Dead Ahead

DEAD AHEAD

G.D.PARK

Contents

Prologue: The Infected and the Husks

Chapter 1: Popping the Heads

Chapter 2: Dead Run

Chapter 3: Flesh of their Prey

Chapter 4: Eight Days

Chapter 5: Dead in the Eyes

Chapter 6: This Quiet Earth

Chapter 7: We All Die

Chapter 8: Cries of the Dead

Chapter 9: The Reaper

Chapter 10: Losing It

Chapter 11: Fear Won

Chapter 12: Blood and Bones

Chapter 13: Blood on His Hands

Chapter 14: Quiet Chaos

Chapter 15: The Sprint

Chapter 16: Dead Already

Chapter 17: Death Grip

Chapter 18: To Be Frank

Chapter 19: Meltdown

Chapter 20: Fresh Meat

Chapter 21: Good to Go

Chapter 22: Last Chance

Chapter 23: War Machine

Chapter 24: Do You Want to Live

Chapter 25: The Flow of Blood

Chapter 26: Fetid Flesh

Chapter 27: Army of the Dead

Chapter 28: Blissful Blackness

Chapter 29: The Hunger

Prologue:

The Infected and the Husks

It had only been a matter of days, that’s all it took, days. It started with the disease, but you already know that; the simple infection that swept through the country. Every country, every city and every home became a breeding ground for the virus. Everyone lost someone. Some people lost everyone, and then they lost themselves.

Mass graves filled quickly. That was how the UK government deemed fit to dispose of loved ones and friends. The disposal teams, army grunts dressed up in hazmat suits, would beak into people’s homes to take the sick and infected for ‘treatment’ ignoring the screaming children and family members around them. They were removing the piles of corpses left at the end of every street day and night, but there were too many corpses and too few hands. But even that didn’t last long. And those mass graves, they didn’t stay full for long either.

No one knew what the hell was going on. Dead ones they loved and knew were coming home. They thought it was a miracle. The religious nuts went… well, nuts. Even more so! The government told the public that they had it all contained, but all you had to do was look out your window to know it was a lie. And then all hell broke loose. Society didn’t just collapse, it imploded. People started killing each other whether they had turned or not. The fear was worse than the infection. And of course those who were infected didn’t stay dead for long. It was chaos on a truly biblical scale.

I used to joke, telling people I had my zombie apocalypse contingency plan sorted. Fat lot of fucking use that did me. ‘Hold up in my parents’ house, it’s perfect once you have the windows and doors secure’ all that doesn’t add up to much when your parents try to eat you! I couldn’t stay there after that. Not after what happened. Not after what I did. I don’t think the boy has forgiven me for what happened at his Gran and Granddad’s house. I don’t think I have forgiven myself either. But I’m getting ahead of myself, way ahead of myself. So much has happened in the past…. How long? I don’t even know any more!

But that’s in essence why we keep moving; me and the boy. I’ll spend my last breath to keep him safe if I have to, but here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that. So we keep moving, day to day we try to keep ahead of them.

     There is no holding up. If you stay in one place too long they find you. And once one of them finds you, they all find you. Gotta’ kill them quick, kill them clean. I know now getting their blood in your eyes or mouth doesn’t turn you, finding that out wasn’t a pleasant experience at all!

Bites! We all know that’s how they get you. It’s something in the saliva that turns you, if they haven’t eaten so much of you that you can’t turn that is. I have seen some things that I just can’t get out of my mind. They didn’t even look human. But I knew they were, at least they used to be. Ground up puddles of mush and bone. They were the lucky ones, the ones that didn’t come back. Getting caught by a large group of husks will do that to you, shamble about as they do, once they pin you down it sends them into some kind of feeding frenzy, each of them competing with the others to consume as much as they can till eventually they eat your brains too. ‘Braaaaaaiiinnnss!’ Ironic isn’t it? Makes you wonder if there really was some truth in the old stories. Maybe the disease isn’t new; maybe it struck before but didn’t have the chance to spread like it did. There are too many maybes nowadays, destroy the brain and move on.

Most of them are hollowed out husks of people. They tend to go for the softer parts of the body first. Eating your guts and working their way out from there. That’s the easiest way to tell the difference between the Infected and the Husks. The infected were never bitten. They died and came back to bite. The Husks, generally as a rule, weren’t only bitten but eaten leaving a large cavity from the ribcage down. The infected don’t eat as much of their victims as the husks, probably because they still have a stomach to fill.

I used to find it funny in the movies when people couldn’t bring themselves to use the ‘Z’ word. But I get it now. These ‘things’, these ‘creatures’, they aren’t to be laughed at! God was I naïve. I really thought I was prepared for this shit. Trained myself in martial arts and jumping about with sticks and swords. Ha! I broke that sword on the third head I tried to lop off. They don’t go down easy! It’s not like in the movies where you can take on a whole group at once. Not unless you have to. The husks are easier to take care of, they are slow but there are always loads of them. It’s the infected you have to be wary of they are fast and will quite literally come at you tooth and nail. The most I have taken on so far is five, and it is not an experience I wish to go through again. The skin of my teeth! If I hadn’t been for the boy I would be one of them now. He is only fifteen, but already turning into more of a man than I have ever been.

It was in the beginning, when this all first started, that the five infected came at us. It was when I still didn’t quite believe what was really going on. We had been running around that town like crazy. I think I was going a little crazy myself back then.

We had decided on a camping trip down past the border into England, thought we would get away from the public for a while. Too many people we knew were dropping with the illness. So we found ourselves in the hills in east Cumbria. It’s a beautiful area, not a soul for miles around. We should have stayed in there. It was a regular occurrence for us to disappear into the hills of the countryside, get out into nature and rough it for a week. It’s a good chance to practice with weapons and train in the martial arts without beady eyes watching everything you do.

It was as we were heading back to where we had left the car and the bike that a group of them attacked me, my boy and my friend. It was just a sleepy little village, Morton, situated at the bottom of a hill in the middle of nowhere, yet the infection had spread. And after the infection, well, you know what comes after the infection. It was like the whole village had come out to welcome us back. To welcome us back with open mouths.

He thought he could hold them back while we got away. Sam, my friend, he thought he could take them all on, I thought he could to. We were both wrong. I was still stood there stupefied while they rushed at us. Brandon clinging to my arm, Sam was on the case in a flash. He pulled two bamboo kali sticks from his bag and slipped easily into well practiced offensive and defensive strikes and parries. Breaking arms, legs, jaws and sculls. Driving the blunt ends of the sticks into eyeballs and necks; spraying streams of blood around him. Desperately he tried to protect me and the boy while I just stood there in silence. It was Brandon screaming that kicked me into action. One of them had made it past Sam and was coming for him. Still laden with all of our gear I managed to kick what I assume was once an old lady in the jaw, sending me and her to our collective arses. With the boy’s help we made our way tripping and falling toward the car while Sam fought them off. I slammed myself against the drivers’ door of my old burgundy ford escort eclipse, I threw the gear into the passenger seat and the boy got in the back. One of the husks was kind enough to shut my door for me by use of his face against the window and I heard the back passenger door slam to very shortly after. As I looked past the putrid rotting face pressed against the glass snapping its teeth at me I saw Sam fall.

I drove away while they ate him. He was the first person I saw go like that, eaten alive. I looked him clean in the eyes, his hand stretched out towards me, while they pulled his guts from his stomach and ate them, and I just.... drove away. I wish that was the worst thing I had seen as we escaped. I wish that was the worst thing I had done as we escaped. I was such a coward, I guess I still am.

“When there is no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the earth” I used to love that saying. But all it rings is a hollow truth now. This truly is hell. Well, this isn’t hell. Appleby! That was hell! That was where we got our first proper taste of how bad things were. We had to get petrol you see! Nothing would have stopped me driving after what happened to Sam, and I tore it down those thin country roads away from Morton. I was in a state of shock, we both were. It was as we were just getting into Appleby that the gravity of the situation hit me. Just outside the pub we had had a drink in before heading to the hills, the Royal Oak. Traffic filled the road, none of it moving, and the Oak was ablaze. We had to leave the car, take what weapons and provisions we could and leave it. We could hear the bloodcurdling screams of the creatures getting closer. They must have heard the engine and the screech of the tyres as we came to a stop. I grabbed everything I could carry from the car, including Sam’s bike gear; leather jacket, boots, gloves, trousers and helmet, I’m glad I did too; they have saved my skin more times than I care to remember.

I never knew how unfit I was till I had to run up that hill with those fucking things chasing us. It wasn’t a big hill by any means, but having to weave in and out of the cars dragging a bag of clothes and camping equipment, tent (which got dumped half way up the hill) and a bag of mostly useless weapons behind you, it was quite a task. At the top of the hill I looked back to see them, my first glimpse of the infected, it had only been husks that attacked us earlier, it was husks that killed Sam, but there had been just too many of them. These things, the infected, god they were vile. Corpses that had been rotting in a pit in the baking sun for almost a week, then decided to wreak havoc amongst the living; bloated, fetid, bags of maggots. And they had seen us too!

We turned and bolted down the other side of the hill. Every step was like a hammer blow to my spine. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I grabbed the boy and pulled him up the steps of a house that looked like an old converted church and rattled through the door. I can’t even remember now if it had been locked or not. We just cowered and peeked out of an arched window in the porch, feet propped up bracing the door closed, hoping, praying that the creatures would pass us by. We were so relieved to watch them pour down the hill past the house. They didn’t move well but they were still quick.

Our relief, however, was short lived. We heard movement behind us. The boy already had his hand on the door when I caught him. We couldn’t risk going back out there. I drew my sword from the bag and pushed forward into the house.

It was then that I saw three husks over the body of an elderly man. Two of them were pawing and mauling at his stomach, scooping handfuls of intestines and organs and cramming them into their mouths, swallowing with sickening gurgling noises. The third husk, just a child, was an all fours beneath one of the others. Collecting pieces of masticated innards dropping from where the other husks stomach would be, and hungrily gobbling them up, just for them to drop to the floor beneath it.

The elderly man wasn’t dead. He had been though! He must have turned as they were eating him, and he was lazily joining in. Slowly he would pick a piece from his own belly and place it in his mouth, mournfully chewing on his own guts, squirting almost black blood from between his teeth, with a pale yellow liquid casually dribbling from where his nose used to be. I say ‘his’ I should really say ‘it’; I don’t consider them human after the turning.

It’s difficult to tell the difference in gender between Husks; in most cases any soft fleshy parts of the body get eaten. The ears, nose, cheeks and lips are commonly missing from husks heads, making them all look disgustingly similar. Even the jugular occasionally gets torn away and consumed, which makes for a particularly disgusting sight when they are feeding. When they attack the rest of the body the victims clothes are ripped away so most husks are staggering around mostly naked spare a few tattered rags, the chest/ breasts get eaten, pretty much the entire contents of the lower torso is ripped from the body including the genitals. It is a truly repulsive sight. Of which I have become all too accustomed to now.

    I disposed of the four vile creatures, breaking my sword in the process on a harder than anticipated scull. It turned out to be fairly easy with that number of husks. It appears that once they get into a repetitive eating cycle they aren’t easily distracted and won’t stop till every part of the innards has been chewed to a point that they can’t pick it up any more. Usually by then the victim has already turned and has been assisting in the process.

We stayed in that house as long as we could. Living off of what provisions we had left from our camping trip and whatever we could find in the house. I picked through the things we had brought, sorting out the pointless from the useless. The hill had taught me that we have to travel light and the car had taught me that we had to move quiet. I would have put the bike gear on the boy if I could have, but it was probably better for him to be able to move fast, god knows he has had to. I adorned him with a selection of knives and the air pistol which was to be kept loaded and cocked at all times.

We put up with the rotting corpses in the other room for longer than we should have, and it was when we decided to throw the bodies out a window an infected found us. We covered the windows and bolted the doors, took every precaution to keep them out. But one infected becomes two, and two infected becomes a hoard of husks in their wake.

It was only a matter of time before our defences became our prison. We had to leave. We created a ruckus at the front of the building, and then we ran out the back. It was a simple process, very effective. The problem was, we couldn’t stop running, and we ran round that fucking town for days. Every street corner we were confronted by them. Every house we decided to try to sleep in, they found us eventually. It was in Appleby that we found the co-op, we were desperately hungry, and we had to eat. But of course the five infected we found in there were not very cooperative at all.