Autumn exodus, p.24
Autumn - Exodus, page 24
When they reached the carpark at the end of the long, warehouse-like gym building, the source of the noise was revealed. The cars that had been left on the far side of the carpark were up to their wheel arches in water; much of the tarmac resembled a lake.
Sam followed Callum who used a low wall to climb up onto the roof of one of the stranded cars. ‘Christ, would you look at that.’
The river they’d seen when they’d first explored Knottingley had swollen to several times its original size. Sam stared in disbelief at the vast, raging, mud-brown torrent. ‘I think we might have seriously fucked up stopping here.’
‘But how could it have got so bad so fast? I mean, I know the rain’s been heavy but still...’
Sam gestured around them. ‘The rain’s been heavy for weeks, so the ground was already saturated. And the drains and sewers are fucked. We saw that in London, and it’s only going to have got worse since then. And on top of everything, we’ve had heavy snow with a fast thaw.’
‘The snow’s all gone now, though. It should start easing off, shouldn’t it?’
Sam shook his head. ‘I wish. I think it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.’
‘How come?’
‘It’s to be coming down off the hills. There’s going to be an absolute load more water coming this way.’
45
It was dark by the time they made it back. ‘Where the hell have you two been?’ David demanded when Sam and Callum finally returned to the guesthouse. They’d looped around the back of the building and climbed over the carpark wall. Sam dragged him into the kitchen, out of earshot of everyone else.
‘We’re in trouble.’
‘We’re always in trouble.’
‘No, Dave, this is different.’
Sam paused, and in that moment of hesitation, David felt his legs weaken with nerves. In all the time he’d known Sam, he’d almost always been nothing but unfailingly positive. He’d found solutions when others had only seen problems. He’d conjured up escape routes out of thin air. He’d risked his life, been left for dead, and still come up smelling of roses. David knew things had to be bloody awful for him to be talking like this. He looked terrified, lost. ‘Tell me.’
Sam took another breath and steadied himself. ‘I don’t think we’re getting out of here, Dave.’
‘What do you mean? Of course we are.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s worse than we thought. We’ve led everyone into a dead end.’
‘I don’t understand. The dead are here because we’re here, yes, but we always knew that would be the case. We were unlucky. The thaw came and they were able to get mobile again, that’s all. We can get through this, mate. We always do.’
‘I’m not so sure. We tried to distract them with noise again. It’s always worked before, but not this time. They can see through it.’
David almost laughed at the ridiculousness of what he was hearing. ‘What? For Christ’s sake, Sam, get a grip.’
‘I’m serious. We started more music playing, and they just kept going. They walked straight past, following the queues to this place.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Go out there and have a look for yourself if you don’t believe me.’
‘Then we’ll just have to take a leaf out of Piotr’s book and get rid of them, won’t we?’
He shook his head. ‘Not that easy. There are too many. And there are bigger things happening here.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like the river that runs through this place. Callum and I didn’t think anything of it when we saw it earlier, but with this bloody rain and all the melting snow... there’s a serious risk of flooding. It’s too dangerous for us to try getting away now.’
‘But surely the noise of the river should be drawing the dead away from us if it’s that bad?’
‘Same as the music. They’re choosing to ignore it and focusing on us.’
‘This is absurd.’
‘Tell me about it!’
‘So, what do you propose we do?’
‘We need to be honest with everyone about the mess we’re in and get them all onside. Then we secure the building, batten down the hatches, and hope we’re still in one piece in the morning. If we are and the water level hasn’t increased, then we make a fucking run for it.’
#
They worked without pause to get the place ready. Out back, Callum, Ollie, Orla, and Noah had blocked the gap under the bottom of the carpark gate with whatever they could find. It was imperative that they kept the coach dry and operable. They’d need it to get them out of Knottingley – if there was anything left of Knottingley to get out of in the morning, and any way of getting out.
Inside, the rest of the group had confined themselves to three adjacent rooms on the second floor of the guesthouse. Before tonight there’d always been a glimmer of hope, even on the darkest days. Here today, though, there was nothing. Trapped in a rundown B&B, stranded miles from anywhere by the rising water and hounded by the dead, today it felt like they’d reached the end of the road.
Ruth refused to take the news lying down. Sam had explained their position, but she didn’t want to listen. Sanjay was similarly incensed, as was Joanne and Marcus. They supplemented the makeshift weapons they already carried with tools taken from the garden sheds and garages of neighbouring properties, then she led them out onto the street in front of the guesthouse in the incessant rain. Several of them wore head-torches. They’d fight their way out of Knottingley if it came to it.
Sam had warned them about the noise outside, but it was still remarkable. The river roar was even louder now, an ever-present, all-consuming roar. It was everywhere at once, disorientating some of the dead and sending some of the corpses staggering off in random directions, hunting for the source of the drifting din and colliding with others that remained focused on the guesthouse and its occupants. The group were used to an enemy that, for the most part, all herded in the same general direction, but this was wholly different, absolute chaos. Would it make them easier to deal with, or just add another unwanted layer of complication to the carnage? Ruth knew there was only one way of finding out.
She had a long-handled axe that she’d found in a shed next-door, and she swung it in wide, indiscriminate arcs around her, wiping out sizeable swathes of foetid corpses. She advanced into each blood-stained space she cleared until she’d reached the middle of the street. The other volunteers followed her lead, fanning out and forming a semi-circle around the front of the guesthouse, hacking and reaping their way through, cutting down whatever undead that shambled into range.
The fighting felt different this time.
Until tonight, the enemy had all but queued up to be cut down, their blunted instincts driving them forward irrespective of the physical danger they faced. Tonight, though, their confused, independent movements presented a new challenge. Joanne illuminated one of them with her head-torch and lunged at it, only for it to step back out of range. Sanjay swung at another nearby but missed and nearly wrenched his shoulder from its socket, his fist making contact with thin air. He’d dismissed a couple of earlier incidents, explaining them away to himself as a result of the awful conditions and the increasing piles of slippery limbs and entrails littering the ground, but he was becoming increasingly concerned. ‘Fucking thing just backed away from me. Did you see that? That fucking thing just backed away!’
Ruth ignored him, focusing on a trio that had lurched into range, but Joanne was not so dismissive. ‘This isn’t right,’ she shouted, fighting to make herself heard over the rain and wind and the river roar. ‘What are they doing?’
They both lowered their weapons momentarily because the behaviour they’d seen was now being repeated all around them. Some of the corpses – overall a small minority, but enough for them to be noteworthy – were unquestionably trying to retreat. They were moving away from the direction of attack, colliding with others who continued to numbly stumble into range of Ruth’s axe swinging. This level of conscious control had been all but invisible when they’d looked out at the crowds as a whole, but down here among the masses, such subtle shifts in behaviour were increasingly noticeable. And now he was actively looking for it, it was all Sanjay could see. For every six or seven cadavers still clamouring to get at him, one or two more were trying to get away.
Ruth and Marcus were doing enough to hold back the dead tide, because although the size of the crowd out here was huge, they were nowhere near as tightly packed as they had been in London. Joanne took a step back to try and make sense of the madness. A corpse collided with her, and she instinctively shot out a hand and caught it by the wrist. She let it go and the damn thing just stood there, looking directly at her. Its cloudy, unfocused eyes were staring into the light from her torch, its mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. But there was no aggression. The creature wasn’t fighting. ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ she demanded, knowing full well it wouldn’t answer. The damn thing just continued to stare straight back at her, vacant and unblinking, neither retreating nor attacking. Another surge came from the crowds behind it, and it was swallowed up.
Joanne was distracted when Ruth, Sanjay, and Marcus raced back past her towards the guesthouse. She was about to turn and follow them when she realised her feet were wet. When she looked down, she saw that the street was awash with murky water. It was only a few centimetres deep, but it was everywhere, and it was getting deeper. She could feel the force of it increasing too, flowing down the road. She looked around, and though the range of her head-torch was limited, she saw enough.
Many of the dead that had gathered outside the guesthouse were being knocked off their feet as the speed and depth of the water flow increased. When she looked down again, Joanne saw that it was up to her ankles. She retreated to the guesthouse, having to push through a brace of corpses that had followed the others inside. She tore at their flaccid flesh, feeling her way through the decay and stumbling over the waterlogged remains of others that had already gone down.
Sam was waiting in the porch for her. He grabbed her outstretched hand and pulled her inside.
The hallway was wet. They’d done what they could to stop it, but water was already getting in.
‘You okay?’ he asked her.
‘Not sure.’
‘Looks like the river burst its banks.’
‘No shit,’ she said, numb, not knowing how else to respond.
46
The guesthouse reeked of dirty water. There was water throughout the ground floor now, and there was absolute panic on the floors above. They’d done what they could to try and stem the flow, but no matter how much furniture they’d piled up, it didn’t seem to have made a scrap of difference. Still, most of the group remained downstairs, trying.
‘Out of the way!’ Marcus yelled as he crashed down the staircase, his arms loaded with pillows and bedding stripped from bedrooms. He splashed along the sodden carpet and stretched over to wedge the bedding into gaps in the mound of furniture they’d piled up at the door. It was hopeless, but he kept trying. He’d stop one trickle, only to see water start running from somewhere else.
In the adjacent lounge, Sam and Noah were blocking the windows. The miserable light made it even more difficult to look for gaps. There were large numbers of sickly cadavers pressed up against the outside walls of the guesthouse. ‘How are they even standing their ground?’ Sam asked.
‘They’re not,’ Noah said. ‘See?’ He gestured for Sam to look through a small crack between the piled-up furniture.
The corpses were being carried along like driftwood, catching on the corners of the building and bunching up. Here, where the porch of the guesthouse protruded, large numbers of them were already wedged in, forming a dam of the dead. He moved an upturned chair and pressed his face against the glass to get a better look. Jesus, the water was at waist level with the grotesque monsters now.
David went from room to room, collecting stragglers. ‘We’ve done as much as we can,’ he said to Sam and Noah. ‘Time to move to higher ground.’
When he left the lounge again, he collided with Joanne coming the other way. ‘It’s not so bad out back,’ she said. ‘There’s some water coming under the gate, but we’ve done enough to stem the tide.’
‘Think it’ll hold?’
‘I think it has to.’
The kitchen and dining room were clear. David ran back towards the staircase then stopped when he realised Sam was still in the lounge, trying to drag a sideboard out into the hall. ‘Did you not hear me? We’re done, Sam.’
‘Not yet. Just give me a minute. I want to get this in front of the door if I can. Give me a hand.’
‘Fuck it,’ David yelled at him.
‘It’ll only take a sec.’
‘No, Sam, look!’ He shone his torch at the front door so that Sam could understand his panic. Water was spurting through the gaps around the doorframe under huge pressure. ‘I’m not asking, I’m telling. Whatever you’re doing, it won’t make any difference now.’
Sam scrambled over the lump of furniture left wedged in the doorway, leapt the banister and followed David, but they’d only made it halfway up the long staircase when the door gave way. It flew open with astonishing force as though the door had been blown by explosives, and the surge of stormwater and dead bodies that flooded into the guesthouse was such that the blockade they’d built was instantly destroyed as if it had been made from paper and matchsticks. For a moment, frozen with horror, all Sam could do was stare as the torrent tore through the ground floor of the building.
And then he saw the dead.
He’d expected them to have been blasted to oblivion by the deluge, and many of them were, but their numbers were such that many others were carried along by the water. A few of the spidery corpses were, by chance, swept towards the stairs. One stuck an arm between the balustrades and was able to catch hold. Its limb was painfully thin, barely any meat left on its bones, yet its grip was impossibly tenacious. And again, as had been the case outside, where one became wedged, others became stuck also, the bones of one becoming a platform for others, clogging each passageway. Another was flung against the wall by the force of the water. Finding itself several steps up, it began to climb, the rising flood aiding its buoyancy. David booted it under the chin, sending it backflipping into the swirling, broth-like mire that now filled the entire ground floor of the guesthouse.
No way out, David thought as he and Sam climbed the stairs like rats. Christ, there’s absolutely no way out.
For now, the coach remained relatively secure in the carpark out back, but how long that would be the case was anyone’s guess. But even if they managed to get out of this building, there was no way they’d get out of Knottingley now. The roads all around would be impassable, and if the floodwaters didn’t get them, the dead inevitably would. Irrespective of how the behaviours of some of the cadavers appeared to have changed, there remained many, many more that still bayed for the blood of the living.
The water level appeared to have stopped rising, but it was academic now. The flood had given the dead an unexpected advantage, lifting them up and allowing them increased access to the staircase and the floors above. Had they left doors and windows less secure, most of the tide would have swept through, but they’d done a bang-up job of it, and made a fairly stable tidal pool. Several of the floaters had already reached the first floor. ‘They won’t get up here, will they?’ Selena asked from the second-floor landing, panic in her voice.
David wanted to tell her that they wouldn’t, wanted to reassure her they were safe, but he wasn’t going to lie.
‘There’s a loft hatch,’ Lisa said, and she shone her torch at the ceiling. Ruth, almost double her size, crouched down and let her climb up on her shoulders. She opened the hatch and looked around. They’d already seen that a small section of the roof had collapsed near the eaves, but it hadn’t got any worse, and the attic space appeared otherwise secure. It had been properly boarded and there was a pull-down access ladder. She grabbed the cord and asked Ruth to lower her down.
‘Get up,’ she shouted as people herded out from the bedrooms towards the steps. ‘Carry as much as you can and get up there.’
No one objected: going higher was a natural human reaction. The fear of what they were climbing towards was nothing compared to the nightmare below that they were trying to escape. Though the dead remained individually lethargic and weak, and only a handful of them had so far made it up to the first floor, in the chaos of the moment it was easy to believe that either the guesthouse would completely fill with foul-smelling water, or that scores of the dead would be able to get up the stairs and attack.
The entire group climbed up into the freezing, damp attic space. The last one, David pulled the ladder up behind him then leant down to close the hatch. He paused for a moment and listened. The driving rain hitting the roof and windows. The roar of the river running down the street outside. The churning of the water inside the building and the bangs and crashes as furniture and corpses were thrown around by the force of the flood.
He pulled the hatch shut and sealed them in.
47
DAY ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE
The first day of the new year had been an unprecedented ordeal, a new low. It had begun with Piotr’s raid on them at the garden centre and had gone downhill from there. They’d expected to be at Ledsey Cross by now, but their destination felt further away than ever. And was there even any point in trying? If Piotr had already found the place, there’d likely be nothing left of it. He’d have destroyed anything of value by now.
Some of the group had slept intermittently through sheer exhaustion, others lay awake for hours, too scared to close their eyes for even a second, listening to the world outside being battered by nature and to the guesthouse being swamped by both the floodwaters and the dead, all of it being mixed into a toxic soup.
