Killing the Dead (Season 2 | Book 2): Dark and Deadly Land (18 page)

Pat seemed to have a better idea of the direction we should take so I allowed him to lead the way, his usual reserve and quiet presence was tested by Gregg who seemed intent on filling the air with the sound of his chatter, not caring that his conversation was almost entirely one-sided.

We crossed a field of wild grass and bright yellow flowers. I had a brief moment of wonder at how long it would take the plants to reclaim the world now that the farms were no longer operating.

There would be no harvests, no herds of cattle and sheep to eat those grasses. Fruit would go unpicked, weeds un-pulled and buildings would slowly crumble from lack of maintenance. A decade? Perhaps two and the world would be a strange place with just remnants of the civilizations that had come before.

I was under no illusion that humanity would survive this apocalypse with any semblance of what we had been before. No, it would be a wilder, hardier people that came through this in the end. The weak would be culled, those lacking the will to do what they must would be preyed upon by stronger creatures. It would be the age of the predator. Not an unpleasant thought admittedly.

“You think that’s the place?” Pat asked, his voice breaking into my solemn contemplation. I glanced up to see he was pointing at a cluster of buildings in the distance. I shrugged as I had no idea and he frowned.

“Perhaps we should proceed as though it is,” I said with a careful inspection of the land between us and the factory. It wasn’t looking good.

Open fields between us and the road, we’d be seen long before we could reach the buildings that ran alongside it. Worse than that, the road ran to the north-west and from what we had been told, all the way to the coast. That was the road Lily and the others would drive down. We needed to get finished before they arrived or they would be seen long before they reached the factory.

Storage sheds and what looked to be a small water treatment plant were at either side of the factory that had been built alongside the original hangars for the airfield. I could just make out beyond those buildings, a screen of trees that protected the view of the homes that were just visible.

“What do we do?” Gregg asked.

The factory itself was a large building of red break with a flat roof. At least one tall chimney stack indicated they had a furnace for disposing of waste. It was hard to make out from where we were, but I was confident only a low stone wall surrounded it. At least two figures were walking a perimeter around the roof as they kept watch.

“Clear line of sight nearly all the way around and the only place we could sneak up to it, is on the opposite side,” I said.

I rubbed at my chin as I considered options. “We could wait until nightfall and wander in under cover of darkness but Lily will be here before then.”

“So what do we do?” he repeated.

“You won’t like it,” I said with a grin when he groaned.

“Probably not mate. What then?”

“We need a distraction.”

“What kind of distraction?” he asked as he glanced from me to Pat and back again. “Aw no, no way.”

“It’ll be easy. You wander off that way,” I said with a gesture to the south-east. “We’ll swing around north a little ways and when those sentries on the roof notice you, we’ll make a run for it.”

“Yeah but if they notice me then won’t people come after me?” Gregg asked. “Cannibal type people.”

“They won’t eat you there and then,” I pointed out. His eyes widened and he shook his head in denial as he realised I was serious. “If they catch you, they’ll take you back to the factory first. We’ll be there by then.”

“Nope, not doing it,” he said shaking his head, hands held up before him. I flicked a glance to Pat who shrugged.

“Someone needs to,” I said with as much patience as I could muster.

“You bloody do it then,” he snapped.

“I would do, but whoever goes to the factory will need to kill a number of people. I’m fairly sure you would prefer not to do that.”

“What about him?” he pointed at Pat accusingly. “He could do it and look at the size of him, they’ll think all their birthdays have come at once when they think of how many he could feed.”

“He’s a better fighter than you but he’s also slower,” I said. “Whoever leads them away will need to be nimble.”

“Fuck!”

“Just think mate,” Pat added. “If you don’t do this then Cass will be in danger.”

“Oh fuck again,” Gregg said with an expression of abject misery. “Fine, I’ll do it but you two owe me big time.”

Chapter 20 - Lily

“Again!” Becky almost growled as the van slowed to a halt. I wanted to echo her but poor Cass had no control over the state of the roads and she was already looking a little wild-eyed whenever Becky swore.

“Can’t be helped,” was the only thing I could think to say as I opened the passenger side door and climbed out of the van on weary legs.

Deep breaths, count them off,
I repeated to myself as I took a firm grip on the handle of my club with both hands. I focused on the string that wound around the end of the timber to form a handle, the feel of the rain drops as they ran down my face and the sound they made as they pattered against the hood of my coat.

The first zombies skull cracked as my club hit it, the second fell to its knees as an overhead swing crashed down onto the top of its head. Becky had the final one pushed up against a parked car with one hand pressed against its chest while the club in her other beat against its head and shoulders. She seemed to be taking her frustrations out on it, which was probably better than taking them out on us.

“I think you got it,” I called to her as I pulled open the car door. Nothing much of interest in the musty interior but the keys were in the ignition. I turned them not really expecting anything and was rewarded with silence. The engine was as dead as the zombies we’d just dispatched.

With nothing else to do, I released the handbrake and called the other women to me. Cass took hold of the wheel since there was no way I was having her exert herself pushing the car in her condition. Becky joined me at the rear and together we pushed the car with all our might.

It took more than a little effort but slowly it began to move and Cass expertly guided it to the side of the road. I sighed as it rolled to a stop. It was the fifth such encounter we’d found and I was beginning to grow as weary of them as Becky.

“Give me a hand,” I said as I grabbed a pair of feet. The other woman grabbed the shoulders as Cass retreated to the cab of the van, arms raised in surrender at my glare. I may have been a little overprotective of her but this was the first baby for our little family and I was damned sure nothing would go wrong if I could help it.

We dragged the bodies to the side of the road and left them in a disgusting and malodorous heap behind the car. A few extra minutes were spent trying to clean our hands and we climbed back into the van.

“You’d have thought they’d have made sure the roads were clear,” Becky muttered.

“Probably didn’t even occur to them,” I said softly. “I don’t think they’ve been out of Haven much since this began so probably didn’t realise how bad the roads could be.”

“Still… just annoys me.”

I shared a grin with Cass as she started the engine. The problem was I could actually understand the frustration but it was so rare to see the usually so self-assured woman out of sorts, that I couldn’t help but be amused.

Cass drove the van slowly along the road. Between the rain that seemed to change from heavy to light then back again every five minutes and the frequent obstacles in the road, visibility was poor. It didn’t help that we had a bomb in the back of the van either.

Along the road on either side of us were muddy fields of green grass. Here and there in those fields was an occasional zombie. Sometimes they would become aware of us and start after us in slow stumbling steps, others they would stare off into the distance, unmoving as though they were the world’s ugliest scarecrows.

It wasn’t long before I began to notice other things in those fields. Mounds of bone and skin that had once been cows, tattered wool hides that had been torn from the sheep. The undead had feasted on the animals and I wondered at what that meant for our future.

At the moment, we were scavenging food from people’s homes and businesses. We’d maybe grow some vegetables and fish the rivers and lakes as well as the sea. Some point would come though where that scavenged food was gone and we’d need to be self-sustaining. How hard that would be without any farm animals, I couldn’t say. It was one more thing to add to my ever growing list of worries though.

“Something up ahead,” Cass said sharply. I looked up to see a collection of houses. Less than a dozen, barely enough to be called a hamlet let alone a village.

A mud-spattered tractor was parked on the road with a long trailer attached. It had somehow managed to tip over onto its side and blocked the road entirely. A faint trace of smoke could be detected when I wound down the window and leant out.

The houses, once homes full of life and love, were empty and dark. Broken windows and smeared stains around the doors told a tale that was all too familiar. I couldn’t see beyond the blockage but even as I strained in my seat, neck craned in an effort to see, the smell of smoke was growing stronger.

“A trap?” Becky asked, her voice betraying her nervousness. It was easy to forget she wasn’t really one of our group. She’d not faced the living monsters as we had. Not until those monsters had invaded our island home at least.

I nodded and climbed from the van. A trap it may be, but we needed to get past somehow. We’d not seen any roads leading off of this one towards our destination so as far as we knew, the road we were on was the only way to go.

“Keep the engine running,” I said in a low voice. “Anything happens, get out of here. Find another way or abandon the van and go cross country to find the guys.”

“You sure about this?” Cass asked.

“We need to get past.”

“I’ll go with you,” Becky offered but I waved her away. No point us both getting captured if it was an ambush.

On silent feet, I padded over to the overturned trailer, my feet splashing in the puddles. I hoped that the sound of the heavy rain falling would be enough to mask our arrival if anyone was waiting.

I raised my head over the side of the trailer, just enough for me to peek behind to see the other side. In the shadowed doorway of a house to my right, I caught the gleam of a cigarette and guessed that whoever was supposed to be on guard was sheltering from the rain.

Nothing to say they’re bad people,
I told myself as I crept along the side of the trailer to the wall. I glanced back to see the van far back on the road, the sound of the engine a low rumble just barely audible beneath the sound of the rainfall.

With a deep breath, I vaulted the wall to land with a thump in the field on the other side and pressed myself back against the wall, the rough stone scraping against my jacket. The house closest to me had a garden wall that separated it from the field I was in and someone had piled bales of hay alongside it. Either to block whatever they were doing from view or as a little bit more of a barrier to be overcome by anyone attacking.

Since the undead were stupid at the best of times, I figured it was safe to assume it had been put up to stop them and not a live person since it took me less than a minute to clamber over and dash across to the house.

No one had raised an alarm so I considered it a safe bet that I hadn’t been seen. I crept around the side of the house towards the back, away from the road and the smoking guard. I glanced in windows as I passed but the curtains were drawn.

I’d made my way carefully through three different gardens before I got close to a house that had activity. A window had been opened and a thin plume of smoke, almost invisible against the grey skies, flowed from the chimney. Voices could be heard within.

Careful not to make any noise that would be noticed, I did my best to move closer to the window. The voices were there, but just beyond intelligible. As I moved closer, the occasional word could be made out but any meaningful conversation was lost to me.

My palms were sweaty and I tightened my grip on the handle of my club as I asked myself what the hell I was doing. The deep breathing that Ryan had suggested I do, wasn’t exactly working and at any moment, I was sure I would have a massive panic attack.

This was a mistake
, I thought and pressed myself back against the wall as a peel of laughter rang out, unmistakably feminine. I harboured a brief hope that the people wouldn’t be the monsters I feared. Then came the scream.

It was the sound of pain and rage, fear and lost hope, a cry of someone begging for the release of death. I sucked in a great gulp of air as I pressed one fist tight against my mouth to hold back on the great hiccupping sobs that tried to force their way free.

Someone needed help, needed rescue from whatever torments they faced. They needed saving from whatever they faced and I just knew without a doubt that I could not be the one to do it.

Images flashed through my mind, the scent of freshly spilt blood filled my nostrils and I had to fight back the desperate urge to vomit. I clenched shut my eyes as the world spun around me and I felt as though I were suffocating.

The urge to run was almost overwhelming. That need to get away, to flee from the sounds of pain that were coming from within the house. I couldn’t do it, couldn’t face it, and couldn’t possibly be strong enough to get through it.

God help me,
I screamed silently. I needed Ryan. He’d fix everything, he’d march into the house and tear them apart at the merest hint of a request from me to do so. He’d save the ones that needed saving and he’d do it with a smile on his face, for me.

But he wasn’t with me. He wouldn’t always be there to hold my hand and do those distasteful tasks. I couldn’t ask him to always be the killer if I ever wanted him to just be the man I knew he could be.

Suck it up,
I told myself. The words sounded firmer in my head than they would ever be if I had the courage to utter them. No, if I wanted to build anything in this world once the zombies were gone, I couldn’t do so without having to get my hands dirty myself. I’d told him I never wanted to take another human life but one thing I’d learnt since the start of all this was that what I wanted meant nothing.