Autumn exodus, p.9
Autumn - Exodus, page 9
Cheeky fucker.
It was easier said than done, though. Callum and Ollie had little to gain but plenty to lose by screwing him over, but it stung his ego a bit to be putting his fate in the hands of two kids he’d only just met. Time past, he’d have put them in their place, but they’d so far survived and were in reasonably good physical shape. He thought they must have been doing something right.
Losing the cover of the trees made Sam feel unexpectedly vulnerable. In comparison, Ollie and Callum looked assured as they cut through an alleyway then strode along a well-to-do-looking street. Midway along was a black BMW convertible blocking the pavement. What was left of the driver remained strapped in her seat, dressed for the office. When they were just a couple of metres away, she heard them and began flapping her jaws wildly and flailing her spindly arms about, a hurricane of sudden movement. When Sam reacted, the others snickered.
‘Morning, luv. You look nice today.’ Callum said casually. This clearly wasn’t the first time they’d met.
They crossed the road at the end of the street, not even pausing to check for corpses, and continued through the carpark of a large pub opposite. They carried on down the side of an empty outbuilding. Sam could see huge swarms of corpses nearby. He slowed down, and Callum shoved him in the back. ‘They’re alright. Just keep moving.’
They followed a narrow path between the side of the outbuilding and a wooden fence. Sam’s heart was pounding. There were bodies on the other side of the fence. He could feel them colliding with it, no doubt reacting to their footsteps. They crossed an overgrown beer garden, then climbed through another broken fence into the back garden of a modest-looking semi-detached house. Out through the side gate, across another road, then straight through the front door and out into the back garden of the house opposite. Across another road, then they crawled under a buckled garage door before walking the length of a decent-sized garden with an oval swimming pool at the far end. The water was green, solid with algae. Sam almost didn’t notice the bloated body bobbing on its back. It had swollen so badly that its tight trunks had cut into its belly and the tops of its legs. Another garden, then yet another house, then they stopped. Other than well-trod trails through the uncut grass, Sam knew he’d struggle to find his way back to base on his own.
‘That’s got to be far enough, right?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, this’ll do us,’ Ollie said.
Callum explained further. ‘Train tracks are on the other side of this fence. We’ll follow them into town, then get out through the station. It’ll be busy but we know what we’re doing. We’ve got a couple of buildings primed.’
Sam was confused. ‘What, with explosives?’
‘No, you dick. With noise.’
#
Fifteen minutes later and they were on a level halfway up a multi-storey carpark they’d blocked off at street level. It was pissing down with rain again. ‘Want to wait until it eases off?’ Callum asked.
‘No,’ Sam said. ‘Do it now. It took long enough to get here, and I don’t want to miss the pick-up.’
That didn’t bear thinking about. They were about to whip the undead masses into a frenzy; no one wanted to be stranded at that rave.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Ollie said. ‘We’ve done this before.’
It was clear that they had. There was a car parked across two spaces – a souped-up Ford something-or-other, it had so many modifications it was hard to tell – and Ollie grabbed a rucksack full of phones from the front seat. They’d been using the car’s battery to keep a number of phones and a couple of power packs charged up. Next, they put Bluetooth speakers on the ledges of the outer walls, facing out into the street. Finally, they filled the world with German Death Metal.
Inside the carpark, the noise reverberated and echoed until Sam thought he’d lose his mind just before he went deaf, but pride kept him from covering his ears. The boys barely seemed to notice.
By the time they got back down, the rain-soaked streets were already swarming. The dead emerged from every corner and every direction, all zeroing in on the multi-storey.
‘How long we got?’ Callum asked.
‘About half an hour,’ Sam replied. ‘How long will it take us to get to the rendezvous point?’
‘About that.’
And before Sam could say anything else, Ollie spoke. ‘Back to the station, down onto the tracks. Follow Callum and me and try to keep up. I know you’ve got a dodgy leg, I can see it when you walk. But if you fall behind, you’ll be left behind.’
‘Pirate code, is it? Got it,’ Sam said.
Ollie charged straight into the advancing crowds, confident in the knowledge the hordes were temporarily distracted. Callum immediately followed and Sam did the same, realising that if he lost sight of the lads, he was screwed. There wouldn’t be another chance if he missed his connection. The noise coming from the carpark could be heard from space. They’d lit a bomb under this place. It wouldn’t be safe to come back to this part of town for weeks, if ever.
#
The barracks had been a hive of activity until about twenty minutes ago. Since then, the group had remained completely silent and stayed out of sight to give themselves maximum chance of getting away safely. But even maximum chance didn’t feel like much of a chance at all. Sam, Ollie, and Callum had set out to keep the dead away from the roads, but what was happening at the barracks was always going to be more of a draw for those corpses that were drifting close to this place.
The fact there’d been more activity here in the last hour than the last three months hadn’t helped. That they’d had to start the vehicles and leave them running for a while had added to the draw, but had they not started, the entire plan would be scrapped. They’d been successful; the vehicles were moved into position in the yard now, ready to go.
Chapman was behind the wheel of the first truck, Mia sitting alongside him to navigate. Ruth was to drive truck number two with David co-piloting. Sanjay would be driving the final truck with Noah there to help with directions, while Orla had agreed to drive the van. Vicky was with her, for no other reason than the seats were marginally more comfortable than any of the trucks. She’d lost so much weight it was starting to hurt to sit for prolonged periods.
The rest of the group and their belongings had been distributed evenly, taking seats on long benches in the open transport vehicles with only tarpaulin walls between them and the dead. They were as well prepared as they could be, considering that they were about to embark on yet another half-baked plan. They were focused on getting everyone out of Brentwood in one piece and hitting the road, and what happened after that was currently anyone’s guess. Gripping the wheel of his truck tight, Chapman was beginning to think that getting that far would be enough of an achievement in itself.
The standing room only concert at the car park could be vaguely heard, but the temporary silence at the base now was eerie, almost unbearable. In an effort to prove his allegiance beyond doubt, Mihai had volunteered to be the one who’d make a last-ditch attempt at tempting the more persistent visitors away from the entrance to the barracks. Someone had suggested starting another fire, but an over-reliance on arson had been the catalyst for their downfall at the Monument, and it was decided that this operation needed something a little more straightforward. Old school.
Standing next to a skip on a building site, about half a kilometre away from everyone else, drenched by the cold rain and poised to make himself the centre of undead attention, Mihai was wondering what the hell he’d let himself in for. The urge to run for cover was strong, but he stood his ground knowing that a few minutes of danger now would prove that his loyalties lay with the group of people that he’d previously been tricked into screwing over. Christ, if I never see Piotr or Dominic Grove again it will be too soon.
There must have been a couple hundred shambling figures outside the barracks now, all of them with their backs to him, focussed on the breathing beings within. Their preoccupation with everyone else had made it easy to get out here, but getting back again was going to be more of a challenge. He’d soon find out, anyway, because he could see Chapman hanging out of the window of his cab, waving furiously.
Here goes everything...
Mihai began hammering a heavy wooden baton against the side of the skip, the empty metal bin ringing out like some huge, upturned bell. The clanging noise bounced off the walls of empty buildings and echoed along soulless streets, immediately having the desired effect. On cue, the corpses began to shuffle around, the entire congregation now lumbering towards him.
He’d been told to give it a couple of minutes, but he bottled it. He sprinted around the outer edge of the crowd and dove back through the hole they’d cut into the fence. ‘What the hell are you doing?!’ Chapman screamed at him as he raced towards the trucks. ‘That was nowhere near long enough.’
‘Bit of a damp squib,’ Mia said, ‘but we’re committed now. The lads will be waiting for us. Just drive and hope for the best.’
‘To be honest, that was the plan all along.’
Chapman started the engine, revving hard to make sure it caught. The other drivers all did the same, and in seconds the cumulative noise from four rattling engines had undone Mihai’s paltry efforts and refocussed the attention of all the distracted dead. Chapman shoved the truck into gear and hit it, hurtling straight at the gate, crashing through, and swerving out into the fringes of the crowd.
‘Left,’ Mia ordered.
‘You’re sure about this?’
‘LEFT!’
He did as he was told, swinging the truck wide and wiping out a few stragglers. For a moment he couldn’t see. The decomposition of the dead was astonishing. Some of them burst on impact like overripe fruit, popping like balloons filled with offal. He flicked the wipers onto their fastest setting then wrenched the truck around the back of an overturned car he was about to collide with. His wheels skidded in the grue. ‘Which way now?’
‘Left again then straight on.’
‘This doesn’t feel right. You certain?’
‘I live here, don’t I? Do me a favour and just drive. This isn’t the most direct route, but it’s the safest.’
Trees to their left, a row of quaint-looking bungalows on their right... the apparent respectability of their immediate surroundings belied the fact that they were driving around the outskirts of an apocalyptic town centre. For a couple of seconds everything looked like it used to, but the illusion was shattered when the convoy roared towards a crossroads just as a surge of ghouls dragged themselves around the corner. Chapman braced and locked his arms, fighting against his instincts. He wanted to swerve, but the safest option was to drive straight through the lot of them and hope the force and power of his vehicle would do enough damage to wipe out the horde.
The truck barely slowed. The creatures all but disintegrated on impact, reduced to an impossible jigsaw of broken limbs and smashed up body parts.
‘Too easy,’ Chapman said, smug, but he was forced to eat his words when the bloody chaos cleared, and he realised the road ahead was blocked by tougher stuff. The cab of an agricultural tanker had veered off the road and into the frontage of a shop, leaving its load straddling almost the full width of the street. He braked hard, aquaplaning through puddles of standing rainwater, then carefully coaxed his truck up onto the pavement and around the tanker’s rear end.
Mia was not impressed. ‘It’s not a time trial, you know. There’s abandoned shit like this all over town.’
He bit his lip to stop himself snapping back, but he knew she had a point. He was letting his nerves show. He slowed down and watched his rear-view mirror until the other trucks and the van had safely squeezed through the gap.
#
‘Hear that?’ Callum asked. ‘Trucks. As promised.’
‘Thank god for that,’ Sam said. ‘Sounds like they’re on the move at least. We need to speed up.’
‘They said two hours,’ Ollie protested.
‘You want to risk missing them? We need to get a shift on.’
They pounded along the train tracks. There were four lines here, split into two pairs with a well-worn concrete strip between them. Nowhere was easy to run along. Their feet sank into or slid on the gravel on either side of the tracks, the rails themselves were too narrow to balance on, and the spacing of the sleepers stretched between them meant that running at a steady pace was impossible.
Sam found it disconcerting down here; not his purlieu. It was a separate slice of the world, disconnected from everything else. Whilst the simplicity of the straight lines and the protection of the embankments were useful, they took away their options and made an already uncomfortable situation feel even worse.
In the squally air, the washing of the engine noise banging into the Death Metal cacophony was disorientating. ‘Are they still behind us?’ Callum asked. ‘If they’re in front already then we’re fucked.’
Sam was struggling to keep up. ‘How far?’
‘See that bridge up ahead?’
‘Yep.’
‘If they’ve followed Mia’s route, they’ll come that way.’
‘And that’s where we’re supposed to meet them?’
‘That’s the plan. If you stop asking questions and speed up, we might even do it.’
Lippy little shite, Sam thought, but he put in a burst of extra speed now the finish line was in sight.
#
The convoy had made steady progress along Mascalls Lane, the same road they’d been following since navigating the wreck of the tanker. There’d been a constant stream of figures getting in the way along the more built-up sections, but now they’d reached the suburbs again, there were hardly any of them about.
Up ahead, the heavy rain had caused a flood, and the route of the road was lost in the water. Chapman’s instincts were to accelerate through, but the risk outweighed the potential gain. He slowed down to a crawl, focusing on keeping moving and getting back onto dry land. It was deeper than it looked. Water on all sides.
There were things moving under the surface, thumping against the chassis. ‘What’s that?’ Mia asked.
‘Probably just bits of trees,’ he said, and though there were boughs hanging over the road from both sides, they knew the truck wasn’t driving over sticks or branches. Mia looked down and saw the face of an upturned corpse revealed momentarily in the wake from the front wheels.
The relief was palpable when they made it to the other side. Chapman drove far enough ahead to leave room for the others, then stopped and waited.
The second truck made it through with ease.
Sanjay nearly stalled the third truck when an almost completely fleshless arm reached up out of the middle of the murk and latched onto the running board, but he managed to keep the engine running and the wheels moving and when the skeletal fingers finally slipped, he drove straight over it.
Bringing up the rear, Orla looked terrified. The van was much lower than the trucks, the water more of an issue. There might only have been a couple of corpses in the water, but they’d become more active as each new vehicle had driven through. One, like a Darwinian link, had crawled onto its belly where the water lapped against the submerged gutter and was trying to straighten its arms and get upright. It managed to lift itself to waist height and scrape its bony fingers against the back of the van as it passed.
#
The vehicle noise was louder now. As reassuring as the sound was, Sam wished they weren’t so close. He kept his eyes on the bridge they were racing towards, convinced he’d see the convoy cross before he and the lads could get anywhere near.
‘Steps,’ Callum shouted, and he raced up a long set of concrete steps set into the embankment immediately before the bridge. Sam would have gone straight past them. They were clearly intended for maintenance, barely used in normal times, and almost completely overgrown today, hard to make out through the weeds.
Sam reminded himself he was carrying an injury and that he was much older than both Callum and Ollie, but he felt in awful shape when he got to the top. His thighs were burning, and he could hardly breathe. He could hear the engines approaching but he was doubled-over, light-headed. He didn’t know how long he could carry on like this. Life was constantly stop-start, stop-start now. He was at full speed or a dead stop, never anything in-between.
The boys were on the wrong side of a padlocked security gate. Built into a sturdy metal fence and topped with anti-vandal spikes, it was as adept at stopping them reaching the road as it had been from stopping live vagrants trespassing onto the tracks. The street on the other side was clogged with corpses.
The engine noise was getting louder, riling up the dead and ramping up his nerves. The corpses dragged themselves towards the oncoming traffic with renewed energy. ‘Over here!’ Sam yelled and waved his arms as the lead truck rumbled into view, but no one heard him. Chapman was behind the wheel, as focused on the dead as they were on him.
The snub nose of the truck thumped into the wedge of deteriorating flesh, the density of the swarm slowing it down but not stopping it.
‘Give over, granddad,’ Ollie said, shoving Sam out of the way and giving Callum a bunk up. Callum balanced precariously on the top of the gate – one foot on either side of the spikes – then tried to twist around but fell, landing on his back in the throng like a crowdsurfer at a gig. Their seething movements supported him momentarily, then he fell through to the ground. Winded, he rolled out of the way of the wheels of the second truck, its tyres grinding flesh and bone into the tarmac just centimetres away from his face, showering him with liquid muck.
The third truck was close. Callum scrambled to his feet and pushed his way towards the middle of the road. Sanjay stood on his brakes when he saw him, bringing the truck to a juddering halt just centimetres short.
Sam helped Ollie up, then Ollie stretched back down and helped Sam to the top and over. Ollie made the jump easily and followed Callum into the back of Sanjay’s truck, but Sam was prevented from going the same way by another rush of corpses taking the place of those that had been smashed underwheel. Sam ran for the van at the back of the line and threw himself in through a door that was being held open for him. His feet were still hanging out the back when Orla accelerated, pushing through the crowd of flesh that had built up around them.
