The Undead. The First Seven Days (73 page)

Eventually, they hear banging noises from the corridor ahead of Howie and McKinney.
 
‘Charlie to Alpha, we are approaching your position now, be aware, be aware.’
  ‘Roger that Charlie, acknowledged.’
 
The noises increase as Big Chris and several of his men run into view from a side entrance, each of them carrying large items and boxes in their hands; their weapons strapped across their backs or shoulders.
  ‘There were loads of them up here,’ Chris shouts, as they draw closer.
  ‘Are you all okay?’ Howie asks.
  ‘Yeah, no injuries, bloody close call though. We went into a wrong room and it was packed, I mean fucking packed with them. They couldn’t get out, until we opened the bloody doors then they just started pouring out of everywhere.’ Chris answers, as they stop by the stairwell doors.
  ‘Did you get everything?’ Howie asks.
  ‘Nope, we have a load more to get yet. Can we borrow two of your blokes to cover us, while we carry this lot out,’ Big Chris asks.
  ‘Dave, do you want to go with Jamie? Me and McKinney can wait here.’
  ‘Okay, Mr Howie,’ Dave answers as he and Jamie go down the stairwell ahead of the group, leaving McKinney and Howie on the second floor.
  Several minutes pass in silence as they wait for the group to come back.
  ‘Looks like they got them all,’ Howie mutters.
  ‘Yep, erm… would you mind if I had a smoke, Mr Howie?’ McKinney asks politely.
  ‘Smoking in a hospital? You’ll get in trouble for that, mate,’ Howie jokes.
  ‘Oh, okay, I can wait,’ McKinney answers.
  ‘I was joking mate, crack on if you want.’
  ‘Thanks, do you want one?’ He offers and Howie is very tempted, despite having stopped smoking before the zombie invasion.
  ‘No, thanks mate, if I start now I will never bloody stop and I’m already too unfit for all this running about.’ Howie says, will power winning over temptation.
  McKinney lights up and Howie smells the smoke wafting over, further tempting him. They hear the others coming up the stairs.
  ‘Smoking in a hospital! You’ll get in trouble for that,’ Big Chris calls out, as he walks off.
  ‘That’s what I said,’ Howie mutters quietly and waits in position, until they come back past them again, carrying equipment and boxes.
  ‘I think it’s pretty clear up here now - how was the front?’ Chris asks, as he moves past them again.
  ‘Quiet when we left, no sign of them anywhere near us,’ Howie answers.

Darren Smith grips the GPMG from his position as look-out on the Saxon, slowly moving left to right, looking for movement. He is completely unaware of the infection inside him alerting all the hosts in the area to their location.

The main road runs left to right beyond the car park in front of them and the building line is beyond the road. Big, tall office blocks are mostly joined together to form a continuous line, but with some walkways, alleys and side streets connecting the main road to the hospital area.
  Blowers, Cookey, Graves, Tucker and Hewitt are stretched out in a line across the entrance, smoking cigarettes, while watching the perimeter.
  ‘They’re taking a while,’ Cookey calls over to Blowers.
  ‘Probably had to get a lot of stuff,’ Blowers replies.
  ‘CONTACT,’ Darren shouts from behind them.
  ‘Where Smithy?’ Blowers shout back as they all start looking more intently.
  ‘Building line, small alley off to the left,’ he shouts back, as a single adult undead slowly emerges from the shade.
  ‘There’s only one of them,’ Hewitt calls out.
  ‘Who wants him?’ Blowers offers.
  ‘Let me try for a head shot,’ Cookey says, as he raises his assault rifle and aims down the sights.
  ‘You’ll never get him from this distance,’ Hewitt says, as Cookey pauses for a few seconds then slowly squeezes the trigger.

The rifle fires and the bullet flies through the air straight at the zombie and straight past him -going into the wall, a few feet beyond.
  ‘Ah, fuck it,’ Cookey says, as the rest start laughing.
  ‘Let me try,’ Hewitt calls out and repeats the same action as Cookey, aiming at the shuffling zombie’s head and firing, after a few seconds pause.
  ‘Ha, you fucking losers,’ Blowers laughs as the shot misses. ‘I’ll show you how it’s done.’
Blowers takes a few seconds to line the shot up and fires the rifle, the bullet just clips the zombie on his upper arm making him spin round and bang into the wall behind him.
  ‘I fucking got him,’ Blowers exclaims.
  ‘No, you didn’t, he’s still coming,’ Darren shouts over, as the zombie turns back towards them and continues shuffling.
  ‘My turn,’ Tucker says and lines the zombie’s head up between the sights and fires. The round strikes the zombie in the centre of the forehead and the back of his skull explodes in a pink cloud, as he slumps backwards onto the ground.
  ‘Fucking hell, Tucker - well done mate,’ Hewitt shouts out.
  ‘Did you bloody see that?’ Tucker’s mouth drops open as he lowers the rifle and looks over at the others.
  ‘Good shot, mate,’ Blowers says.
  ‘He was a lot closer though,’ Cookey adds.
  ‘Fuck off, he was shuffling slowly, he did about four steps in total and he got knocked back by Blowers’ shot,’ Tucker shouts.
  ‘Nah, he was a lot closer, almost halfway, I’d say,’ Hewitt joins in, laughing.
  ‘He fucking was not, he was still in the same place,’ Tucker yells back, offended.
  ‘They’re joking mate, it was an awesome shot,’ Blowers says. ‘Even if he was a lot closer,’ he adds.
  ‘Oh, piss off, you wankers,’ Tucker pouts.
  ‘OH SHIT! TO THE RIGHT,’ Darren shouts alarmed, as a massed horde start shuffling into view, coming from a side street to the right.

‘That’s a lot of zombies,’ Cookey mutters, looking at the front of the thick horde.
  ‘LEFT SIDE, TOO,’ Darren shouts again and the lads look to see another horde coming out of a side street.
  ‘MAIN ROAD TO THE RIGHT,’ Darren shouts again as another huge horde come into view on the road they had just driven along a few minutes ago.
  ‘This is going to get interesting,’ Blowers says. ‘Let’s pull back a bit, so we are out of the firing line,’ and they pull back towards the Saxon.
  ‘That’s enough lads,’ Darren calls out when he’s sure he can fire at the hordes over the top of them.
  ‘Oh well, best get on with it then. Smithy, you take that lot on the road to the right, we’ll take the other side street to the right, they’re both closer than the left side.’
  ‘Okay mate,’ Darren says and turns the heavy machine gun to face into the horde and opens up on them.

The GPMG bursts to life, spewing rounds into the front of the horde who start dropping instantly.
  Blowers and the rest start firing single shots into the front of the horde coming from the right side street; the effect is less dramatic than the GPMG, but they still start to wither away at the front  of the horde.

_________________________________________

Extract from Howie’s Journal:

The infection watches through simultaneously through Darren’s eyes and the eyes of the hosts as they start towards the resistors.

The weapons are doing their deadly work already and many hosts are being cut down. The infection has the whole area packed with undead hosts but the losses are too great already and it knows they will be cut to shreds, before they get anywhere near the hospital.

_________________________________________

‘Fuck me, they’re moving faster,’ Blowers shouts, unheard over the constant firing of the machine gun behind him and the assault rifles to both sides.

The hordes had suddenly increased their pace, not by much, but there is a definite increase from the slow shuffling to an almost normal walking pace.
  ‘Fuck it, they’re getting faster,’ Cookey yells out.
  ‘I just said that,’ Blowers shouts back as they continue to fire into the hordes, and, instead of picking their shots carefully, they now fire directly into the front of the crowd, hoping that any shot will drop them or slow them down enough to buy time.
 

Inside the hospital, at the rear stairwell on the second floor, the thick walls and dividing rooms suppress the sounds of firing from the front of the building, as Howie and McKinney hold their position, waiting for the others to load more equipment and medicines into the truck.
  ‘I never liked hospitals,’ McKinney remarks.
  ‘A lot of people don’t, mate,’ Howie replies.
  ‘Too clean and sterile and full of sick people.’
  ‘True, but where else should the sick people go?’ Howie asks.
  ‘I spent ages in them, when my mum got sick - different hospitals, all over the place,’ McKinney says.
  ‘What was wrong with her?’ Howie asks.
  ‘Heart problems, she died a few months ago,’ McKinney says, quietly.
  ‘Oh, mate - I’m really sorry about that,’ Howie says.
  ‘Thanks, Mr Howie, but it was probably for the best, got to be better than going out in all this mess and turning into one of them.’
  ‘Yeah maybe, still, tough thing to have to deal with though.’
  ‘Yeah, Dad didn’t cope very well, started drinking a lot and just went downhill,’ McKinney says, in a soft voice.
  ‘That’s awful, mate, but I guess grief will do that.’
  ‘Yeah, I guess,’ McKinney replies. ‘How do you think the others are getting on out front?’ He adds, trying to change the subject.
  ‘I bet Blowers is taking the piss out of Cookey and Hewitt is smoking a shit load of cigarettes,’ Howie says, as McKinney laughs, a little forced, but at least he laughs.

Malcolm bursts through the doors behind them, panting from running up the stairs.
  ‘Lads, there’s shit loads of firing coming from the front, you’d better get back,’ he says, as Howie and McKinney run down the stairs and back along the corridor towards the main entrance.

The sounds of the GPMG and the assault rifles get louder as they approach. They burst outside into the bright sunshine and the sight of several hordes walking at a steady pace towards them. Most of them are already halfway across the road and getting closer to the edge of the car park.
  ‘They’ve got faster again,’ Blowers shouts, as Howie gets to his side.
  ‘I can see. Shit! Dave still has the radio,’ Howie says as he and McKinney start firing into the encroaching hordes.

The ground is littered with bodies torn apart by the constant fire rate, but the supply of zombies seems endless.
  Darren moves round to start on the hordes pouring in from the side streets and alleys to the left; tracer fire flashing through the air and shiny spent casings jingling onto the ground.
  Within minutes, they reach the edge of the car park and are soon starting to cross.

Darren adjusts again and concentrates on the ones getting closest, bursting them apart, with the large rounds ripping into them.
  ‘MAGAZINE,’ Darren yells, as the machine gun clicks empty.
  ‘Fuck it! Focus on the ones getting close,’ Howie yells, as they start shooting into the car park.
  Dave and Jamie come running round from the side of the hospital and see the immense crowds surging across the road and car park towards the hospital. Jamie runs to join the others, switching from his sniper rifle to the assault weapon on his back. Dave runs to the rear of the Saxon and climbs in, going straight to one of the compartments and pulling out a canvas bag. He then jumps down and runs round to stand behind the others. Reaching into the bag, he pulls out a hand grenade, pulls the pin and throws the grenade high into the air. It spins and lands in a cluster of cars.
  ‘GET DOWN.’ Dave’s voice booms out as they all drop down onto the ground.

An immense explosion rips the air apart, followed by several more as the fuel tanks of the vehicles explode from the shrapnel and the heat and fire of the grenade. Chunks of metal fly off into the air, taking out more of the undead in the car park and a huge fireball scorches up into the sky as the fuel burns up.

Dave gets back to his feet and throws another one at parked vehicles and the others all drop down again, covering their heads with their arms as the explosion booms out. Then the fuel tanks go again - creating another enormous fireball.
  The GPMG starts up again, after Darren changes the magazine, and then the zombie slaughter continues.
 
‘Alpha to Charlie, we have heavy contact, repeat… we have heavy contact, holding for now, how long will you be?’
  ‘Charlie to Alpha, a few minutes is all we need, keep holding them.’
 
Dave puts the radio back into his pocket and selects another hand grenade, this time throwing it directly onto the massed hordes coming across the main road. The effect is amazing as a large circle of zombies are suddenly thrown away from the blast, spinning and crashing into more of the undead around them. Dave keeps throwing the grenades, carefully selecting his spots to create the most damage.
  The combined efforts of the GPMG, the assault rifles and the grenades being thrown keep most of the zombies at bay, dropping huge numbers. The sides of the buildings, side streets and access points are thick with undead bodies walking towards them and, slowly they gain ground, inch by inch. The body count climbs swiftly higher and the zombies are forced to clamber and climb over their fallen comrades.
  Darren continues to fire, choosing the densest parts of the crowd to achieve the maximum amount of damage.