Читать книгу UniteDead Kingdom - Stuart Irving Irving - Страница 11

Four weeks after the fateful call from Jack, Zan sat on a discoloured single mattress with his head in his hands, dismayed but at the same time relieved by the day’s events. His life had been on a constant knife-edge since the outbreak. The simplest misstep had often been the difference between survival and the worst death imaginable. He pushed down on his thighs and hoisted himself up to witness the latest outcome for himself. He looked down from the second floor window of the abandoned house with calm indifference as six undead tore apart the twitching body of his … What? What should I call these fellow London-escapees that continued to latch on to him? Travel-companions? Mobile-zombie-fodder? Snacks in slacks? I guess that will do. He almost smiled but was too worn out to even muster a grin.

His latest ex-companion had shown promise at one stage. That ‘one stage’ being the first ten minutes of meeting her somewhere in the war-zone that that was now South-East London. So no change there then. This time he quietly chuckled to himself. Am I going insane? This made him laugh even more.

She was (definitely past-tense now) about eighteen or nineteen but she acted more like twelve; wide-eyed and terrified at every sound and every movement. Zan, conversely, had gradually become inured at the surrounding misery and grinding discomfort of survival and slow escape from London. He had learned to respond to events with alertness rather than emotion. She preferred the other way round. She said her name was Molly, but he didn’t want to know and didn’t use it once. With every yelp out loud at leaves moving in the breeze he knew he was closer and closer to ditching her. He needn’t have fretted over that decision: people like that didn’t last long these days.

Half an hour previously they were inching through the carnage in a street somewhere in Maidstone, Kent, according to a UK map he found in a ransacked news agent (his bright idea of printing maps floundered when he had to dive into a canal to escape attack in the first week and they were ruined). They were en route to the channel, as per Jack’s instructions. He had convinced the girl - and others before her - that Switzerland offered the only chance of permanent safety. Then suddenly a mangy looking Alsatian ran out from a garden path and Molly had yelped (always with the fucking yelping!) loudly in surprise. It didn’t take long for them to appear in response to the yelp. Their motor skills were limited, especially the less recently dead, but their hearing was fine. And so come they did, not two minutes later. Shambling rotting corpses, driven by gnawing hunger, converging towards the noise. That had been her first mistake.

Then, panic took over. She darted towards the nearest door, tripped over a pavement slab, and went sprawling head first into a fence, crashing through it into the garden. She lay still. Zan had watched all this with calm bemusement, shaking his head. It was decision-making time. He had no bandages, no first-aid kit and nothing to wake her up. She was out cold and was a deceptively big girl, probably seventy kilos plus. The undead were closing in, ten or a dozen of them now. He jogged to the side to draw them away from her then spun round on the spot to see four quicker ones closing in on him. A gruesome-looking pack of about eight still closed in on her. Then he heard her groans as she woke up, turning quickly to screams as she saw them looming towards her a few metres away. Zan hesitated. I’m never going to be able to

[you barely even tried what kind of man]

save her. He had fourteen crossbow bolts left but they were closing too fast and the midday sun provided no hiding place. With an instant pang of regret he spun on his heels and calmly jogged in the opposite direction and into the first house he saw with a sturdy door. Her growing screams alerted the zombies who’d been near to him to change direction towards her. A few seconds later the full complement of twelve were on her. Her last action on Earth was a look of complete revulsion towards him jogging away, and her last thought was of utter abandonment. Her recently cut head (the lamppost she ran into when she heard a door slam shut in the wind) only allowed her to see out of one eye. That vision was quickly obscured by the withered outstretched hands reaching in to slowly tear her apart. She never stopped trying to look in Zan’s direction throughout her violent, noisy demise.

Zan walked carefully through the house, shutting, locking and barricading doors behind him and darted up to a 2nd floor bedroom facing the main street. Ducking under the window he caught his breath and berated himself for being a coward but also the girl for being such a noisy, reactive, clumsy dolt. Just what the hell made her think racing away from him gave her a fighting chance? Maybe it was the same instinct that now led him to be under a window having left her to be slowly ripped apart. He put his head in his hands, frustrated and disgusted all at once, but relieved that he no longer carried the burden of a noisy cretin in a quiet, lethal world. Now crouching at the window he forced himself to watch her being slowly digested and her burbling twitching come to a stop.

Zan realised he had to learn a lesson from this. He vowed to never let anyone come under his wing again. This wasn't a stupid fucking movie, there is no place for heroism, he thought. It’s just pure hour-to-hour survival - no second tries, no forgiveness from his foes. And just because someone was young and a moron was no reason to endanger myself to save them. Maybe this thing had been stopped in its tracks somewhere in the world. Maybe Jack’s Swiss lab has made a breakthrough and a vaccine is being rushed to where it's needed most. He shook his head at his own naïvety. Oh yes, and maybe Jack, Colin and my Dad will deliver the miracle cure on a giant hot air balloon, whilst singing ‘Staying Alive’ by The Bee Gees. He shut his eyes - he wanted to fight his cynicism but it was easier not to. It won’t always have to be this way, but what choice do I have? He would get to the coast; find a boat, head to France or Denmark and on to Switzerland. Everything and everyone else was a temporary and possibly fatal distraction.

Later, after blocking the doorway with a large wardrobe and checking once more no undead were in the vicinity outside, he got on the single bed in an upstairs room. It looked like a teenage boy’s bedroom, with posters of hypercars and glamour models. He idly mused about what happened to the boy, there were no signs of a struggle. With a quick realisation he got up and checked the wardrobe, but it was empty. Sighing, Zan sank into the bed and let the dark sleep envelop him.

He woke with a start, panicking. Where am I? Looking around frantically, his location came back to him. It was deathly silent. He approached the window, half expecting to see a rock-concert sized undead army amassed, waiting patiently downstairs for him so they could carry out his punishment for abandoning the girl. I can’t think that way. I’m spending too much time battling these hostile thoughts. I must learn to ignore them. He looked outside; no zombies. It was an empty and rubbish-strewn wasteland, the street filled with discarded bags, torn clothes, opened suitcases, trolleys, bikes, cars and corpses. Across the street

[Molly]

the yelping girl had been stripped to the bone. His lips curled in disgust and sadness. Zan started to feel overcome with despair and his head fell to his chest. What about her family, what would they say to him right now? He shook his head. No, no, stop it! She hadn’t been a person; she was a burden that’s been lifted. He shut his eyes and felt the dark loneliness grew inside him. It was time to leave this place.

Trudging along the middle of the road he was a couple of kilometres out of Maidstone and on his way to the next town when he saw movement far away on the horizon. Grabbing binoculars out of his rucksack he could see an abandoned road block and a very sturdy-looking armoured personnel carrier. The movement looked like a brawl between some soldiers and humans or maybe zombies. Hell, the soldiers could also be zombies. It wasn’t clear from the sheer distance away, electronic zoom or not. He peered carefully at one of the soldiers as he grappled with another guy and increased the zoom to max. He recognised his insignia. Hmmm, he thought, it’s tempting to go over there but in practice it’s just more potential danger. The alternative was to avoid them altogether and traverse across wheat fields for a dozen klicks at least. Then it was another twenty-five klicks to the coast and the Channel Bridge. Maintaining stealth, it could take him a further two to three days travel.

There were no zombies around so he stopped to take a quick inventory. He learned right from the start that agility was the best defence against the undead so he carried only a rucksack on his back and his laser-sighted cross-bow (zombie kills - three) strung over his shoulder. He had to be sparing about the crossbow bolts and again counted fourteen left. It was the best range weapon he had, and used it to incapacitate a soldier to steal his hand-gun and

[left him there to die he was still]

to stop a feral Alsatian. He felt bad about the dog, first time he’d killed an animal bigger than a goldfish. It was a relief that dogs themselves didn’t become undead.

In his front pocket he had an old laser-sighted handgun with three bullets and a broken laser. Which made it just a fucking handgun. It was noisy so he only used in emergencies (zombie kills - three). He had large serrated kitchen knife in a side pocket (zombie kills - nineteen). Also, in the backpack he had one small knife, fork and spoon and a tin-opener. Zan refused to eat with his fingers; he

[was still alive you walked away you knew you knew YOU KNEW]

wasn’t an animal, at least not yet. A claw hammer (again, multi-purpose, but didn’t kill the undead easily, so Zan stopped trying), water, maps, a small towel, underwear and binoculars. He did find two assault rifles in an abandoned army van but no bullets and very little point carrying either. Luckily logic prevailed there but it felt at the time like he was walking away from a treasure trove. He no longer carried cash or identification. It took him a fortnight of terrifying hand to mouth survival before he threw his wallet away, no longer of any use. That felt strangest of all; like the end of modern civilisation.

He sighed wearily, stretched his legs and said a silent affirmation, pumping his fists by his side. He was dimly aware his actions and trains of thought were becoming more erratic of late; as he checked the ammo in the handgun for the tenth time - still only three unnervingly small bullets. That was his get-out-clause if he was cornered; there was no way he was letting himself be eaten alive. He walked towards the roadside fence and climbed over and carried on into the field. Two for the zombies and one for me he thought over and over again, as he strode through the long, swaying grass.