Autumn exodus, p.20
Autumn - Exodus, page 20
‘What do you reckon?’ Lisa asked.
‘We need to find a way through. We haven’t passed a turning in miles, so it’s going to be a hell of a long diversion if we have to go back on ourselves and look for another way.’
Long, impenetrable shadows made it hard to work out where one vehicle ended and the next began. The brick-like shape of the colossal, ice-covered relic immediately ahead of them was easy to discern. It was a bus, that much was obvious, but it had stopped diagonally across the road, and it wasn’t immediately clear which way it was facing. There was another car pinned between the nearest end of the bus and the barrier that ran along the side of the road.
The bus obscured the view. Sam tried to look over the roof of the car. ‘Can’t see much from here.’
Lisa crouched down and peered under the chassis, checking for debris. ‘We should be able to move it, I think. There’s nothing behind. I reckon if we use the truck to push this car back and steer it out of the way, we should be okay to get through.’
‘Okay.’
‘But there is one problem.’
‘What’s that?’
‘There’s a load of bodies on the other side of that bus. Looks like they’ve drifted here over time and not been able to get away again.’
‘Frozen?’
‘Some of them. I definitely saw some movement, but it’s hard to see how many are free.’
#
There was little resistance in the ranks. ‘We knew what we were signing up for,’ Mia said. ‘If we’d wanted an easy ride, we’d have stayed in Yaxley.’
Sanjay was ready to push the car out of the way with the truck. The rest of the group, all but Ruth, Vicky, and Omar, who remained in the minibus, were ready to deal with the repercussions. They’d planned their next move as carefully as they could, but there remained countless unknown variables. Once Sanjay had moved the crashed car, what then? Would the rest of the road ahead be clear? What about the bodies? How many were there, and in what condition?
Sanjay stared into the space but hesitated before re-starting the truck’s engine. No matter what condition they’d been reduced to, the prospect of any close encounters with the undead still made him unbearably nervous. The sight of everyone else in the wing-mirrors added to his unease. They were all out in the road, tooled-up. It reminded him of that first morning in Wapping when they’d gone face-to-face against the dead by order of Piotr and Dominic, and though most people had survived that day, in his mind that battle in the streets had marked the beginning of the end for the Monument group. Sam slapped the side of the truck and signalled for him to focus and get on with it.
When he turned the key, the engine immediately roared back into life, and he imagined the dead trapped behind the bus beginning to shake off their frozen bonds. Sanjay edged forward, the plough scraping against the barrier at the side of the road. He immediately course-corrected, but there was barely any margin for error. It unnerved him. Can I get through that gap? Am I really going to be able to shift that car?
No time to worry about it now as the plough crunched into the car. For a few stomach-churning seconds it didn’t feel like the wreck was going to budge, that it was wedged in too tightly, but with a short, controlled burst of power, Sanjay managed to force it back. He reversed, then accelerated into it again, a little faster, a little more confident. And then he was through.
He’d been warned about the bodies on the other side of the beached bus, but he hadn’t been ready for them to look like this. It was as if he’d driven into a forest of branchless, snow-covered tree stumps, all of them planted in random positions across the carriageway. He fought against the urge to steer around them and instead drove straight, cutting a path through to a clearer section of road up ahead. He cursed himself for getting so wound up about nothing. In their petrified state, the dead were no threat at all.
But not all of them were frozen.
From a distance, the corpses had looked like pieces on a chessboard that had been abandoned mid-game. On the edges, where there’d been no protection from the icy winds, they were still locked in position. Towards the centre, though, they’d been shielded from the worst of the weather. Those cadavers had slightly more freedom of movement, and the engine noises had given them the impetus to try to break free and attack.
‘I thought this might happen,’ David said, holding a heavy wrench he was ready to use as a weapon. ‘Just get rid of the fuckers before they start getting frisky.’
He led the one-sided charge and was encouraged when he looked back and saw that everyone was fighting. There were no exceptions, no excuses. Hardened combatants like Sam, Joanne, Orla, Selena, and Lisa were hacking down the semi-frozen monsters with ease. Other, less experienced members of the group were also doing what they could. Mia, Callum, and Ollie had spent more time avoiding trouble than waging war. Noah was even less adept at fighting. He gingerly swung the wooden baton he was carrying in a wide arc as though driving downrange and took out the legs of the two cadavers nearest to him. Another one was desperate to lunge at him, managing, in its silent fury, to lift its feet and break the glue-like layer of frost that had until then been preventing it from attacking. His confidence increasing by the second, Noah destroyed the staggering cadaver with single a brutal swipe to the head that ripped the thing’s jaw from its socket.
More of the dead were beginning to move now, the increased activity around them providing them with the impetus to fight back. Orla had an ice-axe she’d acquired while they’d been in Yaxley. She moved from dead body to dead body, hammering the spike into each skull in turn, clinical and efficient. ‘Wish they were like this all the time,’ she said between re-kills, panting with effort.
‘It’s easier than I thought it’d be,’ Noah said.
‘I know, man,’ Ollie agreed. ‘Where’s the challenge?’
‘Yeah, I don’t want a challenge. I just want a rest. I’m getting too old for all this.’
For some of the group, this sudden frenzy of one-sided violence was clearly cathartic, and there were still plenty of pickings to be had. Deeper into the largely motionless crowd, it was as if the corpses were being defrosted by the energy of battle. More of them were breaking free from their icy bonds, juddering and shuddering in a way that was eerily reminiscent of their initial unnatural reanimation last September. The increase in undead movement was unsettling. There seemed to be hundreds of them still. It was beginning to feel like a race against time to get through them.
This was a strangely subdued massacre.
Other than the regular grunts of effort and the occasional shouts of warning and encouragement, the fighting was quiet. The living went about their work with a cool efficiency and the dead took their punishment without protest. David watched his people work with pride. Even the least experienced of them moved rhythmically from corpse to corpse now, hacking them down and barely blinking an eye, hardly pausing for breath. They’d done enough, but they kept fighting, making sure that every last cadaver was permanently incapacitated, no matter how small the individual threat it posed. ‘That’s us finished,’ he finally shouted. ‘Let’s get back on the road.’
36
He’d hardly ventured out of the pub all day, only to empty the bucket he’d been using for a toilet, and even then, only for the absolute minimum amount of time he needed to be outside. Dominic was a social animal, a real ‘people person’, always had been. He still craved human contact (despite the number of humans having been reduced to little more than zero) and this isolation was unsettling. The thought of having no one but himself to hear the constant stream of words he still spoke aloud was depressing, but he didn’t see how things were going to change anytime soon. He thought, and told himself, that he’d better try and get used to it. It was a comfortable enough place, with enough food and drink to see him through several weeks, maybe even longer if he was especially frugal. He’d dragged down a mattress from upstairs and set it up by the hearth, and he’d used the dying embers of last night’s blaze to restart the fire. There were plenty of wooden tables and chairs he could smash up and burn, and he was confident he’d find other fuel sources outside, if he looked hard enough.
‘All in all,’ he said, ‘I’ve got off quite lightly. There are far worse places to be stranded on one’s own.’
Except he wasn’t completely alone, was he?
There was that crowd in the carpark, for starters.
They remained frozen in position for now, but they wouldn’t stay that way for long. He’d been fixated on one of them in particular. The frost had kept its feet fused to the ground, but he swore, as the day had worn on, it had changed position. It had been looking the other way first thing, staring out into the distance at nothing, but now it had swivelled its torso around, though its feet remained planted ahead, and was staring straight into the pub. Its icy eyes were fixed on the window where he’d been standing, watching it watching him. Horrible bloody thing. He knew it made sense to go out there and get rid of them before they regained full mobility. He’d got as far as arming himself with a knife from the kitchen, but he hadn’t yet plucked up the courage to go and do the deed. Maybe he’d leave it for today. It would surely be cold again tonight, more than likely dropping below zero. Probably best to leave it until the morning.
It was going to be strange having to do everything for himself, though he comforted himself that it would probably only be short-term. Once the dead were properly dead, he’d leave here and see who else he could find. He had the benefit of a public image that would likely serve him well for another couple of years at least.
Okay, so politicians didn’t win popularity contests, ‘Other than the ones that originally propel one into office, of course,’ he laughed. But whomever he came across in this strange new world would likely have heard of him, even if they didn’t recognise his face. His pre-apocalypse fame would enable him to get a foot in the door with most any group he came across from hereon in. ‘And a foot in the door is all I’ll need, isn’t it.’ Because even now, once he was in front of an audience, they would be putty in his hands. He knew beyond any doubt that he still had the gift of the gab because here he was, doing a number on himself. The thought made him happy. He was on his own, miles from anywhere, at the mercy of both the elements and the dead, and yet he was still managing to convince himself that everything was rosy.
He stoked the fire, poured himself a drink, then picked up a trashy novel he’d found in an upstairs room and started to read. He’d also found some paper and pens. Maybe he’d write his memoirs while he waited here for the dead to reduce to mush? He remembered a conversation he’d had long ago with Stan, of all people, about him cementing his position in the history books. ‘Maybe I’ll just write those history books myself?’ At least that would guarantee he’d be painted in a flattering light. For now, though, all he’d written down was the useful info he could remember from the conversations he’d overheard last night. Cutting cross-country once they’d passed Leeds, following the River Wharfe, aiming for Heddlewick and the road to Ledsey Cross...
It was hard to believe the others had still been banging on about the bloody legendary Ledsey Cross. He thought they’d have given up on that futile daydream by now. Then again, truth be told, if he had either the means or the inclination, he’d be tempted to check the place out for himself. ‘Locals there would probably welcome someone with the kind of leadership experience I could offer.’
Dominic became unexpectedly misty-eyed over a copy of the last edition of the Daily Mail ever printed. He’d been about to tear it into strips to use as firelighters when a wave of nostalgia had washed over him. He read it from cover to cover then folded it carefully and put it in his bag. Even after all he’d been through, he’d still managed to hold onto a few precious mementos of his life before the end of the world. His laminated parliamentary pass. A photo of him and some random royal at the opening of something or other, he couldn’t remember what or where. He’d taken them as souvenirs when he’d left his office in Westminster for the final time, not fully realising then the extent to which they’d likely become important historic documents; crucial evidence of the world before this one that had been ended in a single morning without warning or explanation.
It was a clear run between the door of the pub and the petrol station. Much as he wanted to stay indoors, he’d been thinking all day that he should probably go and check the place out. He’d find plenty of useful stuff there, of that he was certain. And the sooner he did it, the sooner he’d be able to properly shut himself away in here, and doing that, he reminded himself, is key to our survival. He didn’t want to fall into the same trap as they had in London and make so much noise trying to stay alive that it attracted the attention of hordes of the undead.
Petrol stations usually sold barbecue stuff, didn’t they? They’d have probably had wood and firelighters on display on the forecourt last September, so he might not even have to go inside the building. He’d lose the light in the next couple of hours, so if he was going to do it, he needed to do it sooner rather than later.
‘Get a grip, old boy,’ he said to himself. You can do this!
He wrapped himself up in as many mismatched layers of clothing as he could find and took a single hesitant step outside. The temperature was icy cold – much lower than his new home in the pub – and it chilled him to the bone. But the world out here was reassuringly silent, so he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and half-walked, half-ran across the carpark.
Someone came at him from out of nowhere. His first instinct was that it was one of the dead, but when he realised he’d been rugby tackled by a big fucker who weighed many times what even the heaviest corpse did these days, he knew he was really in trouble.
Winded, he lay on his back in the slushy snow and looked up into the darkening sky. A familiar face leered over him and grinned. ‘Well fuck me,’ said Piotr. ‘Dominic fucking Grove as I live and breathe. What’s a snivelling little prick like you doing out on his own in a place like this?’
37
There were another three of them along for the ride with Piotr. They were his driver from London, Alfonso Morterero, Harjinder, and a woman from Yaxley called Kelly whom Dominic hadn’t seen before. He recognised the van they’d turned up in – it was the same one he’d arrived at Yaxley in with Sam, Vicky and the others. When they’d first found him, Piotr had threatened to kill him, but Dominic had so far managed to persuade them he was more useful alive, though he sensed it wouldn’t take much to make Piotr go back on his decision.
They were inside the pub now, soaking up the heat from his fire and plundering his supplies. They’d already hit the booze. Dominic resolved to stick to soft drinks. He needed to stay in control.
‘So, where did you disappear to, you slippery little bugger?’
‘I lost you in the madness at Stansted. I tried to find you, but you remember what it was like there. Me and Stan got separated from the rest of you, so we just laid low. The others came through a few days later and we managed to get ourselves picked up. We didn’t get to Yaxley until after all the trouble had blown over. Didn’t find out what they’d done until way after the event, otherwise I’d have done what I could to help.’
‘Sure you would’ve,’ Harjinder said, watching from a distance.
Piotr remained unimpressed. ‘None of that explains why you’re out here. Did you think you’d just strike out on your own? You’ve never struck me as a lone survivor type of guy.’
Dominic’s throat was dry as a desert. He took a sip of his lemonade. It was only when he lifted the glass to his lips that he realised just how badly his hands were shaking. How do I spin my way out of this one? ‘I saw what you did there at Christmas. I saw what you did to Taylor.’
‘And?’
‘And I’ll be completely honest, I didn’t think it was going to stop there.’
‘So you decided you’d get out before it got nasty?’
‘It was already nasty enough, Piotr, but yes. I could see things getting a lot worse, and if I’m honest, I didn’t want to hang around for the afterparty.’
‘But it still don’t add up. You always take the easy option, Dominic. You wouldn’t have left on your own, would you?’
Dominic hesitated again, thinking through his options, trying to find the least worst way of describing what had happened over the last twenty-four hours. ‘A group of them left Yaxley. They’re off hunting for the mystical Ledsey Cross, wouldn’t you know. I stowed away in their truck, and they were none too pleased when they found me.’
Piotr laughed. ‘Yeah, I can imagine. Who was it? Shires and his usual playmates.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And they left you out here on your own to freeze? Poor little Dominic.’
‘I’m doing alright for myself, thanks very much.’
‘Yeah, whatever.’
Dominic was beginning to feel a little more confident. ‘So why are you here, Piotr? They’re fortifying their village because they think you’ll be back.’
‘Why would I go back there? There’s nothing left. I set fire to it all,’ he said, unemotional.
‘But they killed so many of your people. I thought you’d want revenge.’
Piotr shrugged. ‘You’ve got me down all wrong, Dom.’
‘So, why are you here?’
‘We found their tracks and followed them till the snow got too heavy last night. Figured they wouldn’t have left unless they thought there was something worth leaving for. If money counted for anything these days, I’d stake everything I had on them going to Ledsey Cross.’
‘Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to the work that out. But they’re long gone. They left hours ago. How did you find me? Was it luck, or are you just very good at finding needles in haystacks?’
Harjinder waved a brick-like gadget at him. ‘Thermal imaging camera. Picks up body heat. Grabbed it from the warehouse before we torched it. You’d be surprised how much you can see when the rest of the world is ice cold.’
