The Undead Day Nineteen (33 page)

Twenty Four

The drone is up. Charlie is ahead on the horse and the rest of us run knowing the fuckers are somewhere in front of us killing innocent people too stupid to board their fucking windows up and answering their doors to their blood covered penis lacking neighbours who are now zombies. Fucked up.

We follow Charlie who follows the blood trail and we wait for the drone to find them. We run and we follow and we wait. The flash of anger I had before simmers to cook slowly with heat building but there’s an itch at the back of my mind that something is wrong, very wrong. Only I’m too stupid to figure out what it is and put it down to the lack of coffee for which I would seriously consider chopping a finger or a toe off for. Not my penis though. I like my penis. I like all my fingers and toes too but I really like coffee.

There is an almost hypnotic feeling created by running at a certain speed. Not sprinting but jogging. The rhythm of my feet on the ground and the motion of my body swaying left to right while moving ahead. It’s like a mild trance and suddenly I can see why all those people used to go running. I suppose they started doing it to get fit but it’s strangely addictive and I think the fitness would end up being a by-product to the feeling of well-being.

That itch is still there and I don’t like these houses. I don’t like the windows that look like eyes. I don’t like being in these streets. I don’t like the cars parked up and left at the sides of the roads or the gardens that had manicured lawns that are now growing out with tufts of weeds poking through. I don’t like it. I don’t like it. I’m irritated and getting worse by the minute. I need to run faster and find them.

‘Mr Howie, I have a crawler…’

Fuck yes. Contact and about time. I sprint harder, building to pump my legs to reach the big junction to take the right turn in time to see Jess rearing up to slam her front legs down on the body that explodes with a spray of blood and gore that coats the road surface in all directions. Charlie spurs the horse on a few steps then round with perfectly poised balance to look down at the mess they created.

I reach the body with Dave and Mo at my sides. Everyone else only seconds behind. A woman but with her ears and nose bitten from her face to show ragged holes instead. Her fingers are gone. All of them. Her thumbs too. Her toes are gone. Bitten clean off. Her knee caps bitten off. Her stomach bitten through so the innards trail behind her.

‘Mr Howie,’ Charlie calls. I look up to see her next to a big white van smeared with blood. I stride closer and the heat of the pot of rage simmering in my gut turns up several degrees.

She died after

I snap my head back to the corpse and sprint back to turn her over to see the red bloodshot eyes staring lifelessly up at me.

The itch grows and I stare round as the others read the words on the van before turning to view the sides of the street as though we’re being watched.

‘Could that happen?’ Blinky asks, her voice steady and showing the high level of fitness she has, ‘could they do that?’

A buzzing noise above me. I look up to see the drone lowering down to hover over the corpse before moving gracefully to the side to land with a gentle thud, a second later and the back doors to Roy’s van burst open as Nick runs up with Reginald behind him.

‘What does it say?’ Nick asks, squinting at the smeared letters.

‘She died after,’ I reply.

‘Reggie,’ Blinky says, ‘could that happen?’

‘Her eyes are red,’ Reginald says, his nerves gone as he squats to look closer at the body, ‘she was turned.’

‘Yeah but, like…could those cunts do that? Could they turn her after?’

‘One drop of blood or saliva is all it takes, Patricia,’ Reginald says tightly, ‘the first wound inflicted would have infected her.’

‘You getting anything on the drone?’ Paula asks, bent over to rest her hands on her knees with the rifle on the ground next to her.

‘Nothing,’ Nick says, ‘too many streets and we’ve got to go too high to see anything but then we can’t see any details and the drone ain’t fast enough…batteries almost gone anyway.’

‘Thought we had another battery pack?’ I ask.

‘We have, I’ll change it now but that only gives us another twenty minutes…’

‘We have to go faster,’ I say.

‘Mr Howie,’ Reginald says standing up, ‘my advice is to stop and pull out. Take these people to the fort…’

‘What?’ I ask.

‘You fucking nuts or something?’ Nick asks, flushed with the same simmering anger I can feel inside.

‘What the fuck?’ Blowers snaps, spitting to the side.

‘Charlotte, go further up the road and look closely,’ Reginald says, ignoring the comments thrown at him.

‘Mr Howie?’ Charlie asks.

‘Do what he says,’ I reply, ‘Reggie?’

‘We are being baited,’ Reginald says, ‘we baited yesterday and today the compliment is being returned but to what end I do not know.’

‘Let ‘em,’ Blowers says, ‘fuck ‘em, we’ll win.’

‘Yep,’ Nick says, ‘fuck ‘em, we should go faster.’

‘Into what?’ Reginald asks and in that second I can see he’s getting used to the hard tones of everyone around him itching for the fight. His nerves are gone. His
oh gosh
manner evaporated to leave a steady pair of eyes.

‘How many could they muster?’ Clarence asks.

‘A town of this size without warning?’ Reginald says, pausing as though he’s working it now but I’ll be buggered if he hasn’t already worked it out, ‘a couple of hundred at the absolute very most.’

‘Couple of hundred?’ Nick asks.

‘That’s not a threat to us, Reggie,’ Blowers says.

‘
Up here,’
Charlie calls though the radio. We turn and run down the road as Marcy jogs back to the Saxon to bring it up and Meredith swooshes off to get there first. ‘Careful where you stand,’ Charlie adds as I see Meredith stop dead to sniff.

It starts with the woman’s nose, then one of her ears then the other then eight fingers and two thumbs followed by ten toes all laid in a long line down the middle of the road. Gruesome and almost unreal in the way it’s so neatly placed.

‘Fuck,’ I mutter, walking down the line of body parts but truth be told we’ve all seen too much death now to be that bothered by the sight. I pause and look back to the corpse then down to the stubby little toes. We’re too desensitised to be repulsed. We’re too far gone now, too deep in the game but that itch and the irritation with it grows all the same.

‘Indeed,’ Reginald says, walking down the line to the end, ‘indeed indeed.’

‘Reggie? We safe to keep going?’

He looks up at me, his eyes blinking behind his glasses, ‘you ask me that after yesterday?’

I nod and shrug and he turns to look down the road, ‘it knows we are behind it,’ he says as though talking to himself but I get the impression he’s doing it for our benefit, ‘it doesn’t have enough to pose a real and viable threat yet it wants us to follow the trail.’

‘Maybe it’s got more than we think it has,’ Paula says.

‘We cannot catch it before it turns every person in this town,’ Reginald says, turning back to face us and placing his hands neatly behind his back. ‘It knows where they are. We do not know where they are. We are being baited but I do not know why. It feels…no, no no no,’ he stops and frowns, ‘it gave us opposition yesterday because it thought it knew it was luring us and this is similar but not the same. Yesterday was infancy, today is childlike. Follow the trail. The breadcrumb trail. Chase me but to what end? I do not know the reasons, Mr Howie but my role is to advise and my counter move would be to not do what it wants.’

‘We did what it wanted yesterday, Reg’ Cookey says.

‘But our goal was the higher objective and please do not shorten my name even more. Reggie is bad enough but Reg? Really?’

‘Aye,’ I say and nothing more.

‘Ah,’ Reginald says with a sigh, ‘it appears you will proceed anyway. If that is the case then be guarded and be vigilant.’

‘We will,’ I say, realising he’s worked us out a lot more than I gave him credit for, ‘Charlie, you confident that horse can get you out of the shit?’

‘Yes,’ she says quickly.

‘How confident?’

‘Very, Mr Howie. Let me go further…’

‘On you,’ I nod.

She stares politely, ‘I’m terribly sorry, what does that mean again?’

‘Means yes,’ Blowers says, ‘Boss? You sure about this?’

‘You heard Reggie, we are not doing what it expects.’

‘Oh good God I did not mean to send Charlotte out on her own,’ Reginald balks.

‘Find them. Report back. Do not engage,’ I say.

‘Sir,’ she grins with determination, turning the horse round on the spot.

‘Keep the drone over her,’ I say, ‘Charlie is our marker…’

‘The drone can’t keep up with a horse, Boss,’ Nick says.

‘Are you counter baiting?’ Reginald asks bringing everyone to a sudden silence.

‘No,’ I reply with a look to Dave, ‘we’re doing advanced forward recce pathfinding.’

‘What?’ Clarence asks.

‘Remember that, Dave?’ I ask him with a smile.

‘Yes, Mr Howie.’

‘Outside the police station wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, Mr Howie.’

‘Ah those were the good old days eh? Me and you chopping up slow zombies by day and hiding by night next to a warm fire with a good book…’

‘We never did that, Mr Howie.’

‘Yeah I know, I was being ironic.’

‘I am autistic, Mr Howie. Irony is lost on me.’

I go to reply then stop and scratch my head as Paula frowns and Clarence blinks while we all try and work out if Dave was being ironic or not.

‘Can I go?’ Charlie asks, keen as mustard to be galloping about the streets.

‘Yep, do not engage…Charlie…do not engage…’

‘Do not engage,’ Charlie yells back, ‘got it.’

‘Blinky?’ I ask once Charlie is out of earshot, ‘she’s capable right?’

‘Hard as fucking nails, Mr Howie, Sir.’

‘Good, right…everyone up for a bit more jogging?’

Twenty Five

It’s not that the axe is too heavy but it’s the weight being all at one end. The rifle is balanced but it’s long and cumbersome. A polo mallet is tethered to the wrist and designed to flex to achieve maximum power when striking the ball. The axe is rigid and untethered. Not that her grip is weak by any degree. Years of polo and hockey have served to strengthen the muscles in her forearms and given her a grip almost as strong as Blinky’s, and Blinky’s grip was legendary. Clarence wouldn’t be able to pull a stick from Blinky’s closed fist.

The axe needs a tether and a sling and the saddle needs to be adapted to be able to hold both weapons securely. Not this saddle though. This was Neal’s saddle and worn to the grooves of his backside. Which weapon to hold on the move? The rifle has the firepower but it’s almost impossible to ride and fire at the same time unless you’re going in a straight line and can clamp your thighs to hold you tight. The axe is good but again the balance is wrong when trying to hold it and ride the horse at the same time.

In the end she slings the rifle to her back and leaves the axe hanging through the looped buckle on the side of the saddle. She doesn’t know what Neal used the buckle for. Maybe he’d adapted the sling of his rifle to hook onto it but then that would mean the rifle would bang against the horses side. As it is, the axe shaft knocks into Jess’s side but a hand on the head holds it still while they build speed down the road and she can feel the change in the horse now given the freedom to go faster and unleash some of the energy bunched in her dense muscles.

At the end of the road she slows to look round the junctions and spots the thick pool of blood lying distinct several metres into the junction on the left.
This way. Follow me.
She spurs on but without spurs. Jess doesn’t need spurs. She just needs a gentle touch of heels and a click of the tongue to punch on and gain speed.

Halfway down the street she spots the corpse lying in the road ahead, ‘easy,’ she murmurs with the gentlest of pulls on the reins that sends the signal to Jess to slow down. The horse responds. The smell of the body filling her nose that makes her toss her head back and snort with angry eyes that bulge from the offensive scent. ‘Easy,’ Charlie leans forward to pat Jess’s long neck, ‘sshhhh.’ Jess settles. The tone of Charlie soothing the fear and the instinct to flee.

Charlie brings the rifle round to get it snug into her side with her right arm holding the weight and her hand wrapped round the trigger guard. She stops several metres back from the body and listens. Nothing to be heard. She scans. Nothing to be seen. She feels Jess beneath her and senses the horse is afraid of the body but doesn’t detect anything else.

The body was once a man but now it’s a lump of meat barely holding form as something that was once human. The face is gone. Torn off to show the layers of skin underneath and the cheekbones showing through. Ears and nose gone. The arms and legs have been ripped from the torso and left in a line going across the pavement to point at the house with the smashed in door smeared in blood.

Edging closer and she can see the genitals of the man stuffed in his open mouth and the red bloodshot eyes open but unseeing.

‘Mr Howie, body in the street. The limbs have been detached and point into a house that appears to have been accessed recently.’

‘Understood, coming to you. Any contact?’

‘No contact, no sign of them.’

‘Any noise from the house?’

‘Nothing, Mr Howie. Shall I keep going or wait here?’

‘Keep going. Find them.’

‘Will do.’

A nudge of her heels, a click of the tongue and split second later Jess is powering on to get past the stinky body and the stinky blood. Charlie slings the rifle and stares on as the lure of the hunt beckons. The horse breathing easily beneath her. The reins in her hands. The position of height and a thing done by man for thousands of years. Hunting on horseback using the power of the animal to close the distance to the prey ahead.

Fifty metres on and two small side streets leading off either side of the wide main road. Again she has to slow down to look for the trail. Instinct tells her to keep on the main road but if the infection is seeking the survivors then it could be following any manner of route. She goes to the left, peering down and round and up at the parked vehicles left abandoned further into the small road. No blood. She circles round then over to the mouth of the other small junction bordered on both sides by low solid panel fencing as Jess tosses her head and snorts.

‘Easy,’ Charlie murmurs, her eyes fixed on the road trying to find the trail. Jess back steps nervously, lifting her feet high and looking for a way out. Charlie senses the fear and twitches the reins to hold the horse steady. Something must be in that side road. She clicks and pushes Jess further into the junction with her own senses thrumming to detect any sound or motion.

They come from both sides. Two men that go up and over the low solid panel fences to charge snarling at the horse who bursts on to run deeper into the side road as another runs out from a garden ahead to race down the middle towards them.

Charlie’s heart ramps to the fight at hand. On the field now. The other players are going for the ball and she lifts her backside from instinct to ride the horse’s motion. Her left hand gripping the reins and her right flicking the axe up from the buckle that lifts high to be gripped on the shaft and twirled over so the head sinks towards the ground. ‘COME ON,’ Charlie shouts, her voice booming into the quietness of the street that makes Jess focus as the fear slides away to the power of the game. Seventy kilos of a freshly turned adult female against seven hundred kilos of a riot trained horse with a bad temper and the end result was written in the stars from the second the infected woman chose this course of conduct.

The axe swishes, a polo mallet ready to slam home. The horse glares, chomping at the bit as her legs open the stride. One in front and two behind. Charlie’s eyes glare unblinking and fixed. Her lips pulling back with a pulsing energy that radiates from every pore of her body.

‘INTO HER,’ Charlie’s words are not needed but she screams them anyway. She screams to vent that instant surge of pure fury coursing through her veins. Horse and human meet. The undead opening her mouth for a bite and finding a head battering her to the side that sends her spinning as the axe swishes with a perfectly timed swoosh to cleave through a skull that explodes with a burst of brain and bone. On they go, riding through the kill and building speed to clear distance from the two behind.

The wide junction at the end looms and in that space she eases the speed to turn the horse who pivots round to face back down. A pause. Jess snorts and lifts her front legs to go. She wants to go. She wants to charge them down. Charlie holds, letting the energy bunch up for the thrill of the explosion of power. ‘COME ON,’ she flicks the reins and that’s all Jess needs. She bursts on, legs working to stride out.

Two incoming. Two males both with heavy blood stains on their groins and both bigger and heavier than the woman now lying dead in the road with her head split open.

Charlie roars again into the air, galloping with her heart thrilling as she rides the horse who holds that straight line.

They charge at each other. The infected men side by side and Jess staring at the gap between the two. Charlie eases back on the reins, a gentle tug that tells Jess they are not going to power through them this time. This is something else. Jess can sense it. She feels the instinct of the play about to happen but she can stop on a sixpence.
Let me have speed, let me use my power.
The counter instinct flows, Charlie lets her have the lead.

They close down in a few seconds that seem to stretch for eternity. The men snarling with bloody strands of saliva dangling from open mouths that stretch wide as they howl and snarl with clawed hands and eyes blazing red. The axe spins over, turning in a hand that times the point of impact. Everything on instinct now. No time for words or instructions or to twitch the reins and alter course. The commitment is here and at the last second Jess shows she can truly stop on a sixpence. She anchors on. Charlie’s thighs lock tight. She rears up. Charlie holds the rein and lifts higher to ride the rise beneath her. Jess’s front feet strike the man on the right, twisting as she lifts to give seven hundred kilos of weight to a body that cannot withstand such an impact and as he falls so Charlie brings the axe down from the apex of the swing. The blade bites deep into the chest and her grip holds true as the horse takes her on and through the man who gets split in two and sinks down with his ribcage splintered open.

Three down. Three kills and Jess turns quickly, dancing round as Charlie glares to check all three stay down. Jess makes sure they do and moves to trample the soft flesh with hooves that pop heads open.

‘
CONTACT CONTACT…THREE DOWN…’

‘COMING…WHERE ARE YOU?’

A flash of movement and another streak of a blur of movement as an infected runs sprinting from a house at the end of the street, running to gain the main road and away out of sight.

‘ON,’ Charlie spurs Jess who spots the prey to be hunted. ‘COME ON…’

A trot to a canter to a gallop in a few strides and Jess holds the middle of the road, watching the man run to the right side.

Charlie bursts from the side street onto the main road, in her peripheral vision she spots the team running towards her with the three vehicles behind them. No time to stop. No time for orders from Mr Howie. He told her to find them and she lets Jess take the corner to open back up to chase the man sprinting down the pavement on the right side of the road.

‘GET THAT FUCKER CHARLIE,’
Howie’s voice urging her on. His desire to kill them reaching out to drive her into the fight. His confidence in her hardening her own resolve even greater than it was.

‘MEREDITH WITH YOU CHARLIE…’
Another voice in her ear, she can’t tell who but she flicks her head to see the dog streaking low to join the hunt.

There is only this. This second when every tiny movement counts and you can’t think about it. You don’t have time. Ride the horse. Feel the motion with instinct from your gut.
Let me carry you, do not drive me.
Charlie relaxes that tiny bit, letting the horse have her way.
More. Let me run.
Charlie gives another fraction of freedom and if Jess had speed before she takes it more now and it builds as Charlie settles into the motion, gripping the reins one handed.
You are too high.
Charlie lowers her body closer to the horse.
Lower.
She lowers more, the axe held out to her right.
LOWER. LET US WORK.

Charlie grunts and sinks down like a jockey on the flat of the final furlough. The change is palpable. A sense of a great animal doing every inch of work to hold herself balanced with the weight central on her back. Charlie can sense Jess’s irritation at the saddle. She doesn’t like it. She wants it gone but you can’t remove a saddle mid gallop. She senses something else too and looks over her right shoulder to see Meredith veering between two parked cars to gain the pavement in a direct line behind the prey.

They hold the road. The dog takes the pavement. Charlie is part of, but not within, the thing that is happening between the two animals.

The infected is fast. He had distance but the fastest man cannot ever hope to outrun a horse or a dog and as the houses on the left end so he veers out to cross the road to vault the low fence to the town’s playing fields of multi-use pitches with bi-functioning posts used as football and rugby goals. Open flat land with well-tended turf and the infected doesn’t stand a chance.

Jess veers behind him, her eyes fixed on the fence as Meredith sprints at her side and together they rise from power given from back legs that lift front legs to clear the fence and land easy mid-stride the other side. Charlie feels the lift and the thrill of it is immense. The surging rise and the drop like going fast over a bridge or the drop on a rollercoaster ride. Then they’re on grass, on turf, on a natural surface that gives a grip that cannot be beaten.

Dog and horse equal in speed and it’s like the man is standing still. There is nowhere for him to go. He doesn’t turn to look but runs on as Jess gives another burst of speed that slams him to the side to be taken by the dog already in flight. Meredith latches on and lets the momentum carry her forward taking the mouthful of throat with her. She lands and turns so fast she can see the undead sinking down with sprays of arterial blood jetting from his ruined neck. Jess eases the speed to turn and face back to the dog standing over her kill. Her head tosses. Her feet dragging clods of earth up. Meredith spins round again, her whole body showing the direction of the thing she sees on the far side of the fields.

‘Got him,’
Charlie rushes the words out, her heart still thrilling. It looked like the horse slammed the man into the path of the dog who was already leaping up to take him down. It was so fast. A blur in her mind. They were running almost flat out. Jess slammed him. The dog took him. That’s not possible. It’s not. It couldn’t have happened. It was fluke. The horse struck him and Meredith took him down. It was the speed of reaction instead of a planned series of moves.

‘Well done, where are you?’

‘Playing fields,’
Charlie pants, ‘
down the road on the left…there are more. I can see them on the other side of the fields.’