Outbreak The Zombie Apocalypse (UK Edition) (23 page)

The door shattered as the creature burst through and steadied itself, crouched low. I raised my fists, the only thing I had left to defend us with. I just hoped that when this thing stood up, it was not as big as the prisoner beast from Usk. 

From behind me, Robbie’s voice had become a tiny, high-pitched whine.

‘Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no…’

As brave as I was trying to be, I could not stop my knees from trembling. 

The zombie shook off the remnants of the door and straightened its spine. It only had one shoe, the other foot clad in a blood-stained white sock. It had left a trail of blood behind it.  Its jeans were clean. Whatever it had been wearing on top had once been a colour other than red, but now it was a deep scarlet. It was matted and clung to the zombie’s body. This thing’s eyes were completely white. A massive tear ran across its neck and blood trickled steadily from its left ear.

‘
Nick?
’ I asked, my heart stuttering so hard it was painful. 

It
was
Nick; and this, right here, it was going to be the end for all of us. I was not going to be able to save Robbie, just like I had been unable to save his sisters, his father, or my little brother.

The monster hissed at me, baring his teeth like a rabid dog. If Robbie hadn’t been right behind me, I would have stumbled back.

Instead I did the only thing I could.

‘Nick, don’t do this,’ I pleaded.

He hissed again, stalked forward, closing the gap between us to less than two metres. My breath was coming fast; tears were blurring my vision.

‘Nick?’

He opened his mouth to snarl again. His teeth snapped together. And then he turned his head to the side, lowering the gaze of his dead eyes from my face and down towards my legs. I felt a tug at the back of my jogging trousers and looked down. Robbie was peering around me, looking at the beast that had once been his father. Nick snapped his jaw together again and Robbie recoiled for an instant. 

Then he leant forward again.

‘Dad?’

Nick growled, but it held less fury. It was almost a question.

‘Nick…’ I began, but I didn’t know how to continue. Robbie and I were frozen; deadlocked.

Nick took a step backwards, and then he made that noise we had heard for so long, so long ago, from outside our gate.

‘MMMMMMMMMMM,’ he groaned.

‘Daddy, Daddy,’ pleaded Robbie quietly, still hiding behind me.

Nick looked down at the boy and then up at me.

‘MMMMMMMM,’ he repeated.

‘Matt, make him stop. Make him—’

‘MMMMMM,’ Nick moaned. And then he cut himself off. His stare, now trained on Robbie, wasn’t so fierce anymore. His eyes were wider.

‘MMMM…’

Almost like he was recognizing us.

My fists went slack. Nick didn’t notice. He dragged his eyes from Robbie to me once more.

‘MMM…’ he said, before he seemed to force himself to turn away and pry his way through the broken door, leaving Robbie and me alone in the storeroom, and I had the strangest urge to laugh until I cried.

*                            *                              *

We waited for over half an hour. I had fallen to my knees and wrapped Robbie in my arms and he sobbed into my shirt until the sobs tapered off into heavy, shaking breaths. I didn’t cry. I’m not sure why, but the tears never came. I felt sick and a little hysterical, but I was shell-shocked and my body never gave away my state of mind.

We didn’t talk. We didn’t need to.

Finally I whispered, ‘I think we should go now,’ and Robbie nodded. I touched my nose. Although it had stopped bleeding, it now held a deep wound. If I survived this then I was going to have a very noticeable souvenir.

I decided that the thought of dying in this room, hiding like rats, was more frightening than facing whatever was outside.

We edged through each door and out from behind the bar. I gestured for Robbie to wait while I snuck outside to ensure the way was clear. I stepped over the cleaner woman’s body and looked left, in the direction we would have to run. The crushed Range Rover and police car remained in place. The horn continued to blare. Steam rose from both bonnets. All along the road and the pavement, streaks of blood and gore lay as memorials to the end of humanity as I knew it. There were, however, none of the infected to be seen. 

I turned my head to the right and felt the breath leave my body. 

Hundreds of zombies lined the road. They were all looking directly at me. I could see their shoulders rise and fall as they breathed. They looked like they were ready to start a marathon, but I knew it would only be a hunting sprint and then they would fall on me and Robbie, feasting or turning us into one of their own.

And then Nick stepped to the front of the horde. 

He lifted his chin towards me. He was telling me to go.

Stunned, I reached back inside and grasped for Robbie, finding his hand, leading him around the dead body on the floor and out into the street. I made sure he did not look to the right, but as we turned left towards the stadium, I took a moment to glance back. 

The creatures were practically vibrating, lips curling back with the urge to charge for us, but none of them stepped past Nick. They didn’t dare. I wasn’t sure what had happened, where this drastic shift in hierarchy had come from; it bewildered me as much as it relieved me. And when I noticed the two smaller figures crowded close at either side of him, I nearly tripped over my own feet.

As I stepped out of sight I was sure I saw Nick place his hands on their heads. Protectively? Possessively?

Robbie tugged on my fingers and kept me from analyzing the scene any further.

I wouldn’t have been able to understand it anyway.

We approached the entrance to the stadium without delay. I scanned the high levels and saw the sniper was still in place. He pivoted his rifle towards us. I raised my arms and showed them my hands. Robbie copied me.

‘We’re human!’ I shouted, and we began to walk forward to the manhole cover.

‘We’re human,’ I said again, and then there were more faces at the window and the rifle had been placed aside. I swear I heard someone say ‘he’s back’.

I knelt down and lifted the iron cover. I took Robbie’s hand and guided him into position so he could safely make his way down the ladder. His haunted eyes looked past me, back the way we had come.

‘Dad?’ he said.

I looked over my shoulder and saw Nick, alone, watching us.

‘No,’ I said, choosing to misunderstand Robbie’s question. ‘But I hope I’ll do for now.’

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I scanned the street below me, searching for signs of the undead.

Nothing.

Nothing except for bodies strewn across the pavement, the road, over smashed and abandoned cars. My breathing was short and shallow, fast like my heartbeat which pulsed powerfully in my ears, threatening to make my head burst open. I picked up the binoculars and brought them to my eyes, looking further afield. More and more, it seemed, this was the scene that greeted us as we searched for sustenance beyond the safe and secure walls of the Stadium.

“All clear,” I whispered, laying down the binoculars.

“Don’t tell me,” said the voice beside me. “I can see that as much as you can. Get on the radio and tell the guys below.”

I glanced across at Chris. I couldn’t see his face as he was focussed down the telescopic sights of his sniper rifle. He was as nervous and scared as I was but that was only part of the reason for his sharp tone. Chris hadn’t been happy about the role I’d been given within his unit. He didn’t see the need for any civilian support. The British Army were considered the best for a reason and as far as he was concerned I simply did not fit the mould.

We were three storeys up in a building within the ‘safe zone,’ an area that the soldiers had cleared of zombies in the last month. Slowly but surely they had advanced our perimeter, first checking the stores and houses for any of the creatures that held us captive and then putting barriers in place to make their advance towards us just that little bit more difficult. 

I picked up the walkie-talkie and squeezed the ‘speak’ button.

“You are clear to go,” I said before retrieving the binoculars from the window sill.

Heavy footsteps echoed up from the silent street below and six soldiers in fully armoured combat fatigues came into view. They moved forward with precision in pairs, guns raised and ready for action. As the lead troops reached the next morsel of cover, whether it was a car rolled on its side or a shop doorway, they would pause and signal the rest of the team to advance up to their position. 

“Matt!” Chris hissed. “Don’t watch them! Keep your eyes ahead. Your eyes are their eyes!”

Chris Garlick was the unit’s top marksman and I owed him my life. When I had fled the Millennium Stadium, the last safe place in South Wales, on my ill-planned rescue mission he’d saved my life. He had accurately picked off the marauding horde of zombies as they had chased me to my Range Rover. It had also been his finger on the trigger when I returned, not with Nick and his whole family but just with his son, Robbie. Chris had refused the initial order to shoot us down when he recognised that we were still human. The mere fact that he had saved my life didn’t mean he necessarily liked me though. 

I placed the binoculars back to my face and scanned left, right and as far ahead as I could see.

“Still clear,” I said into the radio and out of the corner of my vision I saw Chris give a tokenistic nod of his bald head, the closest indication I would get of his approval. 

The soldiers reached their goal; a small but, we hoped, well stocked convenience store. The Stadium still had plenty of supplies, food and drink but the General didn’t want us getting to the point of desperation. He had stared right at me when he told us that desperation made people do desperate things. What he perceived as my desperate action, my mistake of leaving the Stadium, was not going to be quickly forgotten. 

The lead soldier kicked the locked door of the shop until it caved in after his fourth attempt. The noise of his stamps rang out like gunshots, bouncing back and forth across the walls of the street. If we could hear the sound so clearly from up high then so could any of the undead out there. I alternated between the binoculars and my own true vision, quickly homing in on any movements below. The wind blew back towards Chris and I, whistling as it carried litter and debris across the long deserted road. Every time a plastic bag or a newspaper shifted its position, my head flicked toward it, my breath caught in my throat, until I could be sure it was no threat to our men on the ground.

One newspaper got trapped in the arms of a corpse that lay spread-eagled in the middle of the road. I could clearly make out the hole in the middle of its forehead where it had been shot and the arc of dark red goo that had dried on the ground behind it. Its face was grey, its eyes wide open but seeing nothing. The suit it wore was ragged and torn down one arm where the business man it had once been had been attacked, tackled to the floor, bitten. Transformed into one of the flesh eaters.

I dragged my eyes away as four of the soldiers slowly entered the shop, assault rifles at the ready. They had no idea what they were going to find inside and weren’t prepared to take any chances. They had orders to shoot on sight and run like Hell. Two remained at the door, crouched low, weapons poised. Each wore head phones directly linked to the radio I carried.

“Still clear,” I informed them, keeping to the script I had been told to use. Simple instructions, no need to elaborate. Either it was clear or it wasn’t.

Chris lifted his head away from his rifle. I leant in to hear him.

“Do you see it?” he asked, his voice hardly audible. “How they’re dead but not shot?”

I snapped the binoculars back to my eyes, the street below jumping quickly into sharp focus. I tracked from body to body. Most of the cadavers were disfigured. Most were the same as the guy in the suit, with a hole in their head and that corona of blood splatter on the floor behind them. But some were lying there with no apparent gunshot wound. Just dead.

“People who didn’t come back as… them?” I asked tentatively.

“Nah,” Chris said, shaking his head. “Check out the one by the red car… and the one on the corner…”

I found the bodies he was describing and there was no doubt that whatever had occupied those skin covered shells most recently had not been human. The woman by the red car was missing a hand and the old man at the corner looked like he’d been carrying half of his intestines in his arms before he finally collapsed to the floor. Even as he lay there, finally forever dead, he continued to cradle his innards like he was holding an armful of spaghetti bolognaise. Both had dark, muddy looking stains around their mouths. I’d seen that enough to recognise long dried blood.

“Do you think--?” I began to ask.

“That they’re dying?” Chris interrupted. “Screw what I think… it’s what the General thinks. I just hope to God that he’s right. And seeing them dead with no head shot? I think
that
speaks for itself. Don’t you?”

I moved the binoculars from body to body, now starting to recognise more and more those which had been shot and the ones that had just dropped dead in the street. I’d had hope before and had learnt that sometimes hope was not enough. But this was more concrete, something to cling to, that maybe we were going to make this after all.

The radio crackled.

“We’ve hit the jackpot, boys!” A solider emerged from the shop pushing a trolley full of food. A second troop followed him, pulling a cart laden with cans and boxes. 

“Think back to the last one we saw up on its feet,” Chris continued. “It looked like it hadn’t eaten for weeks. It was thin, sluggish, like it had no energy.”

I closed my eyes and bit down on my bottom lip. All I could see was Danny, tied to the rafters of the shed in the bottom of our garden.