The Undead Day Twenty (38 page)

‘Oh my god…oh my god…’

There, right in the middle of the town is the centre and the only place not filled with infected. One long road and right in the middle, even from this distance, are three distinctive vehicles. The Saxon. The van and the horsebox. They’re trapped. Encircled on all sides and that mass of darkness is collapsing in towards the last remaining patch of light in the middle. She spots what must be Jess and Charlie, the shape blurred but just about recognisable. Two more figures further down at the opposite end of the street. She can see the infected are metres away as they disappear into the premises bordering the empty street.

Her hands move to grab the radio that is lifted as she presses the button, inhales and shouts.

‘OUT…GET OUT…TRAP TRAP…GET OUT NOW…’

Twenty-Two

‘Mate, I’m telling you…you have to fucking snap out of it…’ Blowers says, staring at him. A last ditch effort. A last attempt as he patrols down the precinct towards the road that bends round to the specialist stores. He stops and looks round, seeing Nick leaning in the back of the van tinkering with the drone charging unit.

‘This a pep talk?’ Maddox asks, not bothering to hide the sneer. Blowers had decided to walk him down to the road as in patrolling the area but to buy distance and a few minutes to talk. He now bites the anger down and glares at Maddox wondering what he can do or say to make the situation better. Maddox looks round disdainfully in a way to show Blowers he’s not interested in the conversation. He spots Charlie at the far end of the precinct on Jess and venturing further down the road. Cookey and Blinky someway back from Charlie and over to the left side.

‘Maddox,’ Blowers says, forcing a tone of calmness into his voice. ‘What can I do?’

Maddox doesn’t answer but watches as Howie, Clarence, Dave, Reginald and Roy walk from the shopping centre.

‘Mate?’ Blowers says in frustrated desperation. ‘The boss won’t leave you at the fort with Lilly…he won’t let you go either in case you…’

‘A lesson in addition to a pep talk then.’

‘Fine,’ Blowers says, thereby giving up. ‘On you, mate…’

*

‘Seen what’s over there,’ Nick says on seeing Roy.

‘What’s that?’ Roy asks, wanting nothing more than to show Nick his longbow. He follows Nick’s gaze to the Halfords store, the vehicle audio, electrical and cycle parts shop so ubiquitous in every town centre.

‘Ah,’ Roy says, smiling back at Nick. ‘We could get some tools…’

‘I was thinking about rigging up the water thing,’ Nick says.

‘We’ll have a look,’ Roy says, falling into step with Nick as they walk across the road.

*

‘Well, I shall retire to my books,’ Reginald says, nodding at Clarence, Dave and Howie.

‘Yeah okay,’ Howie says, ‘er…so where are they?’

‘I can only assume they are not here,’ Reginald says, as equally stumped as to lack of show from the other player. ‘I should imagine we have been seen…in fact I would guarantee we have been seen but as to why they are not attacking or showing I cannot, at this time, rightly say.’

He goes into his command unit. Now refreshed with tea and conversation that did not contain boobs, bums and willies as the main subjects. He rests down into his chair and starts opening his bag to take out his books while all the time feeling increasingly uneasy at the lack of contact from the other side.

*

‘So?’ Marcy says, urging Paula to explain and give the gossip. Both of them sit perched on the edge of the drinks cabinet entirely unaware of the dark shapes moving above their heads that creep out from the gaps in the ceiling tiles. Hundreds. Thousands. All of them held in place by the single conscious will of an entity evolving with frightening speed. Small ones, big ones and each with eight legs that they use to start abseiling down on almost invisible strands of web.

‘Oh nothing,’ Paula groans, rubbing her face. ‘Ignore me.’

‘No no no…tell me about Clarence.’

‘Tell you what?’

‘Oh you so fancy him. I can tell…you keep looking at him then going all weird and flustered.’

‘I do not!’

‘You so do. Admit it…go on…’

‘What’s the point?’

‘You do then?’

Mo stands sentinel. Idly staring round and wondering where they will stay tonight. He doesn’t know where the feeling comes from or what causes it. He doesn’t hear anything or see anything but the rush inside is so strong it cannot be denied. It comes now. That feeling rushes through him in the otherwise silent air of an empty shopping centre.

*

The air is listless with no breeze and that single thing prevents the smell of the infected reaching her until they are so close there is no room for evasion or preparatory manoeuvre. Now she locks on to the smell. The fetid rancid decay of tainted blood that pumps inside thousands of bodies that she now, at this instant knows are on all sides. She gives voice instant and strong. She barks with a huge sound to tell them to stay back and stay away. She tells them who she is. She tells them her pack are strong and they will die if they come here. She gives fair warning to them and to her own, all of whom snap to the voice of Heather screaming through their radios.

‘
OUT…GET OUT…TRAP TRAP…GET OUT NOW…
’

A blink of an eye. A beat of a heart.

‘CONTACT CONTACT CONTACT…’
Mo’s voice, bellowing from his position on the door.

Every window in the street explodes out in showers of glass as the infected, having crept unheard, unseen and undetected through the buildings, now charge forward while screeching to crash into the street.

The spectacle is staggering. The split second between calm and the detonation of utter chaos of every window on the ground and first floors smashing out with bodies surging into the street. Those that come through the first floor simply drop to snap bones or die from impacts with a sickening display of an intent to sacrifice host bodies for the goal in sight.

Mo releases his radio switch as the windows at the end of the shopping centre blow out in a huge crashing splintering cacophony of noise and motion. The rear doors to the shopping centre were left open by survivors who wished to have a discrete way into the mall. The infected took those survivors and knew about those doors. It crept through, staying low in shadows and barely inching forward as the mass grew from the hordes pouring across the land into the town.

That same blink of an eye. That same beat of a heart sees his pistols drawn, aimed and firing at the figures already recovering from smashing through the windows.

*

The structure of the Arachnid species differs between types. Some have six eyes, others have eight, some only two. Some eat the webs of other spiders. Some eat other spiders. They don’t have true blood either but an open circulatory system that pumps haemolymph from a heart through arteries into spaces surrounding their internal organs. It was this factor that either enabled or prevented the differing types of the species either taking or rejecting the virus.

As the infection gained the knowledge of the likely destination of Howie so it sent human hosts into lofts, sheds and garages to seek, find and pass the infection. Some bit into the spiders but that killed them. Others tried to bleed on the spiders but the creatures were too fast to flee. Others stuck their hands and appendages towards the arachnids and simply waited to be bitten. Spiders bite in attack and defence and so they bit to draw blood that was taken in. Some simply buggered off, heedless to the filth within the blood. Others turned and took the blood in that changed the composition of what they are. Those spiders became ramped, charged, pumped and frenzied, but like the rats from days before, their small bodies are unable to withstand the virus for any substantial length of time.

The infection does not need a substantial length of time. It needs this time now to create panic with the use of a host that causes more fear than any other creature on the planet.

It knows that spiders respond to pheromones. So it dumps pheromones. Lots of them, and it makes the spiders wild with aggression.

Garden spiders, house spiders, huge wolf spiders, daddy long legs, orb weavers, false widows, money spiders, spotted wolfs, spitting spiders and more that range from tiny to huge. Many were already hovering in the air above Paula and Marcy, hanging on strands of web while more clung by their claws to the ceiling tiles.

Now the pulse of an urge is sent through their tiny brains and the ceilings of the shops, buildings, flats and houses in the town centre broil with dark masses of eight legged creatures that become frenzied for food.

Paula and Marcy snap their heads up to look forward at first the sound of Heather’s voice then Mo’s. In that blink of an eye and a beat of a heart so the windows within the centre implode as the attack is launched. They both surge up to their feet as the spiders drop. They both flinch in confusion at the overwhelming assault to their senses of people screaming, Mo firing, windows breaking, infected screeching and the feel of hundreds of things landing in their hair, on their faces and down their bare arms.

At that second they gain awareness. At that second they feel the thousands of clawed feet scrabbling for purchase on their skin. At that second the true realisation hits home and as one they look up to a ceiling now alive and seething with spiders that drop in a deluge of spindly legs, sharp claws and sharper fangs that dig into whatever they can find. They both scream out with an instinctive revulsion that renders them unable to gain coherent thought. Some miss and hit the floor where they run hither and thither until they find feet to climb and legs to crawl up.

More land on Paula and Marcy. Burrowing into hair and dropping down backs to claw down their spines. Wild panic grips them. An utter disbelief of a thing happening. Spiders don’t do this. Spiders are solitary creatures. It is happening. They can feel it. They can feel the mad scrabble of eight legged things crawling over their cheeks and the strands of silk formed in silk glands and pumped through their anus-like spinnerets. Fangs dig in. Some are too small to pierce the layers of human skin but they try. They bite and claw and dump pheromones that send the others wild and crazed. Others can bite and they do. They dig those sharp fangs into the skin to inject venom ready to liquefy the insides to be sucked out and consumed.

Paula screams the loudest she has ever screamed.  A screech of pure terror from her worst nightmare now coming true. Marcy spins on the spot, beating herself with wild thumps and slaps. She plucks spiders from her arms as more crawl down over her face. She slaps and hits herself, thrashing wilder with every passing second.

Paula flails, spinning and screaming into a shelving unit that crashes over sending baby goods flying over the floor. Marcy stamps, slaps and shouts while outside Mo’s pistols boom one after the other and overhead the sky splits with an almighty crack of thunder from the clouds that formed as unseen as the infected pouring into the town.

Spiders are crushed, squashed, flung away, booted, hit and slapped but for every single arachnid they kill so hundreds more continue to rain down from the ceiling tiles.

Mo hears their screams but he can’t move. The attack is too strong and the infected are coming too fast. Training kicks in. The calmness of the moment. Aim and fire. One after the other.
Emotions do not aid us. Fear does not aid us. Anger does not aid us.
He takes that step into the world shown to him by Dave. Aim and fire. Aim and fire. Heads blow apart from the bullets sent spinning through. Bodies drop as Mo makes every shot count. Thunder overhead. Noises from the front. Marcy and Paula screaming behind him. He stays calm and denies the prickle of panic inside his gut.

*

In the street they are caught completely unprepared. Cookey and Blinky strolling up on the left side trading insults to score points freeze as Heather’s voice shouts through the radio. They spin to look back, both already switching to focus as Mo shouts contact. A second in time passes then the windows go. An explosion of glass from what feels like every window in the street bursting out from human figures charging through. Bodies drop from windows. The sounds of bones snapping and the dull thuds of meat impacting from a drop. Screeches fill the air. Inhuman and wild. The whole street comes alive with hordes pouring to fill the spaces between them and the others. The infected charge. They both blanch in the second it takes to change the mind-set and prepare to fight. Shots ring out as the closest attackers spin away with heads blown apart.

*

Charlie hears Heather then Mo and twitches to bring Jess round as the street detonates. Glass showers down and all around her. Voices wild and primeval fill the air. Gunshots from the shopping centre. Everything happening in the blink of an eye and the beat of a heart. She flinches at a body dropping from a window above aiming straight at her but the thing is slammed away in mid-air. No time to look again or think. The gap between her and Cookey and Blinky is already filled, the same with the spaces between all of them.

*

Nick and Roy hear the same thing. The burst transmission from Heather then Mo. They freeze, spinning on the spot as Roy reaches back to draw an arrow from the top of his bag. The windows go to the left, to the right and on the other side of the street. Glass fragments spray out as Nick lifts his rifle with an instinct telling him to make ready. The blink of an eye, the beat of a heart and the beasts come screeching and wild. Roy takes one step out and spots the street already seething. Further up he sees Charlie on Jess and a body bursting from a window above. He lifts, draws and fires to send the arrow shooting across the street that slams the falling male with such power it snaps the body away from Charlie who digs in to make Jess give flight and gain distance.

In that instant they can both see the street is lost.

*

In the dead centre of the street stand three men. Three men who cock heads at the transmission from Heather. Three men who turn at the transmission from Mo and three men who then look round to the windows of the street exploding out.