Domain of the Dead (2 page)

“Nathan said there was a chopper?” Ryan added.

“Yeah, it hovered over the insurance building before dropping out of sight. I guess they must have landed in the centre of the business park.”

“Yeah, I can hear the blades echoing round the buildings,” Ryan said.

“I take it they didn’t see you?” Nathan asked Sarah.

“I guess not, but I don’t think they’re looking for us, though.”

The door banged open and the rest of the dishevelled survivors emerged onto the rooftop. There weren’t many of them left, but Sarah still thought it a miracle that any of them were alive after so long.

In the warehouse below had been the supplies for their basic needs, but the bare roughcast walls lacked so much. It offered security, but no hope, no reprieve. No freedom.

Sarah stared at the destitute group at the doorway. The clothes downstairs were pristine in their clingwrap plastic covering until the moment they were slipped on. Instantly they seemed to age to match the wearer’s level of dejection. The only exception was Jennifer. There was nothing to her; a wiry prepubescent body that had confounded everyone’s effort to build her up. Her wide eyes and wider smile forced back their bleak confinement. After all, this was all the eight year-old had ever really known. She had been too young to remember much of the world before. Jennifer had lost her parents and gained this surrogate family: Grandpa George, Uncle Ryan, Uncle Ali and Uncle Ray. For some reason, Elspeth, Nathan and Sarah had missed out on an epithet. Sarah had always assumed that she and Nathan were considered big sister and brother. Elspeth? Well maybe she reminded Jennifer of a long gone nursery teacher or neighbour. Sarah didn’t know and she guessed Jennifer didn’t know either.

“So what do we do?” Nathan asked, shrugging. “Light a signal fire or something?”

“They might think it was just an accidental fire,” Ryan offered.

Nathan looked around the roof for inspiration. “Maybe we could use the solar panels like signal mirrors?”

“They’re not looking for us. They’re not looking for
anyone
,” Sarah said. She turned to Ryan and Nathan. “They’re not expecting anyone left alive.”

“So what are they here for?” Ray asked. He pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. He squinted his eyes and took a good look around the broken skyline.

Sarah noted how he was forever pushing the loose spectacles back into place and squinting to see anything more than a few metres away. It was plain that his eyesight had deteriorated since he bought those glasses. But everything had deteriorated since he had bought his glasses. Ray looked out over the deserted town as if he was trying to spot something he had missed, like a man about to leave his house taking a last look around, checking that he hadn’t missed an item.

“If they’re scavengers they’re shit out of luck,” Ray said, pushing his glasses back into place again. “There’s nothing left. We’ve picked this place clean.”

“Wasn’t much to pick,” Nathan grumbled, remembering the fruitless scavenging of last winter.

Ryan shrugged his heavyset shoulders. “So how do we signal them?”

“We don’t,” Sarah said, folding her arms resolutely. “We go to them.”

“
Go to them
, girl?” It was Grandpa George. He shook his head and looked off in the direction of the noise. “We don’t even know who they are.”

“He’s got a point, Sarah,” Ryan said. “They could be worse than those things.”

“They might shoot us as soon as help us,” Elspeth added, her grey hair gusting across her face as she spoke.

“It’s been years since we’ve seen any marauders and none of them were in helicopters. Anyway, they’re advertising their presence with the music. It’s like they want to cause a commotion—to shake the place up.” Sarah slipped her tongue under the stud of her lip piercing, an unconscious habit she had when she was thinking. “No, this has been our only chance of escape in years and it may be our last.”

“Sarah, think about it. We’re safe in here,” George said, to the group as much as to her. “The moment we open the shutters there’ll be no turning back. They’ll be in here and there won’t be no way of stoppin’ ‘em,”

“How much longer will we be safe in here?” Sarah asked.

No one replied.

She looked at their default quartermaster. “Tell them straight, Ray.”

Ray looked nervously around and shrugged apologetically. “I don’t know.”

“Ray!” Sarah barked.

“Maybe four or five weeks worth of food and that’s rationing out even thinner than now.”

No one was surprised at Ray’s statement. They had begun rationing out their food months before. It wouldn’t be long before it was exhausted.

“And Ryan’s guzzled the last of the Jack,” Nathan grumbled.

“Nathan,” Elspeth rebuked.

“What do we do?” It was a rhetorical question Ryan posed. He looked around the group, half hoping to see the spark of an idea in anyone’s eyes.

The thin cloth of Nathan’s shirt rippled in the cold wind. Goose pimples stood out on his thin arms. “Fuck it. Sarah’s right. We have to go to them.”

“Hold on.”

Everyone turned round to see Ali standing by the water tank. He wasn’t one for conversation and the very fact he had spoken without being spoken to demanded everyone’s attention.

“You’re seriously suggesting we go out there?” Ali nodded in the direction of the sound, his long black beard bobbing with the wind.

“What else would you suggest?” Sarah asked.

Even though Ali had lost a lot of weight from their enforced confinement, he still made for an imposing figure. He’d always looked dangerous, not tough, more strange. He fitted the archetype in Sarah’s mind of the creepy unwashed guy behind the till in a sleazy porn shop—not that Sarah had actually been in a sleazy porn shop, but she had been instantly wary of him when they’d met. Ali wasn’t pretty to look at. His large nose was lumpy and pointed off at a crooked angle, a sure sign of a violent life, in Sarah’s opinion. His complexion was pockmarked and there were patches of paler skin all over his face and neck. His hair, what was left of it, was suspiciously black for someone his age. His mouth would gape open as he watched you and his dark brown eyes looked black under his bushy eyebrows.

As the months had passed, though, Sarah had got to know him in increments. The hair colour was natural, along with the male pattern balding inherited from both his father’s and mother’s sides of the family. The pockmarks were the result of acne as a teenager, his broken nose the result of a car crash before the days of airbags, and the smattering of light skin was the result of scarring from the broken windshield. The gawping mouth was an indirect result of the accident. His broken nose never healed properly, leaving him unable to breathe through it. The more Sarah had got to know him the less intimidated she felt. The final nail in the coffin for her prejudice had been when she found out he worked for an animal rescue centre.

“You’re thinking things are so bad that it justifies going out there?” Ali’s eyebrows dipped so low it was impossible to see his eyes.

Sarah looked at Ray. “They will be in a month.”

“There are thousands of those pus bags between here and there. One bite, one scratch and that’s all it takes to turn you.” Ali looked round at the rest of the group’s expressions. “You plan on dodging those things long enough to get to a helicopter full of people who are mystery to you?”

Everyone was silent.

Ali continued, “As Elspeth said, they may not be friendly, they may want to shoot us, they may refuse to take us. What then?”

“We don’t have time to argue this,” Ryan said restlessly. “Who knows how long they’ll be there.”

“Is it truly worth the risk?” Ali asked. “Do you want to wait here and starve to death or take the chance?”

The congregation on the rooftop started looking at each other.

“I only say that because everyone has to be sure what choice there is,” Ali said.

People were looking into each other’s eyes, trying to measure what they thought. Slowly everybody started nodding.

Watching the unspoken agreement spread, Sarah decided to take charge. “Okay, leave everything. Only carry a weapon. It’s not far to the square but there’s a lot of them and we’ll have to run the whole way.”

She looked at Ryan’s toned figure. Unlike the rest of them, he had stuck to a regular workout regime. The lack of fat from the strict diet combined with his improvised weights gave him an athletic appearance. Even then Sarah knew there had been no space for a proper cardiovascular workout. None of them had regularly walked more than the length of the warehouse in years. A mad dash between a thousand infected corpses filled her with dread.

But then so did starving to death.

Adrenaline would have to see them through.

“Nathan, Ryan, get all the Molotov cocktails we have left. Let’s try to thin them out,” Sarah said, her voice carrying a weight of confidence that surprised even her.

She looked out over the street to the town square. It looked further away than it had just a few minutes ago.

* * *

Bates bobbed his head in time to the beat, holding his carbine like a guitar. His gloved left hand held the ribbed heat guard that sheathed the muzzle like it was the neck, whilst his right hand strummed on the collapsible stock. He stood in the midst of this dead town, singing along to a rock track like the last drunk at a student party. His dress didn’t match his actions, though; he was clad in a khaki uniform, most of which was obscured beneath protective armour. Overlapping his pristine black leather boots were matt black shin guards. Above them and made of the same dull man-made material were knee protectors. Strapped around his thighs was a holster and various pouches for holding ammunition, all made from the same black synthetic weave material. The tactical vest he wore was replete with ammo pouches and the various laced panels that ensured a tight fit gave the garment a certain fetish chic rather than a military look, sporting a high collar and shoulder protection which came well down past the bicep. The vest had obviously been developed to guard the wearer’s vulnerable areas against zombie attack. With the black helmet, elbow pads, gauntlets and his blond shadow of stubble, Bates looked more like a faint-hearted skateboarder than a soldier.

He whipped the stubby black machine gun over and started singing into it like a microphone.

He was used to places like this, familiar with them. In the years since the Rising he had visited a fair number of dead towns like this one. They were all the same lifeless husks. Broken down towns smashed by the panic of the outbreaks, then softened by years of weathering. The smashed shop windows. The abandoned rusting cars. The discarded edifice of life like a singular shoe, a broken pair of glasses or a child’s toy. Clumps of moss and grasses clinging impossibly to the stonework of buildings. Nature encroaching on concrete. All of this was commonplace in his life now. Even the skeletons lying bone naked all were mundane.

This was a town like a dozen others he’d visited, like the whole world was like now. Bates was familiar with it, and even though his childish antics said otherwise, he knew he’d never be comfortable with it.

His feet made an amateurish attempt to moonwalk across the cargo net spread over the tarmac beneath. The dance step hadn’t been spoiled by the impediment of his armour or the ground underfoot, it was purely Bates’ own ineptitude at dancing. He didn’t care. The only eyes watching him belonged to the dead and their palsied movement was far more awkward than his own.

Suddenly Bates let out a scream in sync with the track booming out from the battered and duct-tape refurbished stereo. With his weapon taking the place of a mic stand, he stumbled through the off-key lyrics in his impromptu karaoke.

The dead had not been the only ones to watch his juvenile display after all.

A husky east European accent poured over Bates’ earpiece, “Don’t know what make worst noise—you or the dead.”

Bates stopped his singing and looked up across the abandoned car park. Raising a hand to his forehead, he squinted at the rooftop of an abandoned office block. He scanned the rooftops for a glimpse of Angel, the barrel of her gun, a lock of her auburn hair, anything. But she had been trained in the old Soviet mould. Bates knew he wouldn’t see her unless she wanted to be seen.

“You come down here and say that, Angel!” Bates shouted in what he thought was her general direction.

“A hui ne myaso!” she taunted back over the radio.

“What you say there?” Bates looked up at the chopper hovering overhead. “What she say there?”

A new voice crackled across the airwaves: “Stay on station, Bates.”

Bates scolded, “Angel, speak English!”

“Burak!” Angel cursed.

“Oh, that’s it! I know what that one means! I’m coming up there to kick your ass!”

“Bates!” the voice from the chopper cracked. “Stay on station.”

Bates cradled the mouthpiece on his radio mic behind his thick leather gauntlets, shielding it from the gusting wind. “Roger that, boss.”

Without another word he pointed up at the office block where he suspected Angel was sniping from and mouthed his own obscenity back at her.