Class Four: Those Who Survive (29 page)

We can do this, we can survive.

“This one really is becoming tiresome,” Devin sighed. He closed an eye and held his breath. His finger squeezed the trigger and the .308 round was discharged from the rifle. Through the scope he saw the bullet hit the man-mountain in the left shoulder. Poised to strike, his body rocked forwards with the momentum of the shot.

Devin’s scabrous hand reached out and pulled the bolt back to reload.

“FUCK,” The Gaffer yelled. It felt like someone had just rammed a white-hot poker into his body. He buckled up under the impact. Running a swollen hand across his brow, he lifted the parking meter again and swung with reckless abandon; the exertion caused blood to ooze from the wound.

The second round struck him as he completed his swing, side-on. The bullet tore through the back of his neck, spraying gore over his sheepskin coat, and he teetered to one side.

The crusty hand pulled the bolt back once more. “Just go down, make this easier on yourself,” Devin muttered under his breath. He steadied himself on the rug lying on the RV’s roof.

Okay, so that stung a little
.

The Gaffer’s body railed against his efforts to continue. He filed their protestations under ‘Pending’, and pushed himself vertical again using the parking meter as a crude crutch.

He uttered a guttural yell, and charged deeper into the horde, hoping for sanctuary amongst the throng. Fingers like clammy tentacles rolled over his skin; some managed to dig into the freshly created wounds, causing him to grit his teeth further. He spat out a sliver of his own spongified tongue as he bit it off.

He swung this way and that, trying to keep his flanks clear, desperate to keep them at bay, to make sure that they didn’t overwhelm him.

Another distant crack sounded just after he felt the impact in his right bicep. The meter swung feebly in one powered arm. The zombies kept on coming, climbing over the ones that had been downed, yet still pawing at their new nemesis.

The Gaffer yelled in pain as a powerful jaw clamped onto his upper arm. The mouth slurped on the warm blood and bit deeper into his flesh. Eschewing his weapon, he punched the biter with his left fist. It took a number of blows before the jaw finally relented and let go of its prize.

The lull had swung the odds in the undead’s favour, and they surged at him like a tsunami, formed of eager maws and grabbing hands. He reached into his coat and pulled out the sawed-off shotgun. He struggled to bring it to bear, but managed to aim it in front of him and pull the trigger.

Devin watched through the scope as a group of Her flock were blown apart at point blank range by the shotgun blast. Clumps of meat slopped to the floor. He could see that the man was fading, though. “You will soon be amongst them,” he promised, and squeezed the trigger again.

The Gaffer’s vision lit up, as if a flare had been set off right in front of him. The faces of his enemy were illuminated in such clarity, he could make out individual ticks and snarls. His breathing felt heavy and laboured. He clutched his chest and discovered a hole around the area where he guessed his lung should be.

He slumped backwards into the embrace of the undead. Uncaring arms slowed his descent, seemingly holding him aloft in recognition of his efforts. Then the biting started. Incisors started to chew through the tracksuit bottoms. Digits fumbled with his trainers and socks. Other luckier ghouls managed to pull at the wounds already visible and picked out lumps of meat and viscera.

The light faded back to black. He gasped and breathed like he was hyper-ventilating. His left hand fumbled inside a pocket. “Ai…ain…ain’t going out like no bitch,” he muttered.

Devin cocked the rifle and looked back through the scope. The target was barely visible within the gang of clawing, gouging bodies that surrounded him. “Good, he was a stubborn one, but Ishtar will—”

With The Gaffer at its epicentre, the shrapnel from the grenade tore through the grey, decomposing ranks with ease, shredding a ring sixteen feet in radius. Pieces of severed limbs and unidentifiable body parts were flung even further. Devin cowered from the explosion, even from his vantage point.

He looked down at Malky, who stood impassively by the RV. “Let’s get this done; my patience is wearing thin.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“Grimm, where the fuck is your lot?” Andy shouted. He had pulled his sword from its scabbard and was frantically trying to stir people from their slumber.

“Two are dead. Their throats have been slit, dumped in the back storeroom. What is going on?” he shouted back. He pulled the hammers from his belt and strode towards the rows of stirring inhabitants.

Andy shook Steve out of his sleep and looked at the imposing figure of Grimm. “We’ve been done over. We need people up and ready now. We fight or we die. Only caught a glimpse when The Gaffer went outside, but there are loads of chompers inside the perimeter.”

Grimm’s mask rendered his emotional state unreadable. “Why did the sentries not alert us?”

Andy hurriedly pulled the rope off Steve’s arm, still groggy and squinty. “I don’t fucking know. It’s not the time for questions, it’s the time for action.”

As if waiting for the magic words, the side door opened into the factory. The muffled sound of shuffling feet and moans cranked up a notch as the first of the undead staggered into the factory, eliciting screams from the humans within. Grimm turned to the intruders, and nodded towards them. Two of his guards ran over to deal with the uninvited guests.

“We need to seal the doors, befor—”

Just to underline the severity of the situation, another two doors were pushed open. The undead filtered inside, spreading out towards the cluster of cattle at one end of the factory. “Steve, get up. These people need to be helped.
Now
. Look for an opening and try to get them out of here.”

Steve nodded dumbly and fumbled under his bed for his clothes and glasses. Another door slammed open and more zombies sauntered into the chaos within. From behind Andy, there came a growl. Matt sprinted past and clotheslined a pair of zombies that were ambling towards the lazier members of the camp. Some were somehow still sleeping, blissfully unaware of the severe turn of events.

Matt crouched down by one of the fallen zombies and started to smack it in its face. The force and number of blows caused the jaw to crack and break off. Matt plunged his fist into the yawning abyss. Andy looked across, dumbfounded,
What the hell is he doing?

One hand held the thing’s head against the ground while the other rummaged around for something to grab a hold of. Content, Matt pulled, and despite a few nibbles, wrenched out the thing’s tongue in its grey-blue entirety. Taking a moment to view it, he then started to administer it to the zombie’s head. With its lack of moisture, it took on the appearance and weight of a blackjack.

Matt thumped it repeatedly against the thing’s head, oblivious to his surroundings. He was swamped by a mass of grey. As he disappeared into the coterie, above the sound of skin being torn asunder, a voice rang out. “Ha ha, it didn’t work, Dee. Patches, I’m coming to see you boy, WOOF, WOOF.”

All ways in and out of the factory were now clogged with the dead sauntering in, eager to get their rotting mitts on something good before it all went.

Steve had secreted himself next to a cupboard which contained all the disposable plates and cutlery. He watched as the zombies streamed in and dragged the struggling survivors to the ground.

Most of the inhabitants were barely out of their nightclothes; fewer still had armed themselves with anything. Anton was struggling to get himself out of his arm knot, when a very dead woman, dressed in a once-smart suit, saw him and homed in. Remarkably, the glasses she wore had been with her through death and rebirth, and aside from a few scratches and dried flakes of blood, seemed perfectly functional.

“FUCK, FUCK!” Anton shouted. The knot had tightened so much it resembled a shrivelled-up raisin. The more he fought, the tighter it held him. The woman bared rows of stained and chipped Hampstead’s and lunged at him. A few feet from contact, a swish and blur of metal flashed before Anton’s eyes.

Two arms, which had been lopped off just below the elbows, landed on the floor with little fanfare or attention. Their previous owner, Yvonne Tatchell, who had died while hiding in the storeroom of the office in which she worked on the first day of the apocalypse, looked down at the two stumps.

With no intellectual acuity to comprehend what this would do to her somewhat limited chances in her new life as a denizen of the undead masses, she growled again and fell on top of Anton, who was still fighting to get out of his knot conundrum.

Teeth snapped inches from his nose. He recalled the night when Jenny had managed to clamp onto his face with teeth in a little better condition than the gnashers currently on display.

The pressure was lifted off his chest as Andy grabbed her by her blouse collar and threw her to the floor. He put a boot on her chest and slid the blade in through her forehead. Yvonne died for the second time, with no chance of appeal. Andy pulled out the rapier and slashed the rope which held Anton in place.

Anton rubbed his arm, trying to massage some life into it. “Cheers, mate,” he said, before looking past Andy. “Mate, watch out behind you.” The warning barely had a chance to be fully interpreted by Andy’s cerebral cortex before three zombies reached out and grabbed his jacket. He swung around and, although he managed to catch one, it merely took a chunk from its face, the moan told him that it wasn’t going to be enough.

He fought against them, but three became five, which swelled further in even increments, until he fell to the floor screaming. Despite his wild thrashing, the zombies were very much like barnacles to his boat hull and would not be shifted.

Anton watched as the bundled masses tore and gouged at his rescuer; a pool of blood broke against his feet. The decision to flee was passed without the need for a second vote.

He grabbed his belongings from under his bed, peeled Andy’s sword from the exposed buttocks of some unfortunate bastard who must’ve died in the shower, and headed towards the nearest door.

The factory now rang with the screams of those being eaten alive, the moans of those wishing they had put their best foot forward, and the war cries of the few survivors making their final stand.

Steve, though, had chosen Option Four. He tried to clean his glasses again. His hands shook with the ferocity of an aroused tectonic plate. He gave up and managed to get them back on his face. He peered around the corner of the cupboard and saw a violently-smitten zombie, lying in three sections on the ground. A cunning plan hatched in his brain; he crept from his place of cowering and moved towards the corpse.

This is totally going to bloody work
.

He crouched down by the body. The smell hit him first. It was like a rubbish bin which had been left out in the rain, where the rain was sewage water and six months had passed. He gagged, but kept his supper of cream crackers and Ritz down. He slipped his hands into the section he labelled as ‘probably the torso’ and rooted around for something.

He pulled out a lump of tissue. He guessed that it was a kidney, but it was black and pus-ridden. Steve held his breath, squeezed the chunk of meat, which oozed black and yellow goo, and began to administer it to his body. He needed a few more parts before he managed to cover himself, saving a small collection of nut-like objects for his face. He contemplated whether Lynx would pick up this latest trend in aromatic sensations.

The bile he suppressed as he rubbed congealed blood and month-old stools across his face, and accidentally into his nose and mouth, suggested it would not be a winner.

Content with his work, and amazed that he remembered the scene from
The Walking Dead
, he rose to his feet and got into character. Turning a foot inwards, channelling Roger ‘Verbal’ Kint and the zombies from the aforementioned TV show, he moaned and stumbled towards the door.

This is genius.

He dragged his palsied limb past another feast, and was around ten feet away from the outside world. He had gotten used to the smell, and in some dark recess of his mind, he quite enjoyed it. Worried what Freud would make of this new predilection, he picked up the pace.

As he reached the doorway, a straggler knocked into him. The two things looked at each other. One was a man: Clive, who had been a plumber until a zombie had rather fancied tucking into his throat. The other was a therapist, who was covered in the decaying remnants of a zombie.

Clive sniffed him and seemed to recoil.

Ha, these aren’t the droids you’re OWWW WHAT IN THE NAME OF FUCK.

Steve shuddered as Clive sank his teeth through the undead paste and into his face, tearing off a cheek as if it were a filo pastry shell. Falling out of character completely, Steve flailed about and tried to fight off his attacker. Clive hadn’t taken the mantle of ‘last one in’, though, and a posse of geriatrics took their chance and brought Steve crashing down to earth.

As shrivelled, grey fingers pried into the gap his face once covered, scores of gummed mouths fought to break the skin. Steve let out an annoyed gurgle and felt around for his glasses. If he was going out, he was going to go out with his motherfucking glasses on. He had spent the last six months trying to keep them together with scavenged Sellotape.

His filth-covered hands twitched and fell still. Around the factory, the last vestiges of human resistance were crushed into human crumble and devoured.

Without custard.

Savages.