Undead at Heart (11 page)

In another respect it
felt like nothing more than a few minutes. Everything had happened so fast. He
was driving and then he started running and it seemed like he would never stop.

It felt strange to
just be walking now. Doreen had recovered well and was full of bluff and
bluster, with no sign of needing to walk slower. The path they were on cut
between two fields. One was full of some kind of
crop,
the other was grass with cows grazing, oblivious to anything else happening in
the world. They would take a mouthful of grass and then lift their heads and
gaze mournfully at the party walking past.

Tony walked in
silence. At the head of the group Doreen and Bert were keeping up a constant
stream of chatter with Dan and his apprentice. Tony had stayed at the back, not
wanting to take part. Sam hung back with him, and despite his reticence, Tony
was glad.

He didn’t know if she
was aware of his need for
isolation,
or if she was
lost in her own thoughts, but she didn’t say anything and he was glad of that
too.

He kept running over
the events of the afternoon, wondering what was going on. Was this really an
alien invasion? He couldn’t come up with any other answer. He ran over all the
things he had done and realised that he felt ashamed. He’d acted like a coward
and that didn’t fit with his image of himself at all. He’d just wanted to run
and hide and save himself. He remembered, as though it was months ago, the
exchange in the woods, and he wondered where Nicola was and how she and her
group were faring. He wondered if they’d seen the same walking machines as he
had and what she had done about it. He was sure she would have done more than
stand and stare in awe and horror. She would have been like Dave, he was sure.
She would have made plans and done her best to keep the people around her safe.
She wouldn’t have hung back and let everyone else take care of her.

For some reason,
Tony’s thoughts drifted, for the first time in a long time, to his mother.
Could it really have been so long? It seemed so very recent. She had always
taught him to be brave and strong. That was her mantra for him during her
illness. She never showed weakness and she didn’t want to see it from him
either. He knew that if she had seen him today she would have been disappointed
in him.

His father has been
weak. Maybe that was where Tony had got it from. Maybe he could blame his genes
for his need to run and hide. When his mum had become ill, his father had
retreated from both of them, leaving Tony as her partner in her sickness. His
father had always liked a drink, but when she started to go downhill he had
started drinking more and more. Tony thought of his earlier urge to give up and
climb inside a bottle of whisky and felt a hot blush creep up over his face. He
was just like his father and he found he hated himself for it.

He really did wonder
if Sam could read minds as he felt her slip her hand into his. He didn’t say
anything, didn’t even turn his head, but he gripped her fingers and held on as
if her hand was the rope that was keeping him from falling to his death.

“What I don’t
understand,” Tony realised that Dan had slowed down, allowing the group to pass
him so he could come and talk, “is why here? What is there here in the middle
of nowhere that those things – whatever they are – would find so important? I
mean, I could understand them attacking London, or New York or Washington, or
whatever, but why here?”

“Maybe they are
attacking all those places. How would we know?” Sam responded before Tony could
even process the question.

Dan nodded. “True.”

“And, after all,
that’s what they do in all the movies, so it has to be the case, doesn’t it?”

Dan gave a soft laugh
and nodded again. Tony couldn’t decide if he was jealous of the look Dan was
giving Sam, or of the fact that her brain still seemed to be working well
enough to not only
think
about their situation, but to
joke about it too.

“I wonder-.” Tony was
only aware he was going to speak when it happened. “I was driving down the road
and, well, I have to admit I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, but I’m sure I
saw a sign for an army base.”

Dan nodded. “Yeah,
there’s a few of them round here.
An army base, and an
airforce one too.
And, of course, Salisbury Plain isn’t a million miles
away from here. Why? What are you thinking?”

Tony wasn’t sure what
he was thinking. Something was rising from the depths of his brain and he was
still trying to make out the shape. “Well, it just occurred to me. If you were
going to attack somewhere, why would you start with a city? Okay, if you wanted
to just arrive here and kill everyone that would be great. You’ve got a dense
population of people and all that. Blow up London and you take out millions of
people in one go.” He could start to see where his thought was going and he
didn’t like it, but he kept going.

“But what if you
wanted to keep the people alive? Okay, you might lose one or two along the way;
collateral damage. But if you wanted to remove resistance and have the people
left behind, then you’d start by attaching the military targets.”

Dan was nodding and
the look of respect he gave Tony gave him an almost physical jolt which he
could feel run through his spine. “That makes sense. You take the enemy by
surprise, take out their weapons and their fighters, and then you just have the
ordinary population to deal with. You remove the initial resistance and also
the people who might be able to come up with a plan to fight back.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, that’s good,”
Sam interjected.

“Good?” asked Tony. “What’s
good about them coming in and wiping out anyone who could stop them?”

“Well, it means
they’re worried. They feel that the army, or the airforce, or whatever,
actually have the ability to harm them. They’re not coming in as an
overwhelming force unconcerned about what we might do to them in return.
They’re trying to take out any resistance before it can start because they know
it could stop them.”

“Okay, that makes
sense. That’s a good thing.” Dan smiled at her, but Tony no longer cared. His
train of thought had taken a different route.

“Yeah, that’s good. I
mean,
then
we just need to hole up, find somewhere
safe, and wait until our guys win. But, if they don’t, there’s something that
worries me.”

“What?”

“Why do they want all
the people? If they’re not here just to kill us all and take over the planet,
then what do they need us for?
Slaves?
Subjects?”
He glanced back over at the cows staring over at
them. ”Or food?”

After that they walked
in silence. There didn’t seem to be anything they could say to Tony’s question.
They now seemed to have some idea what was going on, maybe even an answer to
why those walkers hadn’t stopped to kill them, but without understanding the
bigger purpose there was nothing they could do. In the end Tony’s earlier
comment had been right. All they could do was
try
and
find somewhere safe and hope that the good guys won.

After Tony’s final
question, Dan had moved back to the front of the group, a sombre expression on
his face. She didn’t know if he would tell the others the conclusions they’d
come to, but Sam doubted it.

She slipped her hand
back into Tony’s, unsure just when that had become uncoupled, and they
continued to walk in silence.

The path twisted
between the fields, cutting south and then east as it followed the fields.

The farm appeared on
the horizon sooner than Tony had expected. He started to seriously doubt that
it was far enough away to have escaped the electro-pulse thing. It was a
cluster of buildings around a courtyard. Sheep were cropping grass in a field
next to one of the barns and a tractor stood silent in the centre of the yard.

As they grew closer,
Tony saw two dogs lying in the shade by the open door to what seemed to be the
farmhouse.

They passed through
the gate at the end of the path, Dan holding it for the party and shutting it
with a clang behind Tony and Sam. They all stopped at the edge of the yard and
waited, but no-one came out to greet them. The whole place seemed deserted.

Dan walked back
through to position himself at the front. “Hello?” he called.

There was no response.

The group walked
slowly into the courtyard, listening carefully but hearing nothing but silence.
Dan and Daz set off towards the house, the dogs rising to greet them, friendly
rather than threatening. The chef, the waitress – Tony thought he really should
learn their names – plus Debbie and her family, waited in the middle of the
yard, watching them. Tony decided not to just wait to be told what to do, but
to take some kind of action which wasn’t just running away.

With his screwdriver
gripped in his hand he approached the nearest barn. The large door was ajar,
but he could see nothing in the inner darkness. He glanced back and saw Sam was
following him, a few steps behind. He nodded to her and then stepped in through
the open door.

There was a smell of
rotting grass inside which made Tony wrinkle his nose and try to breathe
through his mouth. Some shafts of light were shooting through gaps in the roof and
walls, and Tony realised the barn was quite old and a little dilapidated. As
his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he made out large shapes in the room.
He raised his screwdriver protectively, and nearly yelped when he felt Sam
press against his back, but then realised that the huge metal shapes in front
of him were another tractor and a combine harvester. Around the sides were
smaller metal machines which Tony imaged could be attached to the tractor for
cutting grass and ploughing fields.

He stepped in further,
walking round the side of the harvester.

He jumped when Sam
called out, “Hello, anyone here? We’re friendly, don’t worry!”

There was no response.

The rounded the back
of the harvester and were faced with the rear wall of the barn. Tony could just
make out various tools – spades, hoes, axes – hanging from hooks on the wall.
He thought about replacing his screwdriver with some a little
more wieldy
, but decided to wait until they found the
farmers and ask them, rather than simply stealing.

He turned back to Sam,
who had followed him round. “Looks like there’s no-one h –”

He stopped,
mid-sentence, as a grating noise came from below the harvester.

He stepped back,
turned and grabbed an axe from the wall, then faced the source of the noise.

“Hello?” he called,
his voice shaking despite his best efforts to control it.

He crouched down and
squinted under the large metal machine. There was a two foot gap under this end
and he could see a hatch of some sort, which must lead down to a cellar.

He held the axe in
both hands and waited, as the hatch opened a little further.

A pale hand emerged
and thrust a stick out to keep the hatch open, and then the face of a young man
was looking out at him, fear etched on his face.

“Have they gone?” he
asked.

“Has who gone?” Tony
asked, crouching down to address the young man face to face. Even as he did so,
they heard a shout from outside. Tony jerked and fell back onto his bottom and
the man yelped. His face disappeared from the open trap-door and it slammed
after him. Sam could hear a bolt being thrown.

“What?” asked
Tony.
He looked from the hatch to where the shout had come
from and back again. Sam could tell he was torn between the two and felt
something akin to pride that he so obviously wanted to do something. She liked
Tony, but she had been slightly ashamed of him on a number of occasions
already. She had thought at first that he was strong, but then she started to
wonder if she’d been mistaken. Something seemed to have changed in him, though.
He had a sense of agency that had been missing, and she was pleased to see it.

She stepped back from
where she had been half-crouching behind him.

“I’ll go,” she said.
“You try and get him to come out again. Something’s happened here and I think
we need to know what it was.”

Tony had climbed back
to his feet and was wiping the dust from his trousers, and rubbing his bottom
where he had fallen onto it. It was a comical vision, watching him massage his
own behind, but Sam didn’t smile. Tony nodded and she quickly stepped around
him, around the side of the harvester and headed for the door.

The brightness of the
light stung her eyes, forcing her to blink and squint. She looked around and
saw that the others, Andy, Sandra, Charlotte, Debbie and Ryan were still
standing in the middle of the courtyard. Ryan was still holding onto the
handles of little Heidi’s pushchair. Of Dan and Darren there was no sign, but
all the others were looking towards the open door of the farmhouse.

She rushed over to
them. “What’s happened?”