The Undead Day Twenty (44 page)

Blowers closes his eyes for a second. The second’s worth of pause from Roy tells him how desperate it is and the closest they are to losing is now.

Roy looks down at Howie, Clarence and Dave. That those three are still standing is beyond human comprehension. They’ve killed more than everyone else combined but the infection has resources that make his insides drop. He looks down the street to the solid ranks. He looks behind him to see Nick fighting at the stairs and makes eye contact with Reginald. They had a plan a few seconds ago. Heather and Paco were going to the back doors of the shopping centre to cut the flow. That would free Mo, Paula and Marcy to join the main fight. The lads would work back and they would, as they have always done, turn the battle and win but suddenly it doesn’t look like that. Suddenly the hope dwindles but Howie kills the one in front, turns and locks eyes on Roy to give a single nod. ‘DO IT…’ Howie shouts and turns back into the fight.

Roy presses the button on his radio to do what must be done. Howie cannot give orders as Howie is busy. The same with Clarence. The same with Paula. Roy is older, therefore he takes the burden of responsibility and makes the order.

‘Heather, Charlie…go to Blowers…Blowers, hands in and try to pull the baby out gently. If you have to cut her then go from the stomach down…the mother will die if you cut but the baby is the priority…’

It is the only option. Without Paco here the chances of winning are gone. Without Paco storming into that shopping centre they can’t free the three inside but a baby is worth more than all of them. They all know it. It is their way. It is the right way. He releases the radio, draws an arrow and fires.

Cookey draws the back of a hand across his forehead, his chest heaving as he sucks air and looks up at Charlie. ‘Take Blinky…get to Blowers…’

‘But…’ Charlie says, knowing Cookey doesn’t stand a chance against so many.

‘I’ll be fine…I’ll keep running,’ Cookey says.

‘I’ll stay, you go,’ Blinky says.

‘Mate,’ Cookey snaps.

‘I’m fitter…I can run faster and further…you go…go with Charlie…’

‘She is,’ Charlie says quickly.

The thought of leaving Blinky alone is abhorrent but it makes sense, ‘you got enough magazines?’ Cookey asks.

‘Yep now fuck off cuntbreath,’ Blinky says, nodding at him, her own chest heaving as the sweat pours down her face.

‘Just keep running,’ Cookey says, locking eyes.

‘I will…fuck off,’ Blinky snorts, phlegms and spits to the side.

‘Hate you,’ Cookey says, his filthy face showing the grin.

‘Hate you more,’ Blinky grins back.

‘Here,’ Charlie offers a hand to help Cookey heave up behind. Jess skitters round at the extra weight. ‘Hold on,’ Charlie says. Cookey holds on without a joke and without a comment made.

‘Run Blinky…don’t try and fight them…’ Cookey shouts.

‘Yep,’ Blinky says.

‘ON JESS,’ Charlie screams the horse to action.

‘Mate, it’s Cookey…where are you?’

‘Blowers? It’s Heather…we’ll come to you…where are you?’

Heather grips the wheel with her right hand. The left holds the radio. Paco clenches his fists and readies to fight simply from sensing the tension in Heather. She drives fast through the lanes as the lightning and thunder drive fear deep into her gut but for the first time in her life she refuses to allow the panic to take over. The desperation is obvious. The energy she can feel is right there. The words, the way they were said, the honour of them, the sheer fucking integrity of a few that do something so vast it boggles the mind.

Blowers turns to look down the hallway. A soldier born. A soldier made. A soldier by definition of the core of steel running through his body. How do people find each other in a dark town in the middle of a war? Satnav? Maps? Directions? Fuck that. He’ll do it the soldiers way. He’ll go old school.

‘Hands in…try and ease the baby out, it should be face up not face down but go gently though…Roy said gently. He said the cord could be wrapped and if you have to cut then do it from the stomach down…’

‘Where you going?’ Maddox asks as Blowers strides off down the hallway.

‘The others are coming. You’ll be fine.’

‘Blowers,’ Maddox shouts. ‘Where you going?’

‘To light a path for the others…I’ll hold them back…ease the baby out or cut from the stomach down.’

He marches out into the street. Bag off. Flap open.

‘Blowers, where the fuck are you?’
Cookey shouts into his ear.

‘Need directions,’
Heather’s tight voice follows.

Blowers pulls the grenades out as the horde reaches the corner at the end of the street. He stands and gauges distance, direction and the houses on the other side of the street.

‘Gonna light a path…follow the explosions…’

‘Roger that,’
Cookey replies.

‘What are you doing? What does that mean?’
Heather asks.

Blowers pulls and throws. He pulls and throws. He pulls and throws and pulls and throws. He grunts with each and aims the hard metal bombs through windows of houses and down the street to the parked cars left on the side of the road. He pulls pins and throws grenades to light a path with sound and light.

Jess canters on. Cookey clinging to Charlie as they stare and listen. Heather grips the wheel and leans towards the windscreen, staring out at the blackness of the night.

‘Holy fuck,’ Cookey murmurs in Charlie’s ear as the grenades detonate one after the other. Direction is gained instantly. Flames scorch up into the air. Bright flashes and dull thuds that sound one after the other as Howie stiffens with pride and Clarence growls. As Paula’s upper lip pulls back as she takes up her rifle to join Mo. Roy glances to the booms and flashes of the grenades exploding as Nick nods at the fuckers coming up and growls the defiance of his few that kill so many.

Blowers pulls and throws. He explodes cars and houses. He makes it obvious for the others. He gives flame to a street. He gives sound and light as Jess bursts from a canter to a gallop, taking corners at speeds that ain’t right while Charlie feels the horse beneath and Cookey holds on.

Blinky turns at the sounds. Grinning in awe of her utter devotion to Blowers. The man is a god to her. She would never have thought to do that. She turns back as the horde come steaming down the road towards her. She wipes her nose, lifts her rifle and fires a sustained burst that empties the magazine.

‘RUN THEN,’ she bellows, taunting them, goading them, ‘FAT CUNTS…RUN…COME ON…’ All day long. She flicks a finger at them and legs it.

‘There,’ Heather shouts, hearing and seeing the explosions. She speeds up. Pushing her foot down harder. Hedges flash by. Lightning joins the show. Thunder comes to play but the grenades are a different noise. Harder, duller, manmade and not organic.

The grenades are gone. Blowers takes up his rifle and fires the magazine. He changes and empties his magazine. He takes a knee in order to reduce the distance needed to travel to reach the spare magazines in his bag. Time for one more. He loads, yanks the bolt back, aims and fires. They drop dead. They drop injured. They drop to trip the ones that come after but they come all the same and they do so fast and pumped.

Blowers stands, leaving his rifle left on his bag as he takes his axe up and stares at the enemy. So many of them. Fuck there’s a lot. He can’t run now to lead them off as the others won’t find the door. He has to hold them.

‘Boss, Blowers…er…got a few coming at me right now…um…sorry for asking but if you could get angry I’d appreciate it…no worries if not…it’s er…it’s been an honour, Sir…’

‘NOW HOWIE,’ Clarence roars the second he hears the words in his ear.

‘NOW HOWIE,’ Roy echoes at the chilling calmness from Blowers.

‘Shit shit…hold on, Blowers,’ Marcy mutters.

‘Hold on mate,’ Nick says.

‘
Simon. You will hold that line. You will fight. Do you hear me?’

‘Yes, Dave.’

‘We do not yield, Simon. We do not surrender. We fight. YOU WILL FIGHT, SIMON.’

‘Yes, Dave.’

‘FIGHT SIMON. HOLD THAT LINE.’

‘Yes, Dave.’

‘Mr Howie…they took your sister. They hurt her. They took Jamie. They took your friends…’

‘Fuck, Dave,’ Howie growls.

‘
YOU WILL RAGE NOW, MR HOWIE. YOU WILL RAGE…’

Oh aye.

A pulse.

A surge.

Here there is no panic. Just a rage that grows instant and furious. This is what they do. This is why they are here. For this. To do just this. Nothing else.

Be as you are. Be as you were born to be and do not heed the worries of others or the small things of life that give concern for you are a warrior and this is your time.

‘Let’s fight…’

Blowers charges. He takes on a horde with an axe as a streak of black powers up the road behind him to overtake and slam the line ahead with a snarl and a flash of teeth that rags and destroys. It ain’t one against many now. It’s two. Two who are connected in mind and spirit who are connected to all the others as that pulse sweeps through them.

Knives out. Marcy, Paula and Mo charge the door as the shop behind them engulfs in fire.

Nick takes the stairs. He goes down one at a time to reach the bottom then turns righteous and glorious to drive them back from the shop with a speed that isn’t right.

Reginald wages war. He grows wild and crazed in his desire to kill and around him the corpses of his foes lie splattered and broken.

Jess goes faster. She takes corners at an angle without guidance or steerage from Charlie who snarls unblinking and feels Cookey’s energy at his displacement from Blowers pulsing through her back.

Blinky stops running. She dumps her bag and rifle, grips her axe and turns back towards the horde. There is a time for running. There is a time for legging it and it’s not now. Blowers is fighting them on his own. She can feel it. Fuck it. She charges. She charges her horde with her axe gripped and lifting.

Mo goes faster. Spinning left and right to protect the flanks of both Marcy and Paula while dealing with what’s in front of him. The rage in the others is different in him. It’s channelled and focussed.

Blowers and Meredith take the horde on. They take it with a vicious urge to cause harm. Meredith takes one down. Blowers takes two. Meredith takes another. Blowers takes two more. They are fast. They are brutal in the violence they visit upon their common enemy.

Charlie and Cookey ride. Heather drives. Everyone fights.

Twenty-Nine

Maddox stares down as Blowers strides from the house. His heart racing. He swallows then rushes to fill a cup with water that he hands down to Julie. She lifts up with a grunt of pain but takes the drink to gulp thirsty and deep.

‘You heard him yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ she says, nodding at Maddox. She drops the empty mug to reach out for his hands. He tightens his grip on her. She squeezes as they stare with eyes locked.

‘I gotta put my hands in you…’

She nods, tears spilling down her cheeks.

‘It’s gonna hurt,’ he says as softly as he can. She chokes a sob and reaches up to smooth her hands down his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

‘Do it,’ she whispers.

‘Don’t push…’

‘I won’t…’

He strokes her cheek, smooth the hair from her forehead, ‘I’ll be with you yeah? I’ll be right here, Julie…’

‘Okay,’ she whispers the word.

‘You don’t gotta whisper now…you can scream…’

‘The other man? Where did…’

‘He’ll stop them coming in. We got more coming…they’ll be here soon…’

‘Okay…do it…’

She swallows and gulps air as he moves down to kneel in the sticky blood pooling between her legs. His torch shines, showing the head still in the same position. He puts the torch in his mouth, bites down and reaches out.

She feels hot. Too hot. The blood is sticky but he feels the tight curls on the scalp and the warmth coming through the skull. Something moves that makes her grunt with pain. A shift of the baby inside. A squirm. Sweat pours down his face as the grenades outside blow explosions that sound a hundred miles away.

Slowly, so slowly. Gently, so gently he feels the baby’s head and moves out to the sides and her skin that is taut and unmoving. The tiniest of pressure exerted to stretch her wider sends a wave of agony. He freezes, looking up over her stomach.

‘Do it,’ she gasps.

He tries again to physically stretch her. She grunts but he tries more, straining against her skin.

The urge to push comes. The contraction of her muscles that send the signal to birth the child in her body. She resists with everything she has, fighting the urge as Blowers and Meredith charge the horde for the life of her unborn baby.

Maddox becomes engrossed in the tiny fractions of the thing he does. The scalp he can see is smaller than the palm of his hand but he can’t tell how far it extends out. He knows he is being too gentle, too tentative but also knows that he is hurting her. It has to be done. He has to push inside and try. He draws his knife without a word said and hovers the blade as he tries to think where he should cut but then Roy said only to cut down from the stomach. What if he cuts her somewhere here to make the opening bigger? He can’t do it. One slip and he could kill both.

He puts the knife down and goes back to try harder in pushing her skin aside. He needs to get his hand inside but without harming the baby. He goes for the top and starts pushing his fingers in while heaving upwards away from the baby. Her skin tears. Blood pumps down over his hand and wrist. She screams and slams her hands on the floor but he keeps going, pushing in and up. The force needed is huge. He grunts with the effort and strains to go further in. She tears again, more blood comes, she screams out and he can feel the quiver of agony searing through her body. He bends lower to shine the torch in the tiniest of gaps created between her body and the head of the baby. More dark curls of hair. More scalp and skull. He pushes harder, forcing the gap to widen. Her voice pierces his ears.

‘Back of the head,’ he tries to mutter, forgetting the torch is between his teeth. He can see the back of the head so that means the baby is facing down towards the mothers back. That’s bad. The baby has to be the other way Can he turn it? There is nothing to grip. He looks for the cord but can’t see past the baby’s head. He has to go in further. He exerts force to stretch her skin, tearing it apart. The pain is indescribable and it gets worse. It goes on and will never end. It almost becomes too much, like it’s torture but she holds in her mind the single thought of her baby living.

Still not enough. He has to go deeper. He has to see more. He grimaces, tenses and pushes as she screams shrill and agonised.