6
Drive
With all the nearby dead now sinking harmlessly into the mulch I was free to make my way over to the garage, my progress laboured by the mud that grasped at my boots with every step. When I got there I made my way up the concrete ramp that led up to the small brickwork structure, glad to be free of the swamp-like conditions. The metal garage door was painted a pale mint green and was punctuated with dried gore, dents and scuffs, yet was still intact. I pulled out the key that Arthur had given me and unlocked it, before pulling on the blood stained rope that trailed from underneath it, heaving the door open. I realised with a start as I peered into the gloomy interior – seeing the car under a brown dust blanket – that I had no idea if I could drive. The thought brought a nervous grin to my face and I almost laughed. It was ludicrous that I had no idea whatsoever of my own skill set. I was an empty creature, relying on instinct, hunches and muscle memory. It was as if I wasn't even human.
I did however realise that we would need to be careful getting the car to the road that lay around fifty feet away. The mud was getting worse by the minute and we wouldn't be able to bring the car to the front of the house as was first planned, for risk of it getting stuck. I carefully made my way around the car, double checking that there were no dead inside the garage and also checking for some materials that would help us get out of the yard. Although I didn't have a candle, there was enough gloomy sunlight seeping from outside through the open front to be able to see everything well enough.
It was a slightly cluttered if well kept storage area. I found several rough shelves lining the walls that were piled high with paint cans, tools and various DIY implements and materials, and thinking quickly I unloaded as many of the shelves as I could, dumping their loads at the back of the garage. I found that they weren't nailed down but were simply balanced on the struts beneath, so I was able to lift them up and ferry them awkwardly outside, keeping my eyes on the periphery as I created two rough tracks that led at least part of the way towards the road.
When I was finished I headed back to the house, spade at the ready just in case. All seemed quiet but the rain was still falling, creating a background roar like static, dangerously deadening other noises. I looked up and saw the clouds were moving quite quickly in the breeze, so I hoped that soon the rain would pass. I opened the door and headed inside, wiping my feet on the mat despite the fact that the elderly couple were leaving, possibly never to return. It just seemed right, a mark of respect to the house that had kept them safe.
I did a couple of quick trips to ferry the bags out to the car before heading upstairs to check if Arthur and Dorothy were ready to leave. Arthur was gently wiping Dorothy's brow, so I waited for him to finish. As he glanced at me I saw a shadow cross his face. This was the point of no return, a last vital throw of the dice.
“I'll have to carry Dorothy, the mud is too thick for the car," I said to Arthur as I walked alongside the bed. Dorothy looked no better today, her cheeks puffing in and out with each laboured breath. Arthur's brow creased with a frown as I pulled back the covers and slid my arms under her legs and back, though he didn't speak out or make any move to stop me. Maybe he disliked the idea of anyone touching his wife or it could have simply been frustration at the fact that due to his injured arm, it couldn't be him carrying her.
Dorothy was so frail and light she probably weighed no more than a ten year old. She wheezed with each movement to the left or right so I tried to hold her as close to stationary as possible as we walked slowly down the staircase. I was starting to recognise where each creak was now as if the staircase was an old friend. I could only imagine how well the old couple knew those sounds.
Arthur opened the door, checking that the outside was clear before waving me on. I stepped out across the mud as the raindrops started mixing with her sweat, making the nightdress cling to her emaciated form even more. When we got to the car, Arthur unlocked it as quickly as he could with one hand before opening the back door. I gently laid Dorothy on the seat and pulled a blanket over her that Arthur handed me from the boot of the car, before pulling the seat belts across her body as securely as I could manage. We never spoke a single word to each other throughout the task, instead communicating with nods and gestures. The danger of the dead was too present.
As Arthur manoeuvred himself around the other side of the car and into the passenger seat I spotted movement from the left hand side of the garage door and I quickly and instinctively reached for the spade, before realising I had left it in the house. The corpse shuffled in front of the car and I froze on the spot. It was – or rather had been – a small girl, no more than six years old when she had died. She wore blood stained pyjamas and most of the hair and skin had been torn from her scalp, leaving bone which glistened in the rain. Arthur pulled his door shut quickly, pushing the lock down and also leaning and checking the locks on the back door as the corpse struggled around the car, small hands outstretched, teeth clicking and chewing. She elicited a little moan of intent, her hands grabbing ineffectually at Arthur's window. I ducked down and opened the drivers seat door as quietly as possible, slipping inside and locking the door behind me. Small bloody hand prints started to make a pattern on the glass as the corpse kept clawing, feebly trying to feed on us.
I rubbed my temples and eyes, feeling my fingers come away moist. Arthur's eyes were also welling up but I didn't want to ask if he had known her when she had been alive, even though there was surely nothing that I could say to make this worse. She had been a girl, and now she would never grow up.
I took the key to the ignition from Arthur's unresisting hand and started the engine. The sound seemed to drive the corpse of the girl into a small frenzy, as she clawed frantically at the windows. I pulled away as quickly as I could across the planking, wanting to be rid of this charnal house of the dead, not even noting until later that clearly, yes, I could drive. Slowly but surely I drove us off the planks, through the mud and finally onto the rain soaked tarmac of the country road, turning left towards town as storm clouds raced across the sky above us. The desperate wails of the dead child faded away and soon the only sounds were the rumble of the engine and the rain on the windscreen.
Despite the relief that I felt for leaving, my heart was still heavy as I knew full well that whatever we were driving towards would be much, much worse.
“I've been wondering about when you said you had learned your lesson the hard way. It was just after you had come out of your house. You said that if their life was threatened, people were capable of acts they usually wouldn't consider...” I said to Arthur after we had been driving for ten minutes. The town wasn't far but there had been too much rot and pestilence this morning. I wanted some human contact before we delved into more. There was also no extra risk of speaking when we were already making so much noise, turning and twisting through the country roads, being careful not to go too fast in case of any cars that may have be abandoned in the road, causing an obstruction that we might spot too late to avoid.
“Ah, yes,” said Arthur, clearing his throat and glancing behind him at Dorothy. I took a quick glance myself. She appeared to still be sleeping but she could have equally just been trying to concentrate on breathing. Fever and delirium were especially dangerous at her age. Arthur looked back ahead at the road, apparently confident that he could talk freely.
“It was just after the first time we had been attacked, which was the first that we knew of any sickness. We have a television but never seem to watch anything on it. It's always doom and gloom, or... well, this particular brand of doom and gloom would have been worth knowing about. Anyway, there was only one to begin with. He wasn't... it, I need to refer to it as an "it"... it wasn't especially large but I suppose it didn't need to be, as we certainly weren't expecting it. It kept slapping the wood of our door, which sounded like slow, irregular knocking to us, so we... Dorothy... opened the door to it. Anyway, you know all this. Dorothy fell against the stairs and I drove it onto the ground with the poker from the fireplace, thinking it was alive, some sort of crazy burglar or thug. When I saw the colour of its skin, the maggots already laid in... well, I don't need to tell you about them, do I? The worst thing was the stench. At the time it was the most rancid thing I'd ever smelled. That's changed now, of course, after the amount of bodies that accumulated outside.
I didn't know what to think. I've never been especially devout, even though my parents were. It never stuck with me but even so my first thought was that this, this had to be the work of the devil made flesh. I suppose we still can't know for certain if that's not the case, can we? I remember that it started to reach for me, moaning... the moan was like nothing I had ever heard from a person before. It had no urgency, it sounded like... sickness, if sickness had a sound. It was then that I knew what I had to do. I dispatched it as quickly as I could, hitting...” he paused, composing himself as he relived the memory, “hitting its forehead until it stopped moving. Then I dragged the body outside. I tried ringing the town police station for hours but I never got through, it was always busy.”
Arthur fell into momentary silence as we drove past a roadside pub, his eyes drawn to the scene. The sign that swung in the rain said something like “The Dog and Duck,” or “The Hound and Geese” but I didn't see it too closely as my eyes were focussed on the group of corpses that were staggering out of the front of the building, stumbling over the broken remains of the door. The pub showed signs of fire damage, with soot marks leading upwards from most of the windows and a large part of the roof having collapsed inwards. I moved up a gear and drove on before the undead could block our path. The car was driving quite smoothly despite its age but I had little confidence in its ability to plough through a mass of bodies. Their moans were just about audible over the engine, sending a shiver down my spine as we moved past them and onwards. Arthur took a deep breath and continued his account.
“Anyway, an hour or so after that we heard someone calling outside. It was a neighbour of ours. Well, I say neighbour, he lived roughly a mile away but our farms backed on to one another so in country terms it was as close as most people got. We even used to swap tools and machinery sometimes, depending on what crops needed harvesting. Well, there he was, battered and bloody outside our house, screaming his head off for help. We let him in, of course. He was in a state, crying on my shoulder as I led him inside. I'd never seen him like that, he'd always seemed a rather stoic man. He told me that he had seen his whole family die under a wave of “walking bodies” as he called them, and only he had survived. Part of me wondered at the time why exactly he had lived when the others had died but I chided myself for thinking about that when the poor fellow had lost everyone he had loved. As it turns out, we soon knew why, the cowardly..." Arthur gave a short sound of exasperation before continuing.
"When I briefly went upstairs to check on Dorothy he grabbed all our fresh food, everything up to our last piece of bread, along with my tractor key. He just wanted to get away. I spotted him from the top floor and went out to him as quickly as I could, trying to reason with him whilst reaching up and holding the wheel of the tractor in place. There was no way I was going to let him take it, not in a month of Sundays. Then that maniac... he pulled out a hand axe, can you believe it? Thankfully he only hit me with the back of the axe head, breaking my arm. Yes, I'm sorry...” he saw my face crease in puzzlement, “I lied about falling. It was easier to say that, because the truth is I was ashamed of what came next...” he stopped, his mouth working silently as he tried to work out the best way to explain himself. “As he was driving off, I went to get my shotgun, as I'd placed it next to the door inside, after the first attack...”
“You shot him?” I asked quietly, not believing that such a pragmatic man could resort to revenge.
“No, no, but I might as well have. I wanted to fire a warning shot but my aim was poor due to my broken arm and I hit the engine block. I must have hit a fuel line or something, I'm not sure, I never checked on the damage. All I know is that the tractor slowed and then stopped. He tried desperately to get it working, but then I saw them, the dead, converging on the poor selfish idiot. Maybe it was the group from his farm... maybe some were his family; they looked very fresh, a few of them. I tried to help him, I did," he said, tears welling up in his eyes a little as his mouth twitched at its corners. "I reloaded and fired as quickly as I could. I think I hit one but some of them headed towards me. I had to get inside, so I didn't get a chance to fire another shot. Yes, I'm sure that his family were amongst them," he continued, piecing together some memory or other, "because he reached for one of them from his seat, tenderly, as if... that was before his first scream... I..."
Arthur fell into silence and I didn't press him further. It was now obvious that it was this very neighbour who had attacked me in the wheat fields, his jaw askew, hands grasping and cutting. I had removed the man's thumbnail from my ankle. Nausea wound a tight belt around my belly and I slowed the car to a halt in a secluded spot near a cluster of trees, before jumping out and emptying the contents of my stomach onto the weeds and wild flowers. As I stood back up, wiping a hand across my mouth, I felt a wave of sadness wash over me as I realised this man's story must be far from unique. It was probably even shorter than some people's stories, more merciful. The huge corpse that had attacked me at the farm and had almost finished me... he was so fresh. How many weeks had he survived, moving from escape to escape, before succumbing? Had he saved other's lives? Had he been protecting anyone? Had they also died when he had fallen under the rotting waves? And the child...
I spat onto the ground venomously, trying to expel my rage as much as eject the taste of vomit from my mouth. There was no-one to blame though, no one who could pay for this. It just went on and on and everlastingly on.
I got back into the car, rubbing my palms on the leather steering wheel cover. Arthur looked over but didn't need to speak. I nodded to show I was ready to continue and pulled away from the trees and back onto the road.
After what seemed like an age (though it couldn't have been more than five minutes more) we reached the outskirts of the town, as fields gave way to small houses. I pulled up just at the edge of the first garden, before turning in my seat towards Arthur. I glanced at Dorothy, quiet and still in the back, her lips fluttering with soft breathing.
“What do you think is the best way to do this?” I asked. “Do you know how far the nearest pharmacy or doctor's office is? I could walk...”
“I think we'd be in just as much danger sitting here as driving into town to be honest,” replied Arthur, “and there is no way I can drive us away myself with one arm. We've got to stick with you. There is a pharmacy along the high street at some point, next to a book store I believe, opposite the police station. Just keep going, you can't miss it. Thank you for this, I do, I really... I really appreciate this, I, heh...” he laughed suddenly. It was a joyous sound, a stark contrast to the darkness that surrounded us. His gritty laughter put me in mind of a rock slide in a quarry, rolling from high to low. “I don't even know your name.”
I didn't either. “It's Guy.”
“Guy, really? That's a strange name for... well, that's by the by. Times change I suppose. Glad to know you,” he said, shaking my hand warmly. His palm felt rough and cold but there was warmth in his eyes. I smiled and turned forwards again, before slowly pulling back onto the road. I opted to stay in second gear as the road was far from easy to navigate. Cars lay abandoned at the roadside and across the tarmac at skewed angles, their doors hanging open and promising horrific sights within. I tried not to look too closely as we passed by; there was not likely to be anyone living in the vehicles and that was what I was concerned about now, keeping people alive. If I never had to put another corpse down I wouldn't have been sorry.
The houses looked empty for the most part, most of them made of red brick under grey roofs laid with slate. Windows and doors lay open or swinging in the breeze, and there was evidence of flame damage in various spots as people had obviously tried everything they could to destroy the dead. Fire would have taken a long time to burn the corpses though, as they felt no pain, so would be no use as a quick form of self defence. It would have just been like barbecuing meat. There were one or two houses with boards across the windows and I half thought about stopping and checking for more survivors, except that we had no room in the car. A quick glance in the rear view mirror showed one or two dead emerging lazily from houses a hundred yards or so behind us and following at a ponderous pace. I resisted the urge to increase my speed, just in case I lost control or passed the pharmacy and had to double back.
The road turned beside a small slip road that ran down a dip towards a modest hotel. It looked relatively undamaged, presumably because the guests would have left when the troubles started and the staff would have gone home to their loved ones, so there was no reason for the dead to congregate there. Beyond the hotel there was a small park littered with rubbish and the unidentifiable remains of one or two people, little more than red stains with clustered lumps of matter liquefying in the raindrops. There was something ludicrous about the juxtaposition of so much death with the gaudy yellow and red of the slide and the roundabout, which was spinning gently as it carried what looked like the remains of an arm on an endless twirling dance in the breeze.
After we passed a few more houses I started to spot the tell tale signs of shop fronts in the distance, managing to still be bright and colourful despite the weather. It was quite a large town if you included its outskirts but it was old fashioned in its design, sprawling outwards rather than upwards. There were no tenements, no high rise office blocks, so I had no landmarks to head for. Even the spire of the church was rather small and squat, peeking out from behind a tree to our left as we rounded a bend. It was an ancient grey stone affair, humble architecture surrounded by a small graveyard of lichen coated weather-worn gravestones. As we passed by it I saw that the stained glass windows depicting saints and angels in various poses were still intact, however the doors were long ago destroyed and the dead were clustered in and around the arched doorway in worrying numbers. The church and graveyard were above the road, set up a few steps on a flat area of ground overlooking a four foot rough stone wall, over which the corpses tumbled, attracted by the sound of the car. My nerves started to shred a little as I glanced in the wing mirror, watching the bodies tumble, some breaking limbs as they hit the pavement. I had never seen so many, stumbling and crawling over each other like slugs.
We turned past a tool shop and towards a roundabout which was clogged with cars, forcing me to brake aggressively, sending a squeal down the high street that now lay ahead of us. There was the suggestion of smoke ahead past another dip and turn amongst the shops, which perhaps meant there were still people alive here, although why they would choose to stay in a place of such obvious and ever-present danger was beyond me. Then again, here I was driving through it, pulling the dead from their nests as I went. They were now ahead of us as well, only three or four at the moment but more were already emerging from dark recesses either side of the road. There was still no sign of a pharmacy.
“Where?” I asked urgently. Arthur pointed along the left branch of the high street, towards some older looking buildings with three or four storeys each. The shops themselves were for the most part looted here, their contents scattered all over the road and turning to mulch in the rain. Glass, paper, spoiled fruit and all manner of useless consumer electronics were spilling out of windows, bringing to mind the eviscerated organs of the corpses that milled around outside, their feet trudging and sliding over the remains of the society they used to inhabit.
I had to nudge the car up onto the pavement to edge around a burnt-out hatchback and as I did so a pair of hands slammed onto the car bonnet as a corpse half fell out of a shop doorway to attack us. I heard Dorothy moan from under her blanket as the sound of the impact rang around the metal frame of the car. Arthur nearly jumped out of his seat, straining as he reached for the shotgun that he had left on the floor of the back seat. I managed to turn away from the corpse and move into the middle of the road. Although I tried to avoid a lot of the rubbish the tyres by necessity started to churn through the detritus, with broken stereos and televisions bouncing off the bumper. Two corpses started to converge on us from opposite sides of the road, so I had to accelerate to try and get past. I missed the one nearest to Arthur but the one on my side slammed off the windscreen head first, cracking the glass and leaving a wide smear of blackening dead blood. We swerved a little on the wet rubbish but I managed to pump the break and pull us back on course. There were seven or eight of the dead ahead of us now, with more coming from every side. I pulled to a halt and craned my neck behind. The road was already starting to fill with corpses, closing the net around us with their inexorable, inevitable drive for flesh. I could hear Arthur's breathing rasping in my ears as he started to panic and I knew we only had one chance of an escape, though it would be a dangerous one.
I accelerated as hard as I could, moving up to second quickly although I couldn't make it to third before I slammed through the corpses ahead, their bodies rolling over the roof and under the wheels, smashing into the windscreen and causing the cracks to spread, as we twisted and turned before eventually the wheels started to spin ineffectually. There must have been a body or two caught under us, jamming up the tyres and axle with bone and flesh. We were as clear as we were going to get from the swarm so I opened my door before wrenching open the door to the back seat, pulling Dorothy out as quickly as I could, which led her to cough and moan as I threw her over my shoulder in a fireman's carry. The stench was thick in this part of the town, lingering despite the cold wind that was running down the high street. Arthur struggled out of the car and rested the shotgun momentarily on the wing mirror, firing a shot at the closest corpse, catching it in the neck and chest and dropping it in a fountain of red vapour as the lead tore through its flesh.
I looked around desperately as I jogged forwards, with the weight of Dorothy’s body not really causing me an issue, although she was pulling me off balance. More of the dead were emerging from either side and there was one ahead of me, its head lolling and arms raised in blind, hellish desire. Beyond it I finally spotted the green cross of the pharmacy. It wasn’t illuminated but to me it was a shining star and something tangible to aim towards.
Arthur caught up with me, wheezing laboriously. His face lit up as he saw the pharmacy sign but immediately dropped when he also saw the corpse ahead, now barely ten feet away. I also spotted three to my left and four to my right, closing in on us slowly but surely. Arthur went for broke, groaning with effort as he wrenched the shotgun up and fired it one handed. The shot was wild, barely catching the corpse in the shin but it was enough to knock it off balance and it stumbled, still reaching for me as it fell, crashing face first onto the tarmac. We ran beyond it as fast as our legs could carry us, trying to outpace the corpses and gain a bit of distance to allow us time to think. As we passed a couple of cars that were skewed across the road, the pharmacy came fully into view.
The sight that greeted us made my heart sink. There were four of the dead clustered around the entrance to the pharmacy and they had already seen us, their moan rising up and echoing around the buildings. I looked over at Arthur, who was fumbling with the shotgun, opening it over his knee and then trying to pull two more shells out of his jacket pocket. It would take too long, I knew. There were four of them, and the best we could hope for was to take out two. I was carrying Dorothy and couldn’t get involved. It was the end.
That was when I saw them, hand in hand all three, walking side by side down the waste filled street towards me. Marcus was on the left, his coat little more than a mass of skin woven together, held on to his shoulders by dark spikes, trailing blood. His features were almost alien, simply a mass of dark lines and bristles. He was not smiling with his usual predatory grin and his red eyes looked haunted. Cato was being pulled along on the right, his features and height fluctuating as if he were being seen through a heat haze. He was trying to dig in his heels but was being pulled against his will by the central force, Perdita. She seemed a little taller than usual and the strength and power she held over the other two was obvious. She swung her arms forwards and Cato tumbled and rolled ahead of her, finally coming to a rest on his back. Marcus stumbled a little but held his footing. They both looked at me, a strange mixture of emotions in their eyes. There was anger in Marcus and fear in Cato but both of them also exhibited signs of resignation. The corpses were getting ever closer but I was too focussed on the three to notice.
The two in the front raised their arms in unison, as if under command. They outstretched their finger and pointed to my right. Then I saw it. In the doorway of the police station opposite the pharmacy, there was a man. Not a corpse but truly a man, alive and breathing, gesturing wildly for us to join him. I didn’t need to think about it. I grabbed Arthur’s coat and hauled him to his feet, grabbing the shotgun as he dropped it in surprise and pushing him towards the doorway. He spotted the man and broke into the quickest run he could manage but one of the faster corpses, the body of a young woman, was getting closer and closer. I kept my eyes away from the three and swung the shotgun whilst holding the barrel like it was a club, hitting the corpse in the side of the head with the stock. It staggered away and gave us just enough time to scramble through the door that the man was holding open. Arthur fell to the ground once inside, leaning against the wall and breathing in short ragged breaths. I kept holding Dorothy, not wanting to lay her on the cold tiled floor without a blanket. It soon turned out I didn’t have a choice.
“You need to be more careful, you f*ckers made enough noise to wake the dead,” said the voice of the man as he closed and bolted the door. “Now put the gun and the hag down.” He wasn’t very tall but was stocky, with a wide torso and hanging gut. His eyes were red and tired, there was a thick growth of dark brown beard hair on his square chin and his clothes were baggy white overalls stained with blood. These were all incidental details that meant little as soon as I saw the crowbar in his hand. Maybe I could have swung the shotgun around even with Dorothy on my shoulder and grabbed the stock, firing off a shot before he landed a blow, but I doubted it. I couldn’t risk Dorothy anyway, I’d come too far to save her.
I looked to Arthur, whose face was a mask of white shock. He knew we had no choice. I put the gun on the ground and the man nodded, breathing deeply as he smiled, his teeth shining yellow in the dim light creeping through the gaps in the boarded up windows.
“There you go.”