She was still alive, a hand to her torn throat and she made a horrible gurgling, rasping sound as she struggled to breathe. Tracey’s eyes were open but she didn’t seem able to focussing on anything. Charlotte held Tracey’s left hand in both of hers and she glanced up at me, but I couldn’t think of anything useful to say. I put my free hand to my forehead and ran it through my hair to the back of my head and closed my eyes. When I opened them, I saw Misfit, Soph and Clay – surrounded by the bodies of zombies – standing staring at me.
‘This part of the job never gets any easier,’ I said as I walked around Tracey so I stood looming over her head. I bent down and, wanting to save the others from the grim deed, I rammed my knife between Tracey’s eyes. I watched as she went silent and still and her hand slipped away from her throat to lay in the bloodstained snow.
I pulled my knife free, hating the sight of the red blood that dripped from it. Misfit walked over to me and placed an arm around my shoulders. Together we trudged through the slush towards the cars. The zombies in that direction had all been slain and I couldn’t see any more staggering through the snow towards us. I saw Sean, Kay, Chris, Shane and Sam dragging zombie bodies out of the road, piling them beside a fence to clear the road for the vehicles.
‘Where’s Jordan?’ I asked. Sean looked up and shook his head.
We had lost two of the team and we hadn’t even made it to Marco’s lair.
Entry Twenty-Nine
Misfit ploughed the car through the red and white striped barrier at the inner harbour and carried on through the snow covered car park. We drove past a
mishmash of buildings – the white painted Harbour Master’s house and a long, single story café with a worn pale blue exterior, behind which stood a railway station, abandoned long before the outbreak.
Some old warehouses stood dotted throughout the car and lorry parks to our right. I noticed a few zombies milling about between the trucks and cars as Misfit drove as fast as he could on the snow and ice, towards a strange looking building near the beach. Its two story box-like concrete base was topped with a narrower one story box shaped level. A concrete column rose from its roof, with a viewing platform jutting out of it. Together, the column and platform reminded me of a football rattle from the side view. The old harbour control tower.
Part of the concrete column poked out from the top of the viewing platform and was topped with what looked like aerials of varying heights and shapes, but the roof of the viewing part was flat with a low metal guard rail on the same three sides as the windows below. The viewing platform was the only part of the building to have its windows unboarded. A metal staircase ran from the roof of the two story level, to the roof of the one story level and up to the viewing platform, where Misfit had seen Marco standing on the roof earlier.
I saw no sign of Marco, or even any of the HZs. A head height chain link fence ran around the tower’s grounds and Misfit drove straight through it, tearing a chunk down. He stopped the car just short of the tower. With my hand gripping my knife, I followed Misfit out of the car. The others joined us forming a tight group to the right of the door into the building. The door stood ajar. Sean crept towards it and sprang over to stand on the left side, his back to the wall, while the rest of us remained on the right. Sean turned and kicked the door open. ‘Go!’ he yelled and we all filed inside, weapons at the ready.
I found myself in a gloomy office, the dark wood desks grimy with dust from many years of disuse. With the windows boarded up, it was dark but with daylight streaming in from the open door behind me, I could see well enough to know that no HZs were lurking inside. We spread out, checking each room downstairs, but the kitchen, staff room and toilets were all empty.
At the base of a dark stairwell, I kicked myself for not bringing a torch. I pulled my lighter from my pocket and turned the flame to high. When I pressed the button, a three inch flame sprang to life with a faint whoosh and I extended my arm, lighting the stairwell with an orange glow as I edged my way up with the others behind me.
The windowless space smelt overpoweringly musty but I concentrated on straining my ears for any sound of movement above – all I could hear was my heart thudding a techno beat and the faint crunch of cautious feet on concrete. The stairs came out into another office. I stood at the entrance and moved my lighter slowly from left to right, while Misfit, Chris and Sean walked around its perimeter. Confident the room was empty, we carried on up to the next level. The office on the third level was smaller, but, again, empty.
To reach the viewing platform, we had to take a narrow staircase that ran up the inside of the column that connects the viewing platform to the level below. I went first, lighting the way with my fiercely hissing flame and immediately picked up on faint, muffled voices from above. I turned to Misfit and, with the flame in front of my face so he could see me, mouthed, ‘You hear that?’ He nodded and I turned back to the way ahead.
I could see, in the glow from my lighter, the staircase bent around to the right and, as we turned the bend, the noises grew louder. At the top of the staircase I stopped at the door to the viewing platform. Misfit stood to my right, his hand on the door handle, while the others gathered in the limited space behind us. I listened at the door – I could hear groaning and a thudding sound. Misfit looked me in the eye. I nodded to him and he pushed the door handle down while I shoved my lighter in my pocket and raised my knife. Misfit flung the door wide open.
With unboarded windows running three sides of the viewing platform, making it the only part of the building with natural light, I could clearly see we were faced with a room full of zombies, all tightly cramped in the small space, about 16ft long and 10ft wide. I admit, it came as a bit of a surprise when I had been expecting a room full of human psychos. The zombies had their backs to us, their rotten arms reaching forwards, groaning, all trying to shove their way to the front like teenage girls at a boy band concert. But, at the sound of the door opening, the ones at the back turned to face us and began lumbering forwards.
‘Close the fucking door!’ yelled Sean.
Misfit leant inside the room, grabbed the handle and began to pull the door shut. ‘No!’ I said and slid through the narrowing gap, Indiana Jones stylee, into the viewing platform.
‘Sophie, come back!’ I ignored Misfit. I was a girl possessed – something at the front of the platform was grabbing the attention of the zombies and I wanted to know what.
The leader of the pack reached out and touched my left arm with its rotting fingers. I batted its hand away, grabbed the neck of the zombie’s bloodstained sweatshirt, pulled it closer to me and rammed my knife up and through its open mouth. I shoved its body backwards into the other zombies that staggered towards me, trying to slow them down, aware I could only tackle one at a time. The zombies surged forwards, stumbling around their fallen comrade.
Misfit dived between me and the approaching zombies. He gripped my shoulders and bundled me backwards, towards the door. ‘Let go of me, Misfit!’ I said as I tried shove past him.
‘
Have you gone mental, Sophie? What are you doing?’
‘
There’s something down –’ Before I could finish, a zombie lunged forwards, grasped the back of Misfit’s shirt at the neck and pulled him backwards. I stumbled forwards as I was dragged back into the room with Misfit. He released his grip on my shoulders but my forward momentum caused me to slam into his chest, knocking Misfit back in a domino effect into the arms of the zombie behind him. As it lowered its head to bite Misfit’s neck, I swung my knife up and over Misfit’s shoulder and embedded it into the top of the zombie’s head with a grunt. The zombie dropped and I heard Sean yell, ‘You pair of twats, get back – now! You’re going to get us all killed!’ Ignoring Sean, Misfit span around to face the rest of the approaching zombies, his legs and arms wide, his stance saying,
I’m ready for ya
,
zombies
,
bring it on
!
Side by side, we both raised our knives. I glanced to my left as Sean sidled up beside me and raised his crowbar. ‘If you can’t beat ‘em …’ he said as zombies closed in around us, their claw-like hands grabbing our clothing and hair. Together we stabbed and bludgeoned whatever undead head had its rancid jaws closest to our flesh, like a gory game of Whac-A-Mole.
I heard Kay say, ‘Oh for fucks sake, you three,’ before her chainsaw buzzed into life. Something cold splattered the back of my head and I knew without turning around that her chainsaw had began mulching zombie heads.
I plunged my knife between a zombie’s eyes, but before I could pull it free, another one wrapped its cold, crusty hand around my neck from behind. My knife slipped from my hand as the zombie I’d killed fell to the ground with my blade embedded in its head. I struggled and shrugged my shoulders, desperate to shake the hand off so I could bend down and retrieve my knife, but the rough, sticky fingers didn’t let go. They squeezed tighter, making me gag. The zombie’s other hand grabbed a clump of my hair and yanked my head back. I kicked out behind me, feeling my foot connect with something hard. I knew I’d hit it but the zombie held fast.
The zombie of a tall man wearing only a pair of checked pyjama bottoms, his bare chest stripped of flesh so I could see his ribs, lumbered towards me from the front, its arms outstretched. I placed a mental bet on whether PJ-Zombie or Hair Pull-Zombie would be the first to sink its teeth into me, when the grip on my throat and hair loosened. Freed, I raised my right foot and kicked PJ-Zombie backwards, lunged forwards and grabbed my knife, before spinning round to see Chris, a handful of a Hair Pull-Zombie’s hair in his left hand while he pulled his blade out from the top of the zombie’s head.
‘
Thanks,’ I said as he released the zombie and it slumped to the ground between us.
‘
No worries,’ he said, spinning and thrusting his knife between another zombie’s eyes.
Clay, Shane, Sam and Charlotte had now joined us and we moved forwards like a plague of locusts devouring a corn field. The sound of buzzing chainsaws was deafening in the small space as Kay and Soph ploughed ahead of the rest of us. They swung their chainsaws into the tightly packed crowd, removing the tops of zombie heads as more and more of them turned to focus on us.
The zombies had been thinned out enough for me to see the ones at the very front clawed at the window, while others slammed their fists against the glass. I bobbed and weaved, trying to see through the gaps between the writhing bodies as they all fought for front row. I could just make out something dangling down outside the window, dead centre. As more zombies peeled away from the window to turn and attack us, I realised I could see a pair of feet and legs – someone was suspended outside the window by their ankles. ‘Outside … there’s someone outside!’ I screamed above the din of the chainsaws.
The mass of zombies between us and the window was about four rows of writhing bodies deep. Kay edged forwards and swung her chainsaw through the heads of the zombies and in the gap she created, I saw who it was outside – Patrick, tied by his ankles, his hands behind his back and his mouth gagged with a dirty rag. His terrified eyes bulged as he stared at the zombies desperate to get through the glass to his flesh.
‘Oh my god, Patrick!’ I yelled as the zombies on either side swarmed in to close the gap Kay had cleared, and began pounding their rotten hands against the glass. ‘We need to cut him –’ The sound of smashing glass cut me off as the zombies finally broke through the window. Rotten hands reached for Patrick, grabbing hold of his hair and clothing while he wriggled in a vain attempt to free himself. One grasped his arm and pulled him towards the hole.
Sean flung himself forwards, through the zombies to the front and smashed his crowbar into the head of the zombie that held Patrick’s arm. I concentrated on keeping the zombies away from Sean while he tried to free Patrick. Sean turned his crowbar on the next zombie but another grasped Patrick’s hair and drew the old man towards its open mouth. The zombie leaned through the gap in the window, not caring as the jagged glass sliced its chest and it bit into Patrick’s upturned throat.
‘NO!’ yelled Soph as she swiped her chainsaw through zombie heads, trying to get to the front.
Sean brained the zombie and it fell to the floor, releasing Patrick so that he swung back outwards, blood gushing from the wound on his throat. He continued to swing and wriggle, his movements slowing until he hung limp.
Me, Misfit, Chris and Sam stabbed, Clay skewered, Charlotte chopped, Sean smashed, Kay and Soph minced, while Shane bashed zombie heads with his baseball bat until we cleared the room. In the silence that followed, once the chainsaws had been turned off, we stood among the zombie bodies, our heads hung, until a groan from the window
caught our attention. Patrick, his face gaunt, writhed on the rope that bound his feet and he snapped his jaws at us. Sean used his crowbar to clear the remaining shards of glass away while Sam leaned out of the window and thrust his long carving knife through Patrick’s chin and down into his brain. Zombie-Patrick went still.
‘
Fuck,’ I said. ‘Fuck. You were supposed to follow those tracks, Misfit. This whole thing was a decoy so Marco could get to the others.’
‘
We’re a bunch of fucking fucktards,’ said Kay.
‘
Mum, Char … They’ve got my family!’ said Sam, his eyes wide.
‘
Ahhhhhhhhh!’ yelled Shane as he swung his baseball bat into a pane of glass, sending shards flying down to the ground below.
I glanced out of the smashed window, hoping to get a glimpse of Marco or the HZs, but I saw nothing other than the pebble beach leading down to the cold grey sea. I darted to one of the side windows; I could see across the car park to the Burstin Hotel across the road. Smoke billowed into the air to the left, from the direction of Hotel Hell as the fire we started three days ago still raged on, most likely having spread to the whole block. But other than the few zombies we’d passed on the way in, I saw no movement down below.
From the opposite bank of windows, I saw nothing but parked trucks, beyond them, the outer harbour. No sign of Marco, the HZs or the others. At the sound of clanging feet on metal from outside, I turned and we all darted over to the window on the right. I saw an HZ running down the metal stairs on the exterior of the tower.
At the sight of the HZ, Sean and Misfit ran across the room and through a door at the back of the viewing platform to the outside. I pressed myself against the glass of the side window and watched as they climbed over a concrete wall and dropped down onto the stairs. They tore down the stairs after the HZ. When it reached the flat roof of the main two story building, the HZ climbed onto the low concrete wall that ran around the edge and it threw itself off.