Zombiekill (6 page)

Aside from gathering food, he needed to do some more investigation of Peterborough. With the food and water rations all but gone, it was important to replenish them, and in the short-term they needed anything he could lay his hands on. But whatever he found was only going to be a stop-gap. With six mouths to feed, they simply could not all go on living together at Jeremy’s place. There would never be enough to go around. Schafer needed to check out the house on the hill. It was their best chance of making it. Germany was a dream, but the house was attainable. It was barely visible from Jeremy’s, and Schafer had to get closer. He needed to check it out, to see if it really was an option. He wanted to know if it was as secure as they thought, if the walls were still intact, or if it had been overrun with zombies. Rilla was convinced it was safe; sure that if they could all make it there then they could ride out this whole zombie thing. Schafer wasn’t so sure. Jeremy and Lyn had filled Rilla’s head with tales of Attwood and his house. Intending to warn her off the place with stories of how obscenely rich he was, and how the mansion wasn’t suited to the area, they had inadvertently put the idea in his daughter’s head that it was in fact the safest place in the whole area. It was run more like a compound or a military base than a rich man’s sanctuary. Maybe they were one and the same thing. Schafer just knew he couldn’t risk taking his wife and daughter out onto the dangerous streets of Peterborough based on rumors. He had to know what they would be getting themselves into if they left.

Creeping forward to leave the house of death, Schafer turned back to the hallway. As he made his way back past the coat stand, he heard a noise coming from above his right shoulder. A carpeted staircase had hidden the slow footsteps of the women until she was almost upon him. Hopeful he had found a survivor, Schafer turned to discover the woman with her hands reaching for him, her fingers already brushing his shoulders. A nervous excitement made his skin tingle, and he felt suddenly energized, ebullient for the first time in months.

The eviscerated woman had been dead for months, and her skin was tight and yellow. The left side of her face had been eaten away exposing her broken jaw, and where her nose should be there was a well of maggots. A knife was stuck between the woman’s shoulder blade, only the hilt still showing. The white cotton top she wore was caked in dried blood, yet the lower half of her emaciated body was naked. The long brown hair that hung drably from the woman’s skull like a worn mop reminded Schafer of the photographs. He had seen this woman before at a time when she had been happy, when she had been surrounded by her family, and facing a glorious future instead of an ignominious death.

All of Schafer’s excitement dissipated in a moment, his spirit broken like an egg shell. Suddenly he felt very alone and very afraid. “Who are-?” Schafer recognized the woman, but he didn’t recognize the deathly veil that hung over her. The life that was in her eyes was all gone now, and as she lunged for him a cluster of blow flies crawled from a fissure on her skull.

Schafer stumbled back, the woman lurching down the last step and grabbing at him. Her face pressed up against his and he felt the woman’s bony hands dig into his shoulders as she tried to hold him. Her mouth opened, and her rotten teeth tried to clamp down on his neck. Schafer felt the woman’s ice-cold skin brush against his beard, and he screamed, terrified she was going to take a chunk out of him. He had the bat in his hands, but there was no way he could bring it up to strike her.

Schafer used his body weight and one free arm to push the woman back, but she was surprisingly strong, and managed to keep hold of him. His back was to the front door, and as he tried to repel the zombie, he heard a banging noise at the door. It wasn’t the sound of anyone knocking to come in—it was the same thumping noise he associated with the night. When the zombies outside Jeremy’s house tried to break through the fence, they made the same sounds. Like children banging on toys with no purpose or aim, just to create as much mayhem and destruction as they could, so too the zombies acted like children, hoping they could just bash their way to what they wanted.

Schafer refused to submit. He had a lot to achieve, a lot to live for, and making sure Rilla and Magda were going to be okay was top of the list. He grunted with the effort and managed to push the dead woman away from him. Her feet tripped on the lower step, and she fell onto her back on the stairs. Schafer pulled at the knife in her shoulder, intending to run it through her brain and put her down, but the knife was stuck in bone and refused to budge. As he let go of the knife, the woman pushed herself up, and began to come for him again as he stepped back.

Schafer gripped the baseball bat with both hands and lifted it to head height. The woman had been so happy. Were her husband and child upstairs? Had they died together? Had she turned first and eaten her child? All he knew was that
they
had gotten to her. It might have been a bite, a small wound that had insidiously changed her slowly, or it may have been a full on attack. The streets weren’t safe with them outside, and the woman had paid for her country’s lack of protection. Her whole family had probably paid the price, and now Schafer was left to clear up the mess.

He spat angrily and cracked the baseball bat against the dead woman’s skull. The bone splintered, and the woman staggered to the side, her arms unable to protect her as she tried to remain standing. Schafer aimed the bat at her again. He swung with all the force he could muster and smashed the woman’s skull again, this time bringing her to her knees. The woman looked up at him with something approaching reproach and pity in her eyes. He knew he was imagining it. These people, these abominable creatures, didn’t think or feel or desire anything but death. Schafer put it out of his mind. Remember the woman from the photograph, he told himself, remember the beautiful mother she once was instead of the pathetic zombie now trying to cling to life.

Schafer cracked the bat a third time against the woman’s skull, and it smashed open like a coconut, exposing the liquid innards that sprayed against the wall and staircase. The woman went down, and Schafer bent over her as he brought the bat down again and again, pulverizing her head until it was obliterated beyond recognition, and she stopped moving.

“Es tut Mir leid,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for your family.”

He had let his guard down and almost been caught out. It was something he rarely did in chess, and he had forgotten the strategies and advantages that playing with caution could bring. He was so busy focusing on his goal, on taking the King, that he had taken his eye off the board. There were a lot of pawns still on the board who would happily take a bite of him and bring him down. Then it would be game over.

Schafer cursed and vowed to take more care in future. The house had appeared vacant, but death was still a real and present danger. The thumping noises from the other side of the front door increased, and Schafer knew he was going to have to run. He didn’t have the strength to fight more of them, and if he stayed in that house he would end up trapped, overwhelmed by their numbers. The dead woman’s family might be upstairs, and Schafer’s presence had alerted several more of the dead outside. He had to get out of there.

Returning to the door where he had entered the house, he could see several of them on the street headed his way. He bent down and wiped his bat on the long grass, removing the woman’s brains and blood. He saw a path through the dead to the other side of the road from where a smaller road would lead him toward the house on the hill and what he hoped would be their ticket out of Jeremy’s to a safer place.

“Okay, Rilla, I hope you’re right.” Schafer hoisted the bat up high and started running to the road. He would have to take some of them down as he went, even if it meant coming back later to finish them off. He needed to scope out Attwood’s house and get back to Rilla and Magda before the evening came. With little energy reserves to draw on he had to do it now whilst he still had the courage and drive. Taking down the woman had repulsed him, but he had no problem with it. These people were already dead. They had no options left open, no possible future, and he was only crushing the corpses left behind. Their souls had long gone, he knew that. There was a marked difference between them. Schafer had power, compassion, and motivation. Those that walked the streets were dangerous, but they were directionless, empty shells whose only ambition was to kill and undermine everything they had built. Schafer remembered the photographs and the woman smiling in them. That was what he was fighting for. He wanted to be able to give Rilla the chance to do the same, to raise a family and smile and laugh and make love. Schafer stepped foot on the road as the first zombie approached him and gritted his teeth.

“Right then, fuckers. Let’s see what you got for Uncle Schafer.”

CHAPTER 4

Charlie peeled back the top of the scab, forcing her fingernail right underneath the brown hard skin. She peeled back the top like it was the lid on a tin of tuna and exposed the soft pink flesh underneath. It was soft and felt moist to the touch, but it was refreshing; it was new, a part of her that hadn’t been exposed to the zombies and the way the world was. She idly picked off the rest of the scab on her knee and let the breeze through the window cool the fresh new skin. Beyond the window was the garage where Kyler had been hiding all morning. They had argued ferociously last night about nothing in particular. It started when Charlie asked her father if they could spare anything for a dessert as she had not found the tinned hot dogs and rye crackers particularly tasty or satisfying. That in turn had led to a discussion on the merits of storing food long-term, which had evolved into how they were going to keep fed if no help arrived, and the zombies kept coming. They had gone from frustrated to angry in equal measure, and Charlie knew she couldn’t win. He seemed to fluctuate between not speaking to her at all and picking a fight in which he always had to have the last word. Last night had ended with Charlie storming to her room, without dessert, while her father submerged himself yet again into a bottle of whiskey. She found it amusing how they had a seemingly never-ending stockpile of alcohol, yet their basic food stuffs were starting to run dangerously low.

Trying to take her mind off how uncomfortable and unwelcome she felt in her own home since her mother had passed, Charlie picked up the magazine from the kitchen table. She had read the article on The Hunger Games remake several times already, and her mind wandered as she tried to read it again. The pages were full of vibrancy and color, pretty young faces in borrowed jewelry and promises of new thrills just around the corner from amazing new films, all written with big, bold headlines and exclamation marks! Charlie had read all the magazines in the house over the past few months and was bored.

Last night had been the worst in a long time—possibly the worst since it was just the two of them. They didn’t talk about Jemma anymore. It was as if she had joined a cult. Charlie couldn’t understand how her father just ignored the fact that his wife was still out there, her ravaged body still wandering the streets where they had raised a daughter. At night sometimes Charlie would get up and look out at the dark night; at the shadowy silent figures that still walked around the house. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of her mother, a flash of red in the moonlight, yet some nights she couldn’t find her. She didn’t mind seeing her mother anymore; in fact, she found it reassuring in a weird way. It was as if she hadn’t really left them. It was the nights when Charlie couldn’t find her that were the most disturbing. Where did she go? Had she found someone to kill; to eat? In a way, the zombies were like a cult. Once you got in, there was no way out.

Charlie slapped the magazine down on the table and got up. Kyler knew how to hold a grudge, but she couldn’t go on like this. It wasn’t just the sitting around waiting for something to happen, or the unpleasant atmosphere they both lived in now, but the knowledge that eventually they would just end up dead, too, that worried her. It felt like a when, not an if. The food would run out eventually, and so, too, the water. It hadn’t rained in a few days, and it wasn’t going to get any better with the advent of summer around the corner. They had to do something. She knew if they didn’t, they would both join her mother out on the dark streets of Peterborough, disappearing at night into another world.

Grabbing a bottle of water, she made her way to the garage. The water was just an excuse to see him; a pretense to make him talk. There was every likelihood that it would end in an argument, but she had to try.

“Dad?” Charlie walked calmly across the open yard and past the washing on the line that had turned hard and crusty in the sun. The zombies were still close. The fence at the driveway front still rattled in its hinges, and there was the occasional groan or mutter. It was the call of the corpses; a sound she had become accustomed to.

“Dad?”

Kyler was bent over his workbench and looked up as Charlie entered the garage. He flashed his eyes over her quickly and then bent back over what he was working on.

Charlie could tell he wasn’t in the mood to talk, but she had already resolved to talk to him. She had been thinking about how they were going to survive, and she couldn’t do it alone.

“Hey, Dad.” Charlie gently draped an arm around her father, and lowered her lips to kiss him on the cheek. He smelt bad, but so did she. It was something else she had grown used to over the past few months of captivity.

Kyler shrugged her off and kept working.

Charlie sighed. “So what are you working on?”

There was no response. Charlie tried to figure out what he was doing as he unwound a length of duct tape. He had a claw-hammer clamped in one vice and a short piece of wood in the other.

“Weapons,” muttered Kyler, as if it was obvious to even an idiot.

Charlie watched as he began winding the duct tape around the wood and the handle of the hammer, creating a hybrid tool that would render it useless to anyone who didn’t want to go out killing zombies.

“I brought you some water. Thought you’d need it. It’s getting hot already.” Charlie held the bottle out by the vice and put her hand on her father’s sweaty back.

“Not thirsty.” Kyler ignored the peace offering and continued taping up the hammer until the shaft was secured to the piece of wood that he had shaved down and smoothed off.

Resigned to an uncomfortable silence, Charlie unscrewed the cap and took a sip of water.

“You should save that.” Kyler began to release the amalgamated tools from the vice.

“It’s hot, Dad. We’ve enough for a sip.” Charlie tentatively held the bottle out to him again, hoping he would at least take a drink. Even if he was still angry with her, he had to keep hydrated.

“Enough, Charlie.” Kyler slapped the bottle from her hands, and she dropped it. The precious water immediately began to pour out over the hard floor, and Charlie quickly grabbed it. Half the bottle had gone before she could rescue it.

“What the hell, Dad? You don’t have to be such a dick.”

“I told you, Charlie. Save it. We’re going to need it. You think while we’re here, living comfortably in our own home, that we can afford niceties like dessert and snacks and drinking what little water we have left?”

Charlie screwed the cap back on the water bottle. She tried to resist the temptation to argue back. “I just thought you’d need a drink. You’ve been out here for a couple of hours and—”

“Save it, Charlie. Cuddles and trying to sweet-talk me aren’t going to get you anywhere. I thought I’d made that clear enough by now.”

When he looked at her, Charlie could feel the hatred. It certainly wasn’t love in his eyes. Did he really hate her so much? What had she done to deserve it? Those brown eyes of his were alive now, and there was a part of her pleased that at least he wasn’t just ignoring her anymore. It was almost better to feel his anger than suffer his apathy.

“Fine. So what are we going to do about it? It’s obvious we don’t have an infinite amount of water, as you made so clear, so what’s the plan?”

Kyler took the hammer from the vice and examined it. He held it by the attached length of wood. “I’m working on it.”

“Great.” Charlie wiped her sticky blonde hair from her face. The garage was hot, and the breeze that had been so pleasant in the house didn’t seem to flow in here. “Well, while you’ve been doing whatever it is you’re doing, I’ve been thinking about Attwood’s. We need to start thinking about exactly how we’re going to get there. I figure we have a couple of weeks yet before things get serious, and the sooner we prepare for it, the better equipped we’ll be.”

Kyler looked at her with a puzzled expression. His eyes creased together, and then he began to laugh.

“What the fuck, Dad? I’m serious. You know he’s still there. That place is like Fort Knox. I bet he’s got enough food to live for years.”

Kyler continued laughing. There was nothing funny about what she’d said, and his laughter was clearly unconcealed contempt for what she was saying.

“I really don’t get the joke, you fucking asshole.” Charlie put her hands on her hips and almost blurted out what she had been thinking for the last few days. “I wish you were…I wish you had gone out there instead of—”

Charlie stopped herself. It wouldn’t be true if she said it. She was pissed at him and annoyed at herself for thinking he would listen to her. He valued her thoughts about as much as he valued sobriety.

Kyler’s laughter began to turn to coughing, and suddenly he was bent over double as he tried to get it under control. He dropped the claw-hammer and used the vice to stop himself from collapsing completely.

“Dad?” Charlie could see he was struggling for breath, and she unscrewed the water bottle which he grabbed from her eagerly. He gulped it down quickly and soon the racking noises coming from his chest stopped. Sweat still poured down his face and body, but he seemed to be under control again.

“What was that? Are you okay?”

Kyler handed the now empty bottle back to Charlie. “Don’t waste your time with that shit. I’ll be fine. Just got a little hot in here. Forget it.”

Charlie couldn’t understand why he was being so dismissive. He clearly wasn’t well. As much as they argued all the time, she still cared about him. “Maybe you should come inside and sit down for a while. We can talk if you like.”

Kyler’s expression made it clear he was not going to do that.

“Or not,” said Charlie.

Kyler took Charlie’s hand, and she thought that maybe he had reconsidered. Finally, he was seeing sense and going to rest. They could talk inside, really hammer out how to get to Attwood’s place.

“Come with me. Put that bottle down. I’ve got a job for you.”

Charlie left the bottle behind and let her father lead her away. The blue sky was nirvana compared to the dingy, hot garage, and the breeze a welcome respite from the stifling warm air. There was no wonder her father was feeling ill. As they crossed the yard, Charlie found Kyler dragging her away from the house.

“Wait, where are we going? I thought we were going to go inside? To talk?”

Kyler said nothing. They were marching down the driveway now, toward Peterborough, toward the fence, to the zombies at their door. Charlie noticed the stain on the ground and felt her father’s hand gripping hers tightly. He was on a mission now, pulling her deeper into darkness.

“Dad, stop. What are you doing?” As much as Charlie tried to pull back, he only pulled her closer to the fence. He wouldn’t relinquish his grip on her, and dragging her feet only seemed to spur him on more. As they neared the fence, he scooped up the crowbar that had lain undisturbed since the day her mother had died, and Charlie understood then what he wanted. “Wait, Dad, please?”

There were six zombies stood at the fence, their hands clawing at the metal, their mouths pressed up against it as if they could bite their way through.

“Go on then.” Kyler thrust Charlie forward and held the crowbar out to her. “Go on. Do it. Dispose of that garbage and we’ll talk.”

“No way. This is ridiculous.” Charlie looked at the six figures by the fence, horrified and terrified at being so close to them. It was one thing watching them from the safety of her bedroom and quite another being out here only feet away. “I’m not doing it,” she said, refusing to take the crowbar.

“Like you said, Charlie, at some point we’re going to have to leave. We may as well start thinning them out now. Not to go to Attwood’s, but somewhere brand new, somewhere away from Peterborough and New Hampshire, somewhere far, far away where
they
aren’t.” Kyler looked at the zombies lined up against the fence and then at Charlie. He wasn’t sure if she was more afraid of them or him. He had to make her understand. “Don’t you see, Charlie? America is teeming with them now. They’re like rats. They infiltrated our cities and spread like a plague. Once there was one. Imagine that. The first one had to have come from somewhere. Then there were two, three, and a hundred; then a thousand until there were millions of them. And you know what? We can’t get rid of them now. The government saw to that. Screwed us over big time. There’s no rescue coming, Charlie, not ever. No, we have to leave. I don’t know where yet. North or South. But I know we have to leave Peterborough.”

“We can’t kill them all, Dad. So you kill these six, some more will come along. We should leave them alone, Dad. This is pointless.”

“That’s what you think, is it? Leave them alone? Leave them alone, and perhaps they’ll leave us alone? Maybe we should just let them take over, ‘cause if we don’t do something about them, they
will
take over. The streets aren’t safe, Charlie.
Doing nothing is not an option
. If I had the ability, the power, I’d build a wall. I’d build the biggest fucking wall this planet has ever seen. Forget seeing it from the Moon, you’d see that fucking bitch all the way from Jupiter. I’d kill every last one of them, and then I’d erect a wall around the whole country. Nobody comes in, nobody gets out. It’s the only way.”

There was so much hate and vitriol when he spoke that Charlie feared he wasn’t even joking. “You’d build a wall?” she asked, incredulous. “I think we’re getting off topic here. We don’t need to think about them, we need to think about us. It’s what
we
do that matters.”