood and bites can kill you, then so can their bone and tissue, right?”

Kyle was becoming more worked up and on the verge of panic as he looked from the bone fragment to his shoulder alternately.

“Here,” Mark grunted, moving towards him with a syringe. He jabbed it into the opposite arm. “It’s penicillin and should help with any secondary infection.”

“Shit, shit.”

“Calm yourself down,” Stan ordered as the veteran became more agitated. He reached forward, grasping Kyle by the back of his neck and pulling him closer. “Take it easy, do you hear me? We have enough shit to deal with without you losing the plot. Keep an eye on your wound. If it gets any worse, then we’ll deal with it.”

“How? How the fuck will we deal…”

Stan pushed him back, unwilling to spend his time pampering to the veteran. Internally, he sympathised with the man, but at that moment they had other concerns. Personally, he felt confident that the bone belonged to someone or something that had been alive at the moment of its obliteration, but that was not enough to console Kyle. He looked to Taff and silently beckoned him across to him.

“What do you think?” Taff asked in a hushed voice while Bull kept the veteran under control and began trying to reassure him.

“Fuck knows. If it came from one of the infected, then he’s a dead man. We won’t know for a few hours, but in the meantime I don’t want him losing his head and spreading panic.”

“What should we do?”

Stan shrugged and looked beyond him to where Kyle was still sitting, talking in a frantic whisper with Bull.

“We still got some morphine left?”

“Yeah.”

“Dose him up,” Stan ordered.

Taff looked back at him in surprise.

“He’s hurt and won’t be much use to any of us for the time being. Dose him up, and put him to sleep. Throw him in the back of one of your vehicles, and keep an eye on the wound. If he’s infected, we’ll soon start to see the signs. If he isn’t, wake him up, and give him the good news. He’ll be the best of all of us if that’s the case.”

Taff grunted, a smile involuntarily stretching across his face. Stan had not meant his remarks to be amusing, but nevertheless Taff found a strange comedy in his commander’s cold and calculating form of reasoning.

“What about Charlie and the others?”

“We’ll just wait,” Stan replied, his attention being snatched away as he noticed that a small gaggle of people had congregated by the trees and away from the rest of the survivors.

“Burial,” Taff said, looking into the area where Stan was watching. “One of their guys has just snuffed it.”

“Keep trying the radio.”

Stan headed for the group of silhouettes that he could see moving about in the cover of the trees. As he drew nearer he could hear the sound of laboured breathing and the unmistakable crunch of a shovel being slammed into the dirt. He recognised Tina and Paul from their silhouettes and muted voices, but the rest were hidden within the gloomy shadows.

Tina noticed him first and stopped, holding the shovel out to one of the others for them to take over. She sighed, wiping the sweat from her forehead as she walked towards Stan.

“It’s Greg,” she informed him when she saw him eyeing the human shaped mound stretched out in the dirt behind her. She glanced back over her shoulder at the man’s body that was wrapped in a blanket. “We thought we should bury him while we had the chance.”

Stan nodded. It made no difference to him whether they buried their dead or not. He did not really know any of them, but he saw no harm in them affording a little dignity to their fallen when and if they had the chance. He watched her for a moment, the sound of the shovel striking the hard soil echoing a little too loudly for his preference.

“The ground’s too hard,” she continued, feeling uncomfortable about his strange silence. “I think a shallow grave will be all we can manage.”

“Better than nothing.”

Stan looked up at the vast, cold sky and stars above them. His breath was coming in thick, white clouds, and he wondered how close to freezing the temperature now was, and how much longer they would be able to wait before survival dictated that they begin moving, if only to keep warm. He looked around him. He was unsure of exactly how many people they had saved, but he had seen a number of small children amongst them, even babies, and no one seemed particularly well equipped against the cold.

“I’m thinking about sending the advance party forward,” he said turning back to her. “If we strip them down to the bare minimum, they could possibly take the weakest of the survivors with them. At least they’d be warm in the vehicles.”

“I think that would be a good idea. We can…”

Stan shifted suddenly, jutting his neck forward and moving into a semi-crouch as though readying himself to spring at her in an attack. A faint light flickered across Tina’s face, illuminating her features for a moment as Stan spun on his heel, expecting to see someone disobeying his orders and holding an unshielded light. The area around them remained dark with the dim shapes of the survivors barely visible against the ground and the surrounding trees. Beyond them was the large dome of the observatory perched on the summit of the hill. The sky beyond was glowing.

Stan and Tina rushed forward, bounding over the people who were sitting around in silence and huddled together for warmth and comfort. Some of them took notice and began dragging themselves up from the ground and followed after their leaders, curious and frightened from their sudden burst of activity. 

“Holy shit,” Tina gasped as she reached the area where Stan had come to a standstill and stood staring out towards the built-up area.

Out ahead of them and roughly five kilometres to the south a bright light hung in the air, lighting up the dead city beneath it as it slowly drifted down towards the earth. Another rocket silently soared up into the sky and burst into brilliance, casting its light over a vast area of the ground and making the buildings appear to sway and their shadows stretch and shrink.

“Flares,” she said, feeling a sense of hope suddenly flood into her body.

Within an instant, however, the hope she felt turned to despairing horror. Her head began to spin and her stomach flipped as she placed her hands over her mouth, holding back the cry that threatened to fall from her lips. Her legs became weak, and she swayed as she staggered forward, shaking her head and unable to take her eyes away from the majestic light that oscillated from side to side as it drifted towards the ground.

“My God, some of them are still alive down there.”

More of the civilians and militia had gathered around them and were watching the lights in dismayed silence, knowing that some of their own had somehow survived and remained trapped within the FOB. A few turned away, not wanting to acknowledge the truth of what was being spoken to them from across the city. Others buried their faces in their hands, stifling the sounds of their despairing whimpers as the horror of the situation impacted heavily upon their minds. The majority looked on in stunned and frightened silence. Some feeling shame and revulsion towards themselves while others fought against the urge to go charging from the hilltop and towards the town in a desperate bid to do something, anything.

“We have to help them,” Paul gasped from behind Tina and looking around him to see if anyone was in agreement.

Some were nodding, taking small steps forward and fighting against the trepidation that was clear in their faces. Others shrunk away, the memory of the evacuation still too fresh in their minds and their survival instincts in complete control of their actions.

“We can’t leave them there,”
another voice whispered.

“They’re our people,”
someone else pleaded.

“We have to do something.”

The group was beginning to stir, and hushed arguments for and against attempting a rescue were beginning to grow in volume. Even before Tina and Paul had said anything they were divided on what they should do. As many turned away, some men and women remained behind, already checking their equipment and counting their remaining ammunition. They turned to Paul and Tina, awaiting their commands and willing to risk everything they had to help the trapped people that had been left behind.

“Tina?” Paul said, stepping closer.

Stan watched her as she turned to face Paul. He had said nothing since the flares went up. His mind was already made up on their course of action, but the decision was Tina’s to make. He and his men would take no part in an attempt at rescue. There was no possibility of them reaching the FOB. The entire city was swarming with the dead, and they no longer had the tunnel as an option for entry and exit. They had risked their lives enough, and they would head back to the coast with or without the survivors from the base.

“What do we do?” Paul asked.

She looked up at him, her mind racing with a thousand thoughts and struggling to make sense of a single one of them. Her heart screamed at her, demanding that they do something to help the beleaguered survivors, but her cold logic repeatedly reminded her that they had barely made it out with the people they had. She was torn, and her common sense was battling hard against her emotions and sense of duty to her people. She looked around her at the pitiful remains of their colony. Dozens of faces stared back at her with uncertainty and fear etched into their eyes. More of them would surely die if they attempted to return to the base. That much she was certain of.

“There’s nothing we can do for them,” she finally stated with a shake of her head. “We can’t help them.”

As the words slipped from her lips, she felt her heart sink, and a cold shame flow through her body, clamping its icy fingers around her heart and soul. The survivors who were desperately clinging on to life within the ruined fortress were being condemned to death by the woman that they had always relied upon to keep them alive.

“We can’t help them, Paul.”

Stan nodded and turned his back on the remaining flare that was beginning to fade and allowing the darkness to claim back the city into the night. Tina was right; there was nothing that anyone could do to help whoever was left down there. Getting to the base was impossible. The tunnel was gone, and the land surrounding the fortress was teeming with the infected. Hundreds of thousands of them had swarmed into the area, and it was a certainty that anyone who went down there would never be seen again. There would be some amongst the survivors that would strongly disagree with Tina’s decision and even accuse her of abandoning her people when they needed her most, but that was the price of leadership. She needed to preserve what they had left and ensure that the people they had made it out with survived. She could not risk losing any more regardless of what her feelings told her.

“Stan,” Taff called to him in a hushed voice as he approached the SUVs. “We’ve made comms with Charlie. He wants to speak to you.”

Stan took the handset from Taff and placed it against his ear. Bull and the others remained close, sharing a mug of coffee while anxiously awaiting the news from Charlie.