Outbreak The Zombie Apocalypse (UK Edition) (24 page)

No matter how much or how little I fed him, he still lost weight. I was convinced that if I upped the amount I was giving him then he would start to look more, well, more human. But instead he continued to fade away. In the darkest of nights, I believed that he was, in fact, rotting from the inside out, like he was host to a huge tumour that was draining his body of its vital nutrients.

 “They’re starving to death. That’s what the General says and that’s what I think too,” Chris said confidently. “We’re their only food source and we’re either dead, one of them or locked away safe in the Stadium.”

I pushed the binoculars back to my face so Chris couldn’t see the tears that welled in my eyes. Every time I thought of Danny I was filled with guilt. Not just for what I had done to my brother but for what my actions had meant for the rest of humanity. I lifted the lenses to look ahead of the soldiers as they continued to bring more and more full carts out into the street. Litter breezed across the pavement, first snagging on the base of a now useless streetlight and then around the denim clad leg of a…

I snatched up the radio.

“We have one,” I said.

I tracked the creature as the soldiers on the ground below us silently shuffled back into the safe confines of the shop. Beside me, Chris chambered a round into his sniper rifle and locked his eye over the scope.

“Talk to us, kid,” said the hushed voice of the lead officer on the street.

I zoomed out, wanting to see the whole picture before I spoke. The last thing those guys needed right now was for someone,
for me
, to make a mistake. To focus on the small picture of a single zombie when the big picture was a hundred of them creeping towards us. The binoculars trembled in my hands and I tried to breathe deeply, slowly, with more control. Whenever I saw one of those things, it was like seeing them for the first time all over again. Like when the first one had appeared at the secure gates of my house.

I couldn’t blink. I could feel my eyes drying out, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His left arm gripped one of the metal struts of the gate. His right hung limply at his side, severed at the elbow. It hadn’t been cut off, it had been torn away, and the ragged flesh of what was left of his bicep was covered in black, congealed blood. A shard of bone poked through the mangled mass of flesh.

The zombie staggered along the street. It was male, wearing just a pair of blood smeared jeans and was what the soldiers had started calling ‘a classic Romero zombie.’ Slow moving, thoughtless beyond the desire to feed. One leg dragged behind as it stepped miserably around a decapitated body. It kicked the severed head in front of it as it advanced, its mouth moving up and down, and its wasted jaw muscles prominent in its gaunt visage. The skin was mottled, the eyes that dead grey I knew all too well and although I couldn’t hear the sounds that emanated from its mouth, I knew what they were because I heard them every night in my dreams.

“MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.”

I took a moment to search the rest of the street and saw no other movement.

“Lone Romero,” I said into the walkie-talkie. “Two hundred yards to your north, moving in your direction.”

“Roger that,” the lead officer, Bateman, replied. “Chris?”

“I have the shot,” the sniper next to me replied confidently, subtly adjusting his stance.

“Wait!”

The single word was out of my mouth before I knew I was going to say it.

“What do you see, kid?” The question from Captain Bateman came through the radio with just the smallest sense of unease. Chris didn’t look up from this rifle but I could see him shaking his head.

“There’s only one of them… but gun fire could bring a whole lot more down on us,” I blurted.

“Bring it on!” Chris barked arrogantly. “The more the better! I could do with the shooting practice!”

“Yeah, you could! But not while my unit is down here you don’t,” Bateman retorted derisively. “Hold your fire and maintain visuals. We’ll deal with the Romero. I don’t want a bunch of Remakes on my tail if I’ve got to run for it.”

“Thanks,
kid
!” Chris didn’t try to hide his sarcasm. “I need some hits to get me back on top of the scoring charts. And bulls eying Remakes scores double!”

The Army had coined the phrase ‘Remakes’ for the faster, speedier, more agile zombies of the second epidemic. I’d seen both versions of Dawn of the Dead, watched them with Danny of course. He preferred the original while I liked the newer one. I’d just never expected to be living it. One of the soldiers had seen the films too and made the reference as a joke and the names had stuck. It was all bravado, tongue in cheek gallows humour to hide the fact that there was no quick fix to stop the fast ones. I’d seen first-hand just how quick they could be.

I glanced over my shoulder when I heard the thing pursuing me bellow in anger and jump in one single motion from the road to the top of the wall. If it hadn’t been raining, it would have caught me there and then. But it had been and its feet whipped out from underneath it as it landed on the damp stone. It clipped the wall on the way down, the sports coat fanning out like a cape as it fell inside the boundary, landing on one foot, using the other knee for stability on the chippings.

And to me they weren’t ‘Remakes.’ To me, they were what I’d made.

Two soldiers slipped silently out of the shop and advanced on the Romero. One of them snagged a shopping cart and walked straight towards the undead. The other skirted to the opposite side of the street and unsheathed his knife. On seeing the movement of humans, the arrival of food in front of it, the zombie became more animated. Its hands reached out towards the soldier with the trolley and for the first time Chris and I could hear that grotesque, guttural growl.

“MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.”

Its body was waifish, arms thin and reedy and yet its teeth were bright, white and clean. They snapped together as the soldier approached, keeping the trolley between the two of them. The creature tried to step left and right, desperate to get nearer to the soldier, but it was nudged back at every turn. I moved my attention to the other soldier who had worked his way quietly behind the zombie and had raised his knife to head height.   

I looked away as he brought the blade down in a firm and swift motion. I glanced back just as the zombie slumped to the floor, its eyes wide open and staring. The soldier wiped his knife clean on his combat trousers and slipped it back into place on his hip. 

“Good call, kid,” Bateman called through the radio. “Now get down here, let’s cordon off this area and get the supplies back to the Stadium.”

I was pleased with my input into the situation but as I watched Chris stow his sniper rifle, I was worried I may have just made myself an enemy.

I'd like to thank my publisher
Pants on Fire Press
and most importantly
David Powers
. I'd also like to thank his son,
Jacob
, for convincing his dad that this book is 'freakin awesome.' I can't forget
Claire Pound
who not only dies really badly in this story but was also the first person to read it for me. 

And to all of
you
, for reading Outbreak, I can't thank you enough.