Last Days With the Dead (20 page)

She pulled Samson to a brief stop, allowing him to catch his breath properly before the burst of speed she knew they would need if they were to survive the next ten minutes. Ahead of her, the road was dotted with thirty to forty of the Dead, in various shapes, sizes, and states of decay. Even as she spoke, film covered eyes that burned with a ceaseless hunger, locked onto her, Karen and Liz instantly becoming the only thing that mattered in their Dead world. What began with one of the Dead taking a single shaky step towards them, its arms outstretched beseeching them for the flesh it craved, was immediately taken up by another and then another, until a slow swarm of decaying corpses were shambling towards them.

‘They’re coming from behind too,’ Karen said nervously, turning to look behind her.

A small Dead child, its body nothing but a patchwork of bites and grey mould, had stepped out from behind a wrecked car next to Samson, and was pawing pathetically at Liz’s foot. The child had been young when it had died, and even when it reached up on what was left of its blackened toes, its fingers barely brushed against the heel of her boot. Without even thinking, Liz flipped the blade in her hand and with a sharp stabbing motion, punctured the top of the child’s skull.

‘Are you ready?’ she asked Karen, trying to sound brave even though to her
, it seemed her heart was hammering loudly in her chest. ‘Just try to batter any away with the pipe if they get too close, and only use the gun if you really have to, okay?’

‘O
kay,’ Karen replied in a trembling whisper, looking down at the small mass of now motionless decayed flesh.

‘YAH!’ cried Liz, giving Samson a kick with her he
els.

Instantly
, the beast knew what was expected of him and burst forward. Swerving in and out of the Dead ahead of them, Liz did her best to avoid the many Dead hands that grabbed for them as they sped past, but it soon became apparent their luck was quickly going to run out. The Dead were just too close together on the road for them to be totally avoided for long, and as Samson sped past a Dead woman dressed in the stained and tattered remains of what may have once been a bridesmaid dress, she managed to latch onto Karen’s leg.

‘No!’ Karen cried, smashing at the woman’s face with her pipe.

Oblivious to the damage Karen was wreaking upon her face, the Dead woman continued to claw at Karen, desperate to pull her closer to her snapping jaws. Then, with a well-aimed strike, Karen brought the heavy pipe down hard on the Dead woman’s temple, ripping away greying flesh and cracking her yellowed skull beneath. For a fraction of a second, the woman continued to hold fast, but then as suddenly as she had appeared, she was gone again. No sooner had the woman fallen to the road, than another six appeared to take her place and before she knew it, Liz found they were surrounded on all sides. Only Samson’s speed and pure bulk enabled them to push through and carry on at all. But then, what little luck or blessings the Gods had bestowed upon them, abruptly ran out.

Kicking out at a Dead man clothed in the torn remains of filthy hospital scrubs, Liz quickly alter
ed Samson’s course to avoid the twisted wreckage of a car lying on its side directly in front of them. With Samson only just brushing past its crumpled bonnet, Liz’s heart sank when she saw the rusting shells of another two-smashed cars and a van now blocking her path.

‘Shit!’ she said, pulling Samson to a sudden stop, his hooves sliding briefly on the cracked road surface.

‘Liz!’ cried Karen, the word filled with panic as the Dead closed in on them.

Yanking Samson’s reins, Liz quickly turned the beast around
, but as she did so, two of the Dead who had pushed themselves through the wreckage of one of the cars, grabbed hold of Karen. It was pure bad luck, but at the precise moment they pulled on her, Karen had been leaning forward trying to hit at them with her pipe, and their pulling combined with the momentum of her swinging arm, sent Karen toppling from Samson’s back.

‘Get up on the van!’ shouted Liz, slashing her blade at one of the Dead, sending a severed arm falling lifelessly to the ground.

Pushing herself up, Karen ignored the stabbing pain from where she had landed awkwardly on her hip and with a surge of adrenalin pumping through her, pushed past a Dead woman that had appeared in front of her. As Karen clambered over the crumpled wreckage to get to the roof, Liz continued to slash and stab at the Dead that now surrounded her. Decaying limbs and lifeless bodies fell to the road, but Liz knew she could not hold them off for much longer. For each soul she consigned to its rightful oblivion, another three seemed to be taking its place.

Karen was just pulling herself up onto the roof of the van when a hand darted through one of its broken windows and grabbed hold of her foot. With a
tug, the Dead creature pulled hard, drawing her foot and then her calf through the window. With a loud scream, Karen fell backwards, her back banging hard against the van’s crumpled door. With her leg still hooked over the window frame by her knee, and the creature within already clawing at her leg, she knew she was in mortal danger. Straining her stomach muscles, Karen pulled herself up just in time to see the Dead man inside the van, ripping at her combat trousers with his teeth. She knew within seconds they would rip and the corpse would have access to the flesh he craved. Holding onto the lip of the window frame with one hand, she pulled one of her guns from its holster. If this wasn’t a situation that called for the use of the gun, Karen was hard pressed to think of one, so taking care not to shoot herself in the leg, she took aim. The Dead man was pulling so hard to get the tough fabric to rip that Karen’s first shot went wild, lodging itself in the roof just behind his head. Then over the loud moaning of the Dead all about her, the ominous sound of tearing fabric reached her ears. Karen knew it was now or never. With a yell borne of pure panic and desperation, she pulled herself higher and pushed her arm half way through the window.  The barrel of the gun was practically resting on the Dead man’s forehead, and as he darted forward, a dark slobber dripping from his wide open mouth, she pulled the trigger again.

With a spray of rotting brain matter splashing across the inside of the van, the tension on Karen’s leg suddenly disappeared, allowing her finally
to pull her leg back out through the window.  Without thinking, she began to climb the dented and torn metal again and sooner than she thought possible, she found herself kicking her legs as she wriggled herself up onto the rusted roof of the van. At one point, she was sure she felt the clammy touch of Dead fingers on her leg again, but with one last sharp kick, she was on the roof and finally out of reach.

‘Liz!’ she cried, looking down on the young woman that battled to keep the Dead at bay around her and Samson.

‘Jump!’ Liz called back, her attention on the attacking horde unwavering.

Karen knew she had to trust Liz if she wanted to have any chance of surviving this, so taking a deep breath to steady herself, she took a small step back and then threw herself toward the space behind Liz on Samson’s back.

***

Outside the cart
, the Dead instantly knew something living was nearby and as their wordless call rose in volume, the crowd surged toward the chain link that enclosed them. Those at the back of the crowd were being whipped up by the frenzied calls of the Dead brethren ahead of them, and what had started by one, had fast become a nightmarish stampede of the Dead in the direction from which they had heard the scream.

‘I don’t think that fence will hold them for very long,’ whispered Steve, briefly looking away from the spy hole.

‘Should we try to help whoever’s out there?’ Imran asked quietly, knowing if they waited too long, whoever had screamed would be beyond help.

‘I’m truly sorry for whoever’s out there
, but if those Dead bastards get a glimpse of us, there’ll be no stopping them,’ said Patrick, his words spoken so softly they were barely audible above the loud moaning of the Dead, ‘they’ll rip this cart apart.’

As much as they hated to admit it, they all knew Patrick was right. Any poor soul who had been unfortunate enough to find themselves out on the streets of Bodmin, unprotected and among the Dead, was on their own. There was simply nothing they could do for them, not if they wanted to see another day through living eyes.

With the screech of straining metal reaching those hidden within the cart, Steve and Phil returned to the spy holes to grimly watch the horror outside them unfold. Sure enough, they could already see, in places, the fence popping free of its supports and starting to buckle under the weight of the multitude of the Dead pressed against it. Such was the pressure from those Dead at the rear that many of those in front were having what little flesh they had left on their bones, cut deep into by the criss-crossing thick wire that confined them. Others were simply falling, only to be trampled to a bloody pulp by those behind them. Then suddenly, one minute the sea of Dead faces were being pushed against the wire fence, and then the next, there was a sharp snapping sound and the fence was finally torn free. Like a wave, those at the front went down alongside the twisted and broken wire, and were instantly crushed beneath the bodies of those behind them. Their minds, unable to comprehend anything beyond the need to find the source of the scream, could not fathom how or why they were no longer being held back, and with the closest thing to excitement that their Dead minds could muster, the Dead let forth a terrifying collective moan. Desperately clawing to be free of the moving mass of limbs and bodies, many of the Dead were already puling themselves free of the pile to drag themselves upright slowly, while others behind them, simply clambered over the moving mound that  now blocked their way.

Inside the cart
, Steve and Phil moved to spy holes set in the back wall of the cart to watch the wave of the Dead flow out of the car park, past the wreckage behind them, and quickly disappear from view.

‘God help them
,’ Mumbled Phil, guessing that almost one hundred of the Dead had already forced their way through the small breach in the fence in pursuit of whoever had screamed.

The sound of the crowd as they began to advance upon their living prey was fast becoming overwhelming. As each of the Dead heard one of its brethren’s pitiful moans, it too would add its own unearthly call to the deadly chorus
, and before long, it felt to the four men in the cart that the whole of Bodmin was calling for a mouthful of bloody flesh.

‘My God! Get us out of here!’ said Steve, turning away from the spyhole and covering his ears with his hands.

‘No argument here…’ began Patrick, but was immediately shushed quiet by Phil.

‘Listen,’ he said, holding up his hand for quiet, ‘can you here that?
Someone’s shouting, you can just about hear it above the sound of the Dead.’

Each of them strained to make out the words being shouted.

‘No, it can’t be!’ whispered Imran, standing quickly back up to look through the roof hatch.

Sure enough, no sooner had Imran stuck his head back into the upturned laundry basket, than he was met with the
awe-inspiring sight of Liz, suddenly appearing through a wave of the Dead. With lightning speed, her blade flew from one side of Samson’s back to the next, removing decaying hands and heads with every stroke. She slashed her way through the Dead like a wild thing possessed, cleaving any limb from its body that dared to come too close, all the while, Samson charged his way through the Dead horde toward the relatively clear road ahead of them.

‘Jesus, Liz!’ a stunned Imran managed to say to himself, as he watched her jerk Samson abruptly to the left, the beast’s very size raining a permanent death down upon any of the Dead in his path.

‘What,’ said Phil, ‘what’s the fuck is she doing here? She’ll get herself killed!’

‘She’s got a woman with her
, a soldier I think,’ Imran said, looking nervously back at Phil. ‘What do we…’

However,
his words where cut short by the sound of Liz shouting outside.

‘Stay in the cart!’ she shouted, stabbing down with her sword at the head of a Dead man who was reaching for her, while her companion smashed the skull of another of the Dead with a length of pipe
. ‘Turn back! We’ll double back and catch you up!’

‘We’ve… we’ve got to help her!’ Imran said, ducking back inside the cart, his voice shaking in fear for the woman he loved.

‘No!’ said Phil, grabbing Imran firmly by the shoulders to stop him from kicking open the side hatch. ‘She knows what she’s doing, Imran. You’ve got to trust her. You go out there now and you’ll be killing yourself as well as her, she can’t save herself if she’s trying to save you.’

‘Stay in the cart!’ they heard Liz shout again
, as Samson hammered past carrying the two women.

***

‘How are we going to lose them?’ shouted Karen over the constant groaning of the Dead,  bringing a length of pipe crashing down on the skull of decrepit Dead teenage girl, ‘There’s so many of them!’

‘We’ll need to draw them off somewhere and then double back somehow…’ Liz replied, hacking away the hands of a Dead man dressed in a gore encrusted Policeman’s uniform.

Thanks to Samson’s help, they had barged, hacked, sliced and smashed their way through the main swarm of the Dead that had appeared out of nowhere to almost swamp them. Escaping the main bulk of the Dead horde, Samson had galloped just far enough ahead to give Liz and Karen a little breathing space. Admittedly drawn by the hungry calls of the Dead behind them, even more corpses were now pulling themselves through broken windows, shattered doors and the twisted wrecks of cars to get to the two wonders made of warm blood and flesh that had suddenly appeared among them. But even a fraction of a second that allowed Liz or Karen to think of what they could do next was a God send and as Liz stabbed down into the top of the Policeman’s skull she saw just the thing she was looking for.