Undead at Heart (20 page)

He took a few steps
back towards where Sam and Dave were lying. The zombies had pushed them over,
but hadn’t managed to get any purchase. Dave, flat on his back, was waving his
pick-axe around, keeping them at bay. Tony glanced up at the horde which was
still coming down the hill, then back to the scene in front of him. He steadied
his feet, socked the stock of the gun into his shoulder, and took aim.

“Down!” he shouted.
Dave dropped his arms and Sam made herself as flat as possible. The zombies did
the opposite, his voice attracting their attention, making them pause and look
up at him.

He pulled the
triggers.

The blast was stronger
than he expected, and the stock was not firmly seated enough, so it recoiled
into his shoulder, knocking him back and numbing his arm. He tottered backwards
but managed to stay on his feet, holding onto the gun with his left hand as his
right dropped to his side. Finally stable on his feet again, he looked up to
see what effect he’d had.

The creature which had
been standing above Dave was now flat on its back behind him, its head missing.
The other had lost an arm, and was staggering, but still growling and making
moves towards the two prostrate humans., Bearing its teeth it made a lunge
towards Sam, and Dave finally connected with the pickaxe, repeated the trick he
had used on zombie-Stan, and piercing its head, this time ear to ear. The punch
of it threw the zombie to the side, wrenching the axe from Dave’s hand. It
landed, motionless.

Seeing this, Tony all
but leapt the last few steps. He dropped the gun and used his good left arm to
drag Sam to her feet. Dave heaved himself up next to them. The pursuing zombie
pack was racing towards them.

Tony stopped and
grabbed the gun, Dave made a move to retrieve his axe, but Tony pressed the gun
to his chest instead. “Here, take this.” He
flopped
his right arm, which was starting to tingle and hurt, but still wouldn’t
respond. “I can’t anyway. Now let’s get the fuck out of here!”

They turned and ran
after Nicola and the others, just ahead of the snarling pack of once-human
creatures.

Tony’s right arm was really
hurting, and he cradled it in his left as he ran, every step jolting fresh
shots of pain

On his right, Dave had
cracked open the shotgun and emptied the two spent cartridges. He looked over
at Tony. “More?”

Without thinking, Tony
went to reach into the right hand pocket of his jacket where he had stowed a
double handful of the ammunition. The arm obeyed him at last, but it was too
painful and he let it drop and dangle again before scooping it up in his other
one again.

Dave watched this and
understood the problem. He moved closer to Tony and reached in to grab a pair
of shells from Tony’s pocket. The movement proved too awkward for them,
though.  He stumbled, catching his foot in the grass and pulling the two
of them to the ground.

Tony instinctively
flung out his arms to break his fall, the weight of the pack on his back making
it feel much faster than normal. He screamed when his bad arm crumpled under
his weight; a scream which was muffled when his face hit the grass a second
later. He tried to roll onto his back but couldn’t because of the pack and
could only make it onto his side. He felt Dave’s hand pull free of his jacket
and the click-click-snap of the weapon being swiftly loaded and locked. It was
obvious that Dave knew much more about guns than he did, and wondered why on
earth he hadn’t asked for someone who would be better placed to use it without
hurting themselves than him. This thought was followed by the realisation that
he could hear the drumbeat of running feet coming up to him through the earth
to which his ear was pressing. They were coming.

He heard a scream – a
battle-cry – from his right, followed by the loud booming discharge of one
barrel and then the other. The sounds of bodies hitting the floor came up to
him through the ground, but it was only two from a host.

He felt Dave’s hand
scrabbling for his pocket again, but it was too late. The zombies were on them.

They tried with their
various implements to get into the Hut. Alan’s metal bar was too thick, but
Bert had brought a crow-bar which they were able, just, to get into the gap
between the double-doors at the side of the Hut. Alan applied all his strength,
and then leant his weight on the bar, but nothing happened. The immovable
object didn’t move and his force was more than resisted.

He tried again, at the
hinges, but still nothing happened. “They must be metal doors and frames,” he
concluded, but kept trying anyway.

James alternated
between watching his efforts, glancing to the side where Debbie was comforting
Bert while Andy kept an eye on him to stop him trying again to do something
stupid, and watching down the road for signs of pursuit. He didn’t know why the
zombie army hadn’t come running after them, but then realised that trying to
understand them was pointless. Who knew why they did anything when, in a sane
world, they should simply have laid down and died? Ascribing motives to them
was pointless. All he could do was
wait
and see.

Ryan was rolling the
pushchair back and forth, soothing Heidi. Buster was munching the weeds which
grew up in the grass at the side of the Hut. It all seemed so quiet and so
normal,
he couldn’t believe what they had just been through.
But there was no way he could enjoy it. He knew it was a break, a rest, a brief
hiatus; nothing more. In a minute, or ten, or an hour, he knew that they would
be running for their lives again, especially if they couldn’t get into the Hut.
He didn’t know if he could face that, and felt sweat break out on his face. His
hands started shaking and he turned, grabbed the crow-bar from a surprised
Alan, and started to batter on the door.

“Open up! Open up!
Open up!” He smashed the crow bar off the door over and over. It vibrated in
his hand, and made his arm tingle painfully, but he didn’t stop.

“Open up! Open u-.”
When the door suddenly opened, James was nearly as surprised as the young man
who nearly got the crowbar in his face. The man stepped back to avoid the blow
from the crowbar, and the door swung with him. Without stopping to think, James
had his foot in, pushed the door, and was into the Hut.

He turned round,
shouted, “We’re in!” to the others, turned back and shrieked when he saw the
gun barrel pointing into his face.

He put his hands up in
the air, dropping the crowbar which bounced on the concrete step with a clang.

“Are you all safe?”
asked the young man, who James now realised had stepped back, not just to avoid
the crowbar, but to give himself room to swing his rifle up. James also
noticed, even in his panicked condition, that the man was wearing an army
uniform. Which explained the rifle, he thought, and almost laughed.

“Yes. Yes. We’re fine.
Not zombies, not aliens, nothing.
Just humans.
Ordinary humans who haven’t been changed into anything, or
bitten,
or nothing. Don’t shoot, we’re like you, we’re normal. We’re just looking for
somewhere to hide, somewhere safe. Don’t shoot!”

The soldier had
already lowered his rifle in the middle of James’s verbal diarrhoea, but as
James had squeezed his eyes shut, he didn’t realise. He only stopped when he
felt a hand on his shoulder. He shrieked again, but opened his eyes to see the
soldier looking at him with a vaguely amused look his face.

“Come on. There’s no
way you’re anything other than human. Let’s get you all inside and lock the
door again before something other comes along.”

He pushed James past
him and stepped out to tell the others to come in. James walked through the
small lobby area and through a doorway into the room beyond. In a building with
the windows bricked-up and the sky outside covered in thick clouds, James
expected the room to be completely dark, but it was lit by the gentle light
from dozens of candles set up along the cupboards which lined the room.

It looked like a
shrine, or a church. Or maybe, he thought, it looked like what it was:
part-cave, part-sanctuary.

The others crowded in
behind him, marvelling with him at the fairy-tale nature of the scene. Heidi
cooed something in baby talk, and Debbie pushed her further into the room. It
was then that James noticed the other people. It had taken him a moment for his
eyes to get used to the combination of bright and dark in the room, and he
hadn’t noticed the dark shapes which were huddled at the far end, looking up at
them.

It was only when one
of them stood that his eyes detected the movement and he realised there had to
be thirty people already in the Hut; people who’d had the same idea as him.

The figure which stood
looked too short to be an adult. It stepped forward and some of the
candle-light fell on its face, showing it to be a small girl, no more than six
or seven.

“Mummy?
Are you here? Is that you, Mummy?”

The soldier pushed
past James and walked over to the girl.
“Sorry, Alyssa.
This group’s mostly men.
I don’t think your mother’s
with them.”

James heard the girl sob,
and the soldier, his rifle still held in his left hand, bent and put his right
arm around her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m sure she’s on her way. She’ll be
here soon.”

Tony felt a dead
weight land on him.
Dead, but freakishly alive.
Hands
scrabbled at him, as the zombie climbed up him, clutching at clothes and the
pack, hauling itself towards his neck. He tried to fight it off, but with only
one arm it wasn’t easy. He pushed and tried to swing a punch, but the zombie
simply carried on moving. His head was craned around, and he saw the zombie’s
face appearing over his shoulder. Its hair was matted with blood, and one eye
seemed to have popped and run down its cheek. Its skin was a waxy-white, but
its teeth and mouth were stained-black: the colour of blood turned to the
colour of death by the gloom.

As it got close
enough, it reared up, ready to plunge its mouth down over the restricting band
of the backpack strap, and Tony had enough time to be amazed that there was no
panting, no smell of gory breath just an underlying growl as it prepared to
bite. Its head went up and back and Tony tried one last push with his arm, but
it wasn’t enough to shift it. Although he didn’t want to see, he stared into
the thing’s dead eye as it plunged towards him, deciding that if this was his
last act, at least he could face it.

When she heard the
double-shot, Nicola glanced back and saw Tony stagger. She nearly turned to go
back, but saw him catch himself and then saw Dave and Sam on their feet again
and running after her and the others. She turned back and carried on running.

She glanced back again
after she heard two single shots, and saw that Dave now had the gun and seemed
to be wrestling with Tony. The mass of zombies had made it down the hill and
were closing on the others.

And then they went
down: her Dave and Sam and Tony. She let out a wordless yell and turned back.
She didn’t know if Dan or Daz were with her, and she didn’t care. She also
didn’t know if it was the sight of Dave in danger, or Tony, or even both of
them, but she knew she had to help. There were so many of the zombies, it was
hopeless really, but she couldn’t just keep running and leave them to it. She’s
already done that at Tony’s urging and it had been wrong. Damn, why did she
just fold and do what other people told her?

All of this passed
through her head as she ran back to her friends. It seemed like the whole pack
of the undead had slowed to allow its lead members to feast. Three of them
leapt, each one aimed at one of the fallen. Sam was closest to her, and Nicola
ran up, and swung with her blade. It hit the zombie in the side of the head,
splitting its skull, and it went over, still thrashing, still undead.

The creature was on
Sam’s far side, and Nicola’s momentum was still carrying her forward. She took
a step and was next to Tony, where his attacker was crawling over his body
heading for his neck. She managed to stop this time, waited for the zombie to
pause, which it did with its head held high, and aimed carefully. Her makeshift
sword passed through what was left of its neck and sent its head soaring into
the air.

She didn’t wait to see
it land, but turned back to finish off the one which had been attacking Sam,
but Dan was already there, burying his pickaxe in the zombie’s head with one
hand, and pulling Sam to her feet with the other. She looked the other way and
saw Daz standing over Dave, swinging his sledgehammer from side to side,
knocking away zombie after zombie. Most of them got straight back up. But some of
them caught a skull-crushing blow to the head and stayed down.

There was a click, and
Nicola realised why it was that Dave had still been on the ground. She saw him
raise the shotgun against his shoulder, and with two swift shots remove the heads
of two zombies.

Between these shots
and Daz’s hammer-swinging, enough of a gap had been made for the two of them to
scramble back from the still sizable horde approaching them. Some residual
cunning must have remained in the zombie’s brains, as they no longer charged,
but were approaching more cautiously. Daz helped Dave to his feet and Nicola
realised that the only one still on the floor was Tony, turned-turtle beneath
the weight of a headless zombie. She put her foot on the corpse and pushed it
off him, then reached down and tried to pull him to his feet. She realised he
could only use one arm, and the effort of trying to lift him and his pack was
too much. He nearly pulled her down with him.