Remains of the Dead (19 page)

He looked down at the dead backpacker dangling in front of him.

“What you make of all that?” Ali asked. When the creature rotated away from him, Ali huffed, “Didn’t think you had anything to add.”

He bent down and took a long look at his catch. His make do hook had snagged under one of the pack’s shoulder straps. Ali pulled out his knife and was about to cut the strap free when he suddenly stopped.

“Idiot.”

Ali backed up and retrieved some cabling. He tied the wiring to one of the straps on the backpack and secured the other end to his wrist.

“I don’t want this hard-fought catch getting away from me now, do I?” he said to the cadaver as he sliced through the shoulder strap.

With a soft rip the last few strands of fibre snapped under the weight of the dead hiker. The centre of gravity on the hook bucked and the dead body slipped out of the undamaged strap. Like the dummy from a cheap action movie, the lifeless corpse tumbled to the mass of zombies below.

* * *

Ali sat in what had become his chair in Frank’s apartment. The backpacker had proven to be a gold mine: camping provisions, gas stove, sleeping bag and even a domed tent. He was spooning in the last of the beans from a can he’d liberated and trying to figure out what had just happened.

Now he knew the chopper was coming back and there were other people in the same predicament as he. And he knew he could camp out on a rooftop in comfort. But had Ryan’s signalling indicated the chopper would return to some other location, or that the three of them were leaving in that direction?

There was no point worrying as there was nothing Ali could do about it. At least if Ryan got rescued he could tell the pilot to come pick him up.

The only worry for now was the fire.

Could it spread to my side of the street?

He decided no, it couldn’t. He didn’t think it would jump such a wide firebreak as the main road. It might light a few zombies, but he doubted the stone, steel and glass of the apartments would be combustible against such a weak ignition source.

Ali had a newfound sense of safety. He now had food, in the form of the camping supplies, and the likelihood was that the chopper would return.

“I must find something to read,” Ali told himself in preparation for his rooftop vigil.

He cast an eye around the living room. It was neat and tidy with even the TV guide appointed its own space next to the remote control. There was a storage tower stacked high with martial arts and action movies. There was the odd loose case next to the DVD player where he’d found the romantic comedy but with no electricity they had all been reduced to a stack of ornate signal mirrors.

Ali’s mouth opened wide as an expansive yawn escaped. He used the balls of his palms to wipe away the moisture from his eyes. Like the aftershock to an earthquake a second smaller yawn followed. The sunlight was streaming in from outside, but in spite of that Ali’s eyelids were heavy. He set the empty can of beans down on the kitchen counter and returned to his easy chair.

“It could be a long night,” Ali justified to himself as he snuggled down.

Cannon let the blade of the knife slip down to the bottom of the link. The interwoven wire formed a harlequin pattern of squares that made up the car park fence. Each strand of wire was enveloped in a weather bleached casing of green plastic. The plastic had mostly rubbed off at the joints where the cable interlaced, and where it hadn’t it was so perished that it dropped off in lumps rather than yield a neat cut under the blade.

Cannon focused on the minutia of his task, the bite of wire against the blade of his knife, the grating of the metal edge as he sawed through the wire. This was not the way he should be treating his knife and he knew it. A sharp knife was an invaluable survival tool and with each swipe he was dulling the blade further.

Still, this was survival, Cannon told himself.

He concentrated on these niggling details rather than let the reality intrude. But every so often he couldn’t avoid it. Time and time again clusters of necrotic fingers would poke through the chain. A dead face with skin saggy and blue-tinged would be pressed against the fence, gnawing at the wire. At these moments Cannon’s gut reaction was to stop weakening the fence that was holding back the mass of animated dead just a finger’s length away.

A dead hand pushed against the wire where Cannon was cutting. The zombie, utterly focused on the human, didn’t notice that it had impaled its palm on Cannon’s knife. It poked its nose between the wire and gnashed its crooked yellow teeth. Its vacant, sunken, unblinking eyes transfixed on its potential meal as it pushed against the fence, struggling to get at him. Even though Cannon had wrapped his shemagh around his face, the smell of the creature’s rotting innards skulked through the fabric. The monster was so close that Cannon could see the whiskers poking through its dead flesh. The zombie pushed against the fence so hard its skin had started to split at the points of contact.

Cannon pulled his knife back. It slurped as it withdrew from the zombie’s soft, bloated flesh. This cadaver was soggy like a sponge. There was a trace of green in the crevices of the creature’s skin. Cannon wondered if maybe it had spent some time at the bottom of a lake.

Cannon knew nothing ate the dead—no dog or crow or cockroach or maggot. Nothing found these toxic corpses a savoury meal to devour. One whiff of their necrotic stench was enough to deter even the hungriest scavenger. The only thing that chewed at them was the weather or machinegun fire. But occasionally you would see a zombie, like this one, that had its own flora or fauna. There would always be the odd walking dead that had dragged half a bush with it but this one had a green algae matted to its cracked fingernails like the scum that clung to the walls of a neglected fish tank.

There was one time when Cannon had seen a bobbleheaded mushroom growing from a zombie’s suit collar. He’d even helped dredge up a zombie from the ocean, drenched in seaweed, and with a barnacle stuck firmly to its temple.

The wire popped as his knife severed the cable. With the extra space the dead man pushed his whole hand through and grabbed at Cannon’s body armour.

Cannon stepped back, but the dead fingers held tight. The zombie snarled behind the fence, ripping chunks out of its own lips as it tried to bite its way through.

Cannon swapped the knife over to his left hand, ripped open the Velcro securing his holster, and pulled out his pistol. He pushed the muzzle against the dead man’s forehead and pulled the trigger. As the shot rang out, the zombie slumped to the ground. Cannon shook off the grip, prizing the last couple of stubborn fingers free with the tip of his knife. The zombie’s body dangled slightly, suspended by the arm snagged in the wire. What was left of its head tipped back and the mush from its cranium sloshed onto the ground.

As soon as it had fallen away a new zombie filled the gap. Unperturbed by the fate of its predecessor, the replacement zombie slipped its ragged fingers through the mesh, mauling the air, desperate to squeeze through.

Cannon holstered his weapon and bent down on one knee. He slipped his knife down to the next link and cursed the damage he was causing to the blade as he hacked through the wire.

* * *

“But what about Ali?” Ryan protested.

“He’s obviously capable of looking after himself,” Cahz said. “Have you got the handbrake on yet?”

Cahz was leaning against the bumper, holding the car at a stop. This was the second vehicle he and Ryan had broken into and lined up facing the fence. From his position at the front of the car, Cahz was looking directly at the fenced-out zombies. “They’re getting very excited.”

“There’s got to be something we can do for him,” Ryan complained.

“The best thing we can do is get rescued,” Cahz said. “We get rescued and then we take a nice safe helicopter ride to go pick up your friend. Now hurry up. The natives are getting restless.”

The zombies on the other side of the flimsy wire were shaking it with tremendous force. Cahz guessed the fence had been weakened by the years of weathering, but it looked like the undead in their frenzy might just be able to tear it down themselves.

“I’ve cut away about half the links,” Cannon reported as he rejoined the others. “But I daren’t do any more than that in case they break through.”

“I was just thinking that,” Cahz confessed.

Ryan got out of the driver’s seat and wiped chunks of shattered safety glass from his backside. “Next time I’ll remember to put in the passenger window.”

“You not going to pump up those tyres?” Cannon asked.

“No point,” Ryan said. “I doubt they’ll take any pressure. They’ve been sitting on the rims for god knows how long. The rubber will be cracked and perished.”

“So no chance of getting one of these started and driving out of here?” Cannon asked, a note of hopefulness in his voice.

“Sitting idle like this for years? The battery will be dead for a start. Hell, I was out of town for a week and had to dry the spark plugs on my old Nissan before she’d turn over,” Ryan said. “That’s even if they had fuel.” He nodded at the forced open flap to the tank. “What we haven’t siphoned will have evaporated dry by now.”

“Okay, I get the point,” Cannon snapped.

“You really know fuck all about cars,” Ryan said.

Cannon puffed up his quite considerable chest. “Yeah, well, we’ll see how smug you are next time you’ve got a diaper change. And besides, you’ve left your gun on the passenger seat.”

“Shit,” Ryan cursed, checking the small of his back as he looked at the discarded weapon.

“All right, you two,” Cahz said. “We need to focus on this.” He put a hand on each of his companion’s shoulders. “On my signal, you two whip off the handbrakes and roll the cars at the fence.

I’ll be by the fence thinning them out. By the time you guys catch up to me it should be clear enough to jimmy open that back door and get inside.” Cahz pointed at the back entrance to the shop they were aiming for. “Once we’re inside, Ryan leads the way out. We keep going until we pick up the railway line. It’s four blocks west of here.”

Ryan was slipping the gun into the back of his belt and nodded silently.

“Show me that gun,” Cahz said.

Ryan pulled the gun out, barrel aimed at Cahz.

“Fuckin’ hell!” Cahz battered the muzzle away. “Don’t point it at me.”

“You asked to see it,” Ryan said.

“See it—not get shot by it.” Cahz looked at the side of the weapon. “Just checking the safety’s on; don’t want you blowing your ass cheeks off.”

Ryan frowned and tucked the gun away.

“Once we’re on the line it should make our lives easier. It reduces the directions the W.D.s can come from.” Cahz picked up the crowbar and passed it to Cannon. “I guess you’ll be able to take that door off its hinges without this,” he joked, “but to save time you’d best have it.”

“Want me to carry anything?” Ryan asked.

“Just her.” Cahz pointed at the baby in the makeshift papoose.

* * *

Cahz took a sip on the tube from his camel pack. The warm water quenched his thirst but did nothing to shift the sour taste in his mouth. He took a reassuring glance round at the others. Both men were in position, ready to push the first car, Ryan by the handbrake, Cannon at the rear.

Cahz cleared his throat.

“Three, two, one, go!”

Cahz started firing.

Over the shots he could hear Cannon and Ryan grunting as they battled to get the car moving. Seconds later the first car careered into the fence and ploughed through. The fence screeched as the wires buckled and snapped down the fault line. A whole section of mesh popped off from its posts and wrapped around the front of the vehicle. Those zombies pressed in against the wire were hauled off their feet and thrown back, but the mass of dead bodies were too thick for the car to make much headway. The car ground to a halt only a few feet past the fence, leaving a gap twice as wide for the dithering zombies to shamble through.

Cahz kept firing, felling as many as he could and hoping he could stem the flow of zombies trickling past the stalled car.

With a loud crash the second car tore through the other section of fence.

Cahz reloaded, but before he could fire again he heard the bark of Cannon’s support weapon.

Looking round, he could see the second car had also failed to block the alleyway.

Cannon stood with the butt of his machine gun tight against his shoulder, taking well-aimed bursts at the encroaching zombies. With each burst, one, sometimes two, zombies would topple over, but Cahz knew the recoil made the weapon wildly inaccurate even at these short distances.

“Ryan!” he shouted. “Grab the crowbar! Get that door open!”

“What?!” Ryan shouted back, unable to hear Cahz over the gunshots and the screams of his backpack-swaddled daughter.

“The door!” Cahz screamed between shots.

Ryan ran as fast as he could with the child on his back. He skidded to a halt next to Cannon, one hand behind his back awkwardly trying to steady the load. The crowbar was sticking out of a sheath in Cannon’s body armour like a ninja sword. Ryan grabbed it and whipped the crowbar free.

With the last few rounds in his second clip, Cahz floored the zombies between Ryan and the door.

Vaulting over the carpet of dead, Ryan leapt to the door and wedged the end of the crowbar into the narrow crack at the doorjamb.

Cahz loaded his third clip, careful to secure the empty back in its pouch. Although he’d been able to reload from Cannon’s belt of ammunition back in the office, he knew there’d be no chance of a top up, exposed like this in the middle of a horde.

“Get that door!” Cahz ordered.

“I can’t! The wood’s rotten! It keeps splitting!” Ryan called back as he dug the crowbar in again.

“Move!” Cannon bellowed and he swung round, pointing his weapon at Ryan.

“Shit,” Ryan gasped as he dived out of the doorway.

Cannon bounded towards the door as if it wasn’t there. Just a couple of strides away a burst of fire erupted from his gun and he twisted to barge the door full force with his shoulder. Splinters of wood flew from the devastated door and Cannon disappeared through the freshly made opening.