Autumn exodus, p.29
Autumn - Exodus, page 29
The gap between their position and the back of the van suddenly seemed to be reducing. A moment ago, they’d been chasing distant taillights. Now Sam could see the panicked faces of the passengers in the back.
Either we’re speeding up, or they’re slowing down.
#
David accelerated then changed down and crunched through the gears. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Piotr yelled at him. ‘I thought you knew how to drive.’
‘There are too bloody many of them,’ David said through clenched teeth. The treads of the van’s tyres were slick with dead flesh, unable to get any grip on the equally slippery surface of the road. ‘We’ve got no traction. If the road was clearer, we’d have half a chance.’
‘How the fuck did you lot manage without me?’ He turned around in his seat and gave his orders. ‘All of you, get out in front and start shifting bodies.’
They’d prepped for this. It wasn’t a surprise. Lisa, Orla, Marcus, Ollie, Ruth, Joanne, and Mia were tooled up and ready to work. They opened the back and jumped out, the vehicle barely moving forward at all now. Selena and Vicky remained in their seats.
‘You too princess,’ Piotr yelled at Selena. He knew Vicky was utterly useless, not even worth the leverage of threatening her life. Selena was ready to fight back, but Vicky knew it wasn’t worth the risk.
‘Just do it,’ she whispered, her voice barely a rasp.
‘I’m not going to just—’
‘Do it,’ Vicky said again, and Selena did as she was told.
Lisa, Orla, Joanne, and Ruth carried makeshift shields they’d brough with them from the frozen food store; the Perspex lids of chiller units that had been prised off and cannibalised. They were remarkably effective – rounded in shape, relatively lightweight, and see-through. The four women formed a line and moved in unison from the rear of the van around to the front, pushing back a decent number of bodies that the others who followed them bludgeoned into submission with hammers and axes and whatever else they’d managed to lay their hands on.
Sam and Callum were close now. Sam could see what was happening and it came as no surprise. To have expected them to carve a path through such an expansive of riled, undead creatures had been the kind of delusional, bullshit idea Piotr seemed to excel in.
Initially, the forward attack was working. Whether it was due to their collective strength or the fact that large numbers of the dead remained uncoordinated, distracted and confused by the sudden abundance of stimuli, it didn’t matter – the group out front had so far managed to punch a hole through the seething masses that allowed David to keep the van moving forward. But no one was under any illusions. From his seat behind the wheel, David had the clearest view of the carnage. They’d covered less than a third of the distance they needed to.
‘We’re not going to make it,’ he said.
‘Bollocks,’ was the only answer Piotr had for him.
‘You’re not listening to me. I’m not trying to be difficult, Piotr, I’m just pointing out a fact. We’re not going to make it. We’ve slowed down to a crawl.’
‘If they can keep the road clear, we can keep crawling.’
‘But what if they can’t? We’ve lost the advantage of the explosions, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘There’s still some fire.’
‘Yes, but it’s too far away and it’s going to burn out in minutes. Jesus, you still don’t fully understand how the dead react to us, do you? They’re not going to be interested in a couple of distant fires now. All they’re going to be focused on is this van and the people in and around it.’
‘Just keep driving,’ Piotr told him again, and all David could do was comply.
#
Sam pushed and shoved his way through the rancid, writhing crowds around the back of the juddering vehicle. It would jump forward a metre or so, then get stuck again, wheels skidding in gore. Its progress had become so unpredictable, so erratic, that Ruth, Lisa, and Orla had begun to pull away.
From the rear, much of the fighting up ahead remained unseen. Sam felt like he was drowning in rot. What was left of these corpses was unimaginably horrific; most had bloated from the amount of rain and flood they’d suffered, and their corrupted stink was made infinitely worse by the river water stench itself. They virtually disintegrated when he hit them. He glanced back to look for Callum, but all he could see was death. He was about to put on a burst of speed to try to get around the front of the van, but there was no sign of him. Regardless, he dropped his shoulder and raced forward. He overtook the vehicle with ease, then jumped back out of the way when Marcus swung an axe just in front of him. Wrong-footed, he lost his balance and almost fell back into the disintegrating crowd. A hand roughly grabbed a fistful of his jacket and pulled him to safety. It was Joanne. She yanked him back into the circle of protected space she and the others were struggling to defend. ‘Where the hell have you been? You took your time. We could do with some help.’
Sam didn’t have enough breath left in his lungs to respond. It was all he could do to fall into line and keep pushing more corpses away. But every cadaver he grabbed hold of now seemed to be fighting back with equal voracity. But were they fighting? Christ, it was as if they weren’t interested in him at all now, as if all they wanted was to get past him and get closer to the van... like they were trying to stop themselves from being dragged back into the free-for-all.
He felt himself slowing down. Either that, or the ferocity of the desperate dead was increasing. His foot became snagged in a pile of limbs, and as he fought to free himself, the van lurched to the side and nudged into him. It was just a glancing blow, but it hurt like hell. Behind the wheel, David didn’t even notice. Unbalanced, Sam looked down when one of the hideous creatures caught hold of his leg and wouldn’t let go.
It was Callum.
He’d taken a long route around and was on his hands and knees now, crawling between swaying, spidery undead legs, struggling to get into the precious bubble of space around the vehicle and stand up. Sam dragged him to his feet and the two of them backed into Selena. She recoiled, unsighted, and in doing so a gap appeared in the fighting line: the three of them on one side, Marcus and Joanne on the other. The dead poured through between them. Selena did what she could to retake her place in their rough formation, and both Callum and Sam fought alongside her. Individually the undead were insignificant, but in numbers such as this they were unstoppable.
Ruth, Orla, and Lisa were fighting with such conviction up ahead that they hadn’t noticed they’d become separated from the others. Joanne yelled for them to slow down, but the disorientation was such that no one could tell who was shouting or where they were shouting from. Ruth turned around to look for Vicky, but all she could see was more rancorous cadavers spilling into the undefended space behind. It reminded her of a vast festival crowd, but it was as if every attendee was on the same bad trip, hallucinating and panic-stricken. This mess was as far removed as she could imagine from those joyous collective celebrations of light and noise she remembered and missed.
‘Keep going,’ Lisa pleaded. ‘We’re almost there.’
Ruth shook her off. Her desperation to find Vicky was such that she heaved her freezer-lid shield around and started moving back the other way.
#
Despite his elevated position behind the wheel, David was unaware of the fragmentation of the group. He’d lost sight of all of them, focusing instead on keeping the van moving forward. But that was becoming impossible. There simply was no way of driving over the uneven bloody chaos of the battlefield. The tarmac had disappeared, indistinguishable from the muddy, bloody mush of everything else. ‘We’re slowing down,’ Piotr said. ‘Why are we slowing down.’
‘There’s nothing I can do. I can’t get any grip.’
‘Get the others to push.’
‘What others? Can you see them? Fuck knows where everyone’s gone.’
He stopped the van then tried again, shifting into a higher gear and trying to pull away, the way he’d been taught to drive in ice and snow. It didn’t have any effect. Every time he accelerated, the wheels spun faster, and the engine noise increased, but the van didn’t move. The effect on the nearest of the dead, though, was dramatic. They surged closer, slamming up against all sides of the vehicle at once, drenching it in their gore.
David tried reversing, but even that didn’t make any difference. Back into first, then into reverse, then first gear again... their only movement was a useless back-and-forth rocking, barely noticeable amongst the constant bangs and crashes as corpses threw themselves against the van’s windows and metal walls. He hit the horn to try and alert those still fighting out front.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Piotr screamed.
‘The only thing left that I can do. Look, Piotr, we’re going nowhere. We need to get out and walk. I know your leg’s bad, but we don’t have any other option. This van’s not going any further.’
‘Keep. Bloody. Trying!’
‘There’s no point.’
David let the engine die. For the first time, Piotr lifted his pistol from Omar’s chest and pointed it at David.
‘I’ll fucking kill you.’
‘Go on, then. How will that help you, exactly? Don’t you get it, you fucking moron? This is all you’ve got left. The worse you make things for us, the more of us you kill, the bigger your struggle’s going to be. It’s really not that difficult to understand, is it. People are irreplaceable now. You killed the fittest member of our group. And finished off your sick entourage, didn’t you? No one’s got your back, Piotr. We’re only waiting for you to fail again. This is why you’ve fucked everything up so badly, time and time again.’
Piotr had an expression on his face that David hadn’t seen before. Equal parts fear, indecision, helplessness.
‘Listen to me, we can get through this,’ David told him. ‘We’ve got through worse. We just need to—’
He stopped talking. Vicky was trying to get his attention. She reached for his shoulder with bony fingers. He took her hand in his.
‘Don’t waste your breath,’ she said. ‘If he doesn’t get it by now, he never will.’
The back door of the van flew open. It was Ruth. Struggling to move at all now, Vicky slid back along the floor towards her. Ruth kept the undead at bay with her shield so Vicky had space to get out. Around her, the dead watched but didn’t surge towards her. She looked into the multitude of decaying faces staring back at her, knowing that all they saw now was just another corpse, someone else like them who’d been ravaged by disease, barely able to keep moving... hardly even existing, straddling the border between life and death.
Piotr was panicking. ‘What the hell are they doing? Are they crazy?’
In the unexpected madness of the moment, he didn’t react when David seized his chance and threw Omar to safety, shoving him out of the driver’s door. He figured the dead were less of a risk to the boy than Piotr.
Piotr hadn’t even noticed. He was distracted by the first of the undead now trying to crawl into the back of the van, reacting to the engine noise and to the volume of his voice. Fucker was panicking.
‘Not a fan of being this close to them, are you?’ David said. He laughed at him. Couldn’t help himself. ‘Jesus, Piotr, you’re pathetic. I’ve seen you ordering people about, screaming and shouting at folks to get them to fight for you, but I’ve never seen you deal with a single one of them yourself.’
Piotr wasn’t listening. He was petrified by the corpses that had made it into the back of the van, forced forward by an abundance of others surging from behind. He fired the pistol into the multitude. The first shot burst the head of a rancid-looking creature like a brain-filled balloon. The next, fired frantically, shattered a window but somehow missed everything else.
Many corpses reacted predictably, hurling themselves forward again, increasing the pressure inside the van. Outside, some of the others appeared initially to back away from the noise. Piotr couldn’t take his eyes off the ghastly creatures. He was frozen with fear. Too much to take in at once. All out of lackeys. All out of options.
David sensed his disorientation and grabbed the pistol. Piotr fired instinctively, but only succeeded in putting a bullet through the padded roof of the van. He was caught off-guard by the angle of the recoil, and David easily ripped the weapon from his grip. Piotr looked at him, helpless. ‘Please—’ he started to say, but David had had enough.
‘Did you seriously think I was going to let you inflict yourself on the people at Ledsey Cross?’
‘But I... It wasn’t—’
‘Oh, fuck off, Piotr,’ David said.
He’d never fired a pistol before, and he hoped he’d never have to do so again, but he screwed up his face, anticipated the recoil, then shot Piotr through the kneecap of his otherwise uninjured leg.
His screams were worse than the gunshot noise.
David scrambled out of the van and forced his way upstream, through the flood of corpses all moving the other way, reacting to the chaos. There was movement everywhere he looked, so much that he couldn’t make sense of any of it. Which way was he supposed to go? Where were the others? He caught glimpses of some of his friends fighting in different spaces, well away from each other, looking as lost as he felt. And he looked back at the van and could still see Piotr thrashing around furiously inside, his desperate noise drawing more and more of the undead closer. David still had the pistol. Did he try and shoot the fuel tank, like they did in the movies, and cause another explosion that would temporarily distract the dead? Did he shoot as many corpses as he had bullets left for? Or did he shoot Piotr again and put him out of his misery?
Did he fuck.
He left the bastard to scream and shout and bleed out alone, and it felt good. Maybe too good.
David turned around again and walked straight into Vicky. ‘I was looking for you...’ he started to say. She was shaking her head.
‘No time. Just walk. Don’t fight.’
‘What?’
She smiled at him, and even that seemed to take more effort than it ought to. ‘You heard. Just walk. Don’t fight them. Follow me.’
She began dragging herself deeper into the mob and David did as she said. Up ahead he could see some of the others battling hard to stay afloat, in clear danger of being swallowed up and overcome by the tidal dead. Some of the creatures were shuffling towards the van, but many more continued being drawn to the areas where his friends were desperately trying to stay alive. They’d truly split up now – the intended single survivor group having divided and subdivided. Some people were on their own, others in twos and threes, but they all fought with a uniform ferocity, a desire to stay alive. It didn’t seem to matter. They were outnumbered whatever: several thousand cadavers for each individual one of them.
The harder they fought, the stronger the undead resistance seemed to become. David pushed more of the wretched creatures away as they crowded closer to him. Vicky turned back and shook her head again. ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t fight. I told you. They’re as frightened as we are.’
With Ruth alongside her, she kept walking forward. She didn’t react when the dead clattered into her, didn’t try and re-kill any of them; to her they became lost, disoriented brethren, and she just walked through them.
Between them.
Alongside them.
With them.
All David could do was follow her lead. He matched her almost step for step, struggling as much with her lethargic pace as he did with the constant urge to lash out at the unpredictable, foul-smelling monsters that crowded into him from every direction.
And then, up ahead, were Selena, Omar, and Ollie. Vicky changed direction slightly so that she didn’t miss them. She was in such a poor physical condition now, grey-skinned and bedraggled, that none of them recognised her at first. Omar realised when he saw David behind, and he was about to say something when David subtly gestured for him not to. With a faint, barely perceptible change of expression, he signalled for Omar to do as he did and keep walking. Selena, realising that the brittle creature that had just brushed up against her was Vicky, did the same.
Sam and Marcus, next, fighting in a muddy pocket of space.
Then Mia and Callum. Then Lisa, Joanne, and Orla.
Those with shields naturally fell into formation around the others, maximising the available protection, or at least giving them space to breath. When anyone spoke or reacted, the dead around them reacted too. But when they remained quiet and followed Vicky’s example, they were able to pass through the hordes almost completely unchallenged. Way behind them, Piotr’s angry wailing continued for a while longer, but soon it stopped, and the world became unnaturally quiet. The river roar faded away, muted by the distance. Soon the only noises were the dragging of weary feet along the road.
They’d reached the outermost edge of the crowd, the point where the gradient of the road had increased such that the dead could no longer climb. Vicky kept walking for as long as she could, then collapsed. The others crowded around her. Ruth and Selena kneeling at her side. Had she died? Someone had half a bottle of water. Ruth lifted her head and poured it into her mouth. She reacted, swallowing a little, but coughing up more. ‘I’m okay,’ she said, her words barely there.
‘Like hell you are.’
Sam edged closer. ‘What happened just now, Vic?’
‘She’s done in,’ Ruth said. ‘Let her rest.’
Vicky shook her head and, with Ruth’s help, sat upright. ‘We’re kindred spirits, them and us, just the same. I don’t have long left, Sam. I think I understand them now.’
‘I don’t understand any of this.’
