Zombie Survival: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller Page 6

  But many had now made it into the farmyard. They did not, at the moment, appear to be interested in attacking the farmhouse. Once over the gate, they just wandered aimlessly upon the concrete, their heads cocked, their mouths hanging open, their hands dangling at their sides like the hands of dead men.

  Ted allowed his gaze to wander beyond the farmyard: to the path, to the fields, and to the woods beyond. He could see that the landscape was covered with these things, a massed crowd of them clogging the throat of the lane, thin figures tottering and staggering on the fields like scarecrows suddenly come to life, while the woods seem to move and writhe with infectious life, like a chunk of rotting meat that is alive with maggots. The sight was hypnotising, horrifying, terrifying.

  And then, as though in hideous affirmation of the true nature of these creatures, Ted saw two of them stop by the felled body of the figure whom Dave had decapitated. They bent down toward it – awkwardly at first, as though the simple act of bending their bodies was foreign to them – and then they fell to their knees by the body and gazed intently upon it. For a moment, Ted thought that they were enacting some weird kind of mourning for a fallen comrade. But then they held their hands toward the body, hooked their fingers into claws, and gouged into the shattered stump of the neck. They wormed and clawed into the foul, wet, broken flesh and then, with a sharp and eager action, tore a chunk each of the grey, foul matter off the stump of the neck and held it, dripping in their hands. Then, slowly, carefully, they brought the sickly mass up to their mouths and began to eat. Eagerly, they stuffed the mass into their gaping maws, their cheeks bulging, their teeth mashing, slime dribbling down their pallid chins. But then, suddenly, they stopped chewing. They stopped moving. For a moment, they just knelt there on the concrete like macabre statues, like grisly waxworks, their bodies frozen in a single weird moment, as dozens of their other brethren wandered around them. Then, in a single, simultaneous action, their mouths fell open like released traps. The sickly mass of masticated matter that had been clutched between their teeth slowly slopped and slithered out as though their jaws were birthing some mutant, glistening slug. The mass drooled downward to slop and befoul the already fouled front of their shirts, dribbling finally onto the shattered body that it had first been clawed from. Then, slowly, the two figures staggered to their feet and joined their brethren in the aimless circular wandering until they became indistinguishable from the rest.

  “Oh... fucking gross!” said Shaun who had clearly seen the same display that Ted had noticed, “...so not only are they zombies, they’re fucking cannibals as well. Or at least, would-be cannibals...”

  Ted looked around at Shaun, offering the man a sceptical gaze, “zombies...?” Ted asked at last, and offered a little laugh at the utterance of the word, “...is that what you think these things are...?”

  “Well, why not?” said Shaun with a shrug, “they’ve died – been killed by this virus thing or whatever the hell it is – and then they’ve come back to life. If they’re not zombies, then what the hell are they...?”

  “Come on Shaun,” said Dave, “we discussed this back in Birmingham. Zombies are the living dead, raised by Voodoo in Haiti or some such place. That’s how the story goes. As far as I know, this lot didn’t come from Haiti.”

  Shaun shrugged, “Voodoo – viruses... same difference if you ask me. And who is to say that what begins in Haiti or some such place, couldn’t spread to the rest of the world...?”

  Shaun trailed off into a kind of awed and terrified silence. Ted looked away from him, and back toward the figures who circled aimlessly down there on the farmyard, and the dozens – or perhaps by now hundreds – who wandered on the fields and within the woods beyond. Zombies...? Well, it certainly seemed fanciful, farfetched, comic-book stuff. But what he had just seen down there – that horrific feeding – had seemed fanciful and farfetched too, at least Ted would not have believed that such a thing could happen had he not seen it with his own eyes.

  Well, maybe they were zombies, or maybe they were something else, but one thing was certain, they were out there in their hundreds, and it seemed that there would be no leaving the house for the foreseeable future. They would have to take steps to protect themselves, and survive this situation for as long as they could.

  Suddenly, a thought occurred to Ted. Without a word, he hurried out of his bedroom, crossed the landing, and entered the spare bedroom that lay at the back of the house. The bathroom also lay at the back of the house, but its window had frosted glass. The glass in the window of the spare bedroom was clear, and now Ted hurried across to it and peered out.

  “What is it?” asked Dave as he entered the spare bedroom behind Ted.

  “Just wondering if they were at the back of the house as well as the front,” Ted said.

  Dave joined Ted at his shoulder, while the other two entered the room. Once again, they peered through the window, and once again it offered them a depressing view. There was no farmyard or outbuildings to the rear of the house. Instead, there was a small area of meadow that Ted had somewhat neglected over time, and after a long hot summer was rampant with couch grass and brambles. Beyond the meadow was a thick area of pine woodland that marched off down the other side of the hill toward the deeper woodland beyond. Both meadow and woods were alive with yet more figures. Zombies, if that’s what you wanted to call them. Their staggering, rotting bodies lurched amongst the couch grass, and were sinister movements within the shadows between the trees, as though the woods had become infected with the demons of old. If Ted had been harbouring any ideas about escaping through the back of the property, then they ended right then.

  “They’re everywhere,” breathed Dave, dismay in his voice.

  Ted nodded, “that they are. Either they’ve encircled the house from the front or this other lot have come up through the woods back there. Either way, we’re completely surrounded.”

  “Stuck...” said Jenny, “...just like we were in Birmingham. Only this time...”

  “Yes, I know,” Dave cut into her, “...only this time we haven’t got a car.”

  “...well, that’s right,” said Jenny, “we haven’t got a car. But what I was going to say was this time, its worse. There only ever seemed to be a few dozen at any one time when we were in Birmingham. And that was in the middle of a city. While here we are, out in the middle of the countryside and it looks like there are hundreds of them. Shit possibly thousands. It can only mean...”

  But she trailed off, as though unwilling to say what it could only mean. But Shaun finished her sentence for her.

  “...it can only mean that they are increasing in number.”

  “Yup,” said Dave, “more and more and more of them. A hoard, an army that never stops coming. God knows what the cities are like by now. And God help any living person who is still there...”

  “Well,” said Ted, “none of this is helping us. Come on, let’s get that water sorted out. We’ve wasted far too much time already.”

  The others all nodded in agreement, and then they hastened down the stairs and into the kitchen. Ted started scouting around the house for as many water bearing receptacles as he could find, while Dave got busy pumping into the jugs that Dave had already selected. Then, once filled, he handed the jug to either Jenny or Shaun, who carried it carefully as they could up the stairs.

  “Put them in the bathroom,” Ted called up the stairs to Jenny as she took the first jug up, “put it in the bath, so if it falls over it won’t cause a flood.”

  “How come you’ve got a bath up there?” asked Dave as he pumped.

  “What was that?” asked Ted who had been distracted, and not heard properly what Dave had said.

  “You got a bath up there. And a toilet you said. Well – how can you have them up there when you’ve got no water supply?”

  “They were put in by the people who owned the house before me. There used to be a mains line to the house, but I had it taken out.”

  Dave offered him a disgust
ed look, “why?”

  Ted shrugged, “didn’t want to pay the water rates.”

  Dave shook his head, worked the pump, “Christ, you’re even crazier than I am. So the bath... you can’t run water into it? You can’t – you know – actually have a bath in it?”

  “Nope,” Ted replied, “if I wanted a bath I’d just have to carry water up to it like we’re doing now. And then it would be cold, unless of course I heated it up, which would of course involve even more fiddling about. So – don’t have a bath all that often I’m afraid.”

  Dave paused in his pumping. It seemed that he was about to say something – perhaps some smart comment about having thought that he could smell something a bit off – but then thought better of it. He resumed his pumping. There was a moment’s silence, in which perhaps a little thinking was being done. Then he asked the question that Ted had been expecting.

  “So the toilet then...” Dave said at last, “that doesn’t have a water supply either?”

  “Nope,” Ted returned.

  “So that means...” Dave trailed off into a note of horrified disgust.

  “That’s right,” said Ted, a little amused by the other man’s squeamishness, “...you can’t flush it. Or you can – but again, you’d have to carry a bucket of water up to do it. And the water that we’re carrying up there now is strictly for drinking.”

  “Oh shit...” said Dave, then laughed when he realised how apt the vulgarity was.

  Ted offered a rough laugh, “don’t worry. If it gets too bad, we can bring a bucket up. If we still have access to the ground floor by then. Always meant to figure out how to extend a pump up to the first floor, but never did get around it.”

  Dave offered a disgusted sound, “just my luck that I have to fetch up in a house that doesn’t even have a mains water supply.”

  Ted was silent for a moment. Then he said, “...well, if things really are as bad out there as they look, then I doubt that there’ll be a mains water supply for very much longer. Fetching up at my house might just have been the luckiest day of your life.”

  Dave had finished filling the latest receptacle – a bucket – and now he looked up at Ted. It seemed as though he was about to say something – perhaps some smart comeback about just how good his luck had been over the last couple of weeks – but instead he remained silent, his face a pale, tired, and frightened circle in the gloom of the water closet. And then, he just offered a single nod.

  At last they had an array of water bearing receptacles lined up in the bath. Jugs, buckets, flower vases, basins, all brimming with water. Then they brought up an array of food – mostly tinned goods – that Ted had stored in the kitchen, plus the three rucksacks full of food that Dave, Shaun and Jenny had brought. Ted gazed at these reflectively, and wondered how long the supply would last four people if push really did come to shove. Not long probably. So bringing the food and water upstairs was, he supposed, really just a distraction technique, giving them all something to focus on, rather than succumbing to argument and panic. It concentrated them, centred them; got them thinking rationally, logically, from one second to the next.

  There came the sound of footsteps thumping up the stairs, then Dave popped his head around the bathroom door.

  “I think that’s all of the water-bearing things that I can find. Unless you know of any others...?”

  Ted shook his head, “no, I think that’s everything. We’ve got enough here to be going on with.”

  Ted left the bathroom and, with Dave following him, pushed his way into the bedroom. Jenny and Shaun were in the room. Shaun stood by the window, peering out with frightened eyes, while Jenny was kneeling by a pile of tinned food, and sorting it into some sort of order that was of her own devising. She worked at the task briskly, obsessively, as though unwilling to relinquish the job for fear of what might come after.

  When Ted and Dave entered the room, Shaun gazed around at them. “There still out there...” he said, “hundreds of them...”

  “We’ve brought all the water up,” said Ted, choosing to ignore Shaun’s alarmist, and somewhat pointless observation.

  Jenny suddenly halted her tin sorting and looked up at Ted. “So now what?” she asked.

  It was the question that Ted had been dreading. Yes: now what indeed. He took a deep breath: “I think we might as well stay up here, rather than downstairs. We’ve brought all the food up here, and enough water to be going on with. Crucially, we can see outside, so we can keep tabs on what’s going on out there...”

  “Yes,” said Jenny, “but what are we going to do? We can’t just stay here forever. We’ll have to figure out some way of escaping.”

  Dave offered a sardonic laugh, “come on, Jenny – how can we escape? Like Shaun just said, there are hundreds of them out there, at the back of the house as well as the front, and probably at the sides as well. And even if we did, by some miraculous means, manage to escape from the house – where would we go? These dead things are everywhere. If we tried to escape, we’d likely end up in a worse trap than we are in now. We’ve just got to sit tight.”

  “Dave ‘s right,” said Ted, “we’ve just got to sit tight for now. We’ve got food, we’ve got water, and we’ve got a certain amount of security. We’re probably in the best situation that we could be in at the moment, all things considered. And these things that are outside... well, I’ve been thinking. You say that they suffered some kind of virus, disease, whatever it was that killed them and then brought them back from the dead? Well, if that’s the case then how long will it be before they succumb to it again? Or simply succumb to the effects of – well – of being dead? If they’re dead then they’re rotting, disintegrating, falling apart. If we can wait long enough, then they’ll be nothing but a mouldering heap of bones. Then we can make good our escape. And then, if they’re are others out there, normal people like us I mean, then we can start to rebuild...”

  For a moment, he glanced at Jenny’s face, and thought that he saw a flicker of something there in her eyes. Was it hope? Yes, he thought that it was hope. And then he wondered if he’d done the right thing. Was it right to offer hope in such a seemingly hopeless situation as this? Yes... he thought that it was. It was right if it just kept them going for another hour, another minute, another second.

  “Well...” said Shaun who was still peering out of the window, “they don’t look much as though they’re going to fall apart at the moment.”

  “Shaun’s right,” said Dave, “even supposing that you’re theory holds up, Ted, and they do start to fall apart – how long is that going to take? Hours, days, weeks, months? Years? There’s no way we can hold out for that long. And anyway, while I’d agree that obviously a dead body eventually falls apart, with these things all bets are off. I mean – they rose up from the dead for Christ’s sake. How is that even possible? So what else might they be capable of? Yes, they might rot, fall apart. Or they might go on just as they are – on and on and on. Forever.”

  Dave fell silent. A look of regret seemed to settle into his face, as though he’d sensed that he’d said too much. And the light of hope that had been in Jenny’s face faded, a tight frown taking its place, and she looked back down at the tins, as though she was desperate to think of some other way to arrange them.

  This uneasy silence lasted for a moment. But then it was punctured by a sudden noise. The noise came from down stairs, and it was shrill and harsh and unmistakable.

  It was the sound of breaking glass.

  SIX

  Jenny looked sharply upward. Dave, who’d had his arms crossed and had been deep in thought, also glanced quickly upward, while Shaun whipped his head away from the window and peered into the room, his eyes bulging, terror writ large upon his face.

  “Oh shit...” said Jenny, her voice tinged with dread.

  “Was that sound what I thought it was...” said Dave, “...somebody please tell me that sound was not what I thought it was...”

  While Shaun just whispered a single
word: “window...”

  It was enough to bring Ted to a decision. It was something that he’d been turning over at the back of his mind for a while, and up to now had put it off. It would be too explosive, too powerful; perhaps too dangerous to introduce into this group of frightened people. But now, with that single harsh sound of breaking glass, he knew that the stakes had been raised by some considerable margin. The time for caution had passed. The time to fight – and perhaps die – was close at hand.

  Quickly, Dave stepped across to the cupboard that stood against the wall opposite to his bed. He reached inside his pocket, brought out a bunch of keys, and unlocked the cupboard. Then he pulled the cupboard open. Inside, the rifle gleamed in the late morning sunlight.

  “Holy shit!” said Dave who, along with Shaun and Jenny, had gathered behind Ted as he unlocked the cupboard, “you never told us that you had that bad boy.”

  Again moving quickly, Ted took the rifle down from its mount in the cupboard. He reached for the box of cartridges that stood on the floor of the cupboard next to the rifle, selected two, and slotted them into the barrels. Then he positioned the rifle over his arm, the barrel still open. Then he turned to the others with what he hoped was a grave and serious expression on his face.

  “Only I touch this rifle,” he said, “those are my rules. Break them, and you can take a walk outside. Is that understood?”

  They all nodded – but Dave’s eyes were wide, mesmerised; greedy. The eyes of a man who wanted very much to touch the rifle, and would do so given half a chance. Ted decided that he would have to watch Dave. And he would have to keep the rifle under lock and key when it wasn’t being used – or when he was not able to have his own eyes upon it.

  “Alright, l’m going to go down stairs and take a look at what caused that sound. With a bit of luck, it’ll just be a drinking glass that maybe slipped and fell onto the kitchen floor. Maybe... But whatever it is I’ll find it and deal with it the best way I can. If anyone wants to come with me you can – just bear in mind that I can’t guarantee your safety.”