None of us made eye contact, and no one was speaking. It was like we were NASA astronauts preparing for liftoff. Danny caught my attention and gave me a wink. He passed my helmet to me. As I got onto my bike and started the engine, Dan dismounted and took up his position at the front of the Range Rover, fishing the keys to the two padlocks out of his trouser pocket. Jenny got into the driver’s seat of the Range Rover and gunned the engine.
She had clearly noticed the dried, black blood outside the front door and on the drive, but I could only guess that she decided now was not the time to ask questions. She knew I was looking for an excuse not to go through with this, and initiating debate might just have given me the opportunity to talk myself back into the safety of the house.
Nick moved to the foot of the ladder, hooking the bag of meat through his left hand.
It had been decided that I would give the word to get things started. A simple, ‘Go,’ and Nick would climb the wall and attract the attention of the zombies. I sat on my bike, feeling the vibrations from the throbbing engine in the pit of my stomach. I gave a brief thought to Mum and Dad and the sometimes irritating rule of always having a full tank of fuel that they had endorsed to stringently. Well, it was going to save somebody’s life now.
It was then that I realised I had been paying no heed to the zombies at the gate.
Had we become conditioned to the continual groaning?
They continued to rock, forward and back, making that same noise, and as time had passed, even just a couple of days, they looked worse, as if they were finally giving in to being dead. I locked eyes with one and saw nothing of its humanity left. It was just a shell. I gave the neck strap of my helmet one final tug to make sure it was on tightly enough, pulled on my gloves, turned to Nick, and from under my raised visor gave the keyword.
‘Go.’
The zombies had reacted to Nick dropping the meat over the wall just as they had the first time Danny had done it; a terrifying version of Pavlov’s dogs.
The plan could not have been running more smoothly. Danny had quickly unlocked the gates and Jenny had reversed the Range Rover. Dan had pulled the gate open just enough for me to squeeze my bike through and had then got back onto his own machine and followed me out. As we accelerated along the first straightaway from the house, I hoped Jenny and Nick had experienced the same lack of problem in getting the gate shut.
The roads were deserted. They were also dry and our tyres gripped the asphalt perfectly. We swung around the two tight bends that opened up next to the garden centre on the right and the row of cottages to the left. This was my first point of concern. Where there were homes, there could be people. Where there were people…
Nothing. We rode side by side, straddling the white line as we approached our emergency exit; the left turn that headed up towards the prison. We didn’t need to take it. We had every opportunity to go through with this. As we approached town, Danny slowed his bike, pointing for us to divert into the petrol station just before the bridge that would take us into Usk. He pulled in first and I tucked in behind him. When we came to a complete halt, I hopped off my bike and adjusted the straps on his rucksack, making sure they were loose enough for Danny to drop the bag in a split second.
‘You ready, bro?’
‘We’ve come this far,’ I said. ‘Let’s get this done.’
I got back on my bike and we rode out of the petrol station, turned right onto the old, stone bridge and up onto its apex, where we paused once again. From here we could see the rest of the way across the river to the group of zombies outside the hairdressers’. There were twenty at most, probably not even that many, and they were all to the right of the road, near the front door of the shop. They had left a clear path along Bridge Street, and the rest of the route Danny was going to follow looked entirely clear from our vantage point.
The noise of our bikes drew their attention but not enough for them to move towards us. Maybe our leathers restricted the scent of food we gave off. Just like the ones outside of our gate, they stood there and rocked. I was sure that they were making the same sound, too, but with my helmet on and the bike’s engine purring below me, I couldn’t hear anything. Danny flicked his visor up and I edged my bike forward a touch, so we were once again side by side.
‘There’s nothing in the way,’ my brother said. ‘As soon as we get the signal from them, I’m gone.’
‘Well, there it is. Good luck.’
‘You too.’
And, in a blast of sound, he was gone.
A towel was being waved from the very top window of the hairdressers’ building. That was our signal; the girls were in place and ready to exit the front doors. All Danny had to do now was draw the zombies away and loop back around. He flew past the creatures, thumb on his horn as he went, trying everything he could to gain their attention. And it worked. They all turned their heads and tracked his movement up towards the archway that would take him past the Spar and into the big, open car park.
He slowed and swung the bike so he was faced under the arch. I watched with a stomach full of acid as he wrestled with the rucksack, finally freeing it from his back before depositing the mass of raw meat all over the tarmac. And, just like they had done back at the house, the zombies reacted and began their shuffle to the food. I realised with revulsion that there were children in amongst them. A girl, aged about ten with long blonde hair streaked with dirt and blood, half her jaw chewed off, stumbled along with the rest of them. And a boy, no older than seven, dressed in a blue and grey tracksuit, dragging himself along behind because he was missing a leg, leaving a trail of gunk behind him like some nightmare slug.
Danny waited, knowing he was as much part of the bait as the meat itself. He gunned the throttle on his bike, making as much noise as possible to keep their attention fixed on him as I slowly let my bike creep down the town side of the bridge.
I could see inside the hairdressers’. The faces of two girls, one with short dark hair, and the other with longer blonde hair, were now pressed against the glass of the front door, and behind them was a man I vaguely recognised, giving me a wave with one hand and shaking a bunch of keys at me with the other. Yes, they were definitely ready to go.
‘No! No! Get back!’
Danny. My attention was drawn back to the main street. To the zombies, still about two hundred yards from my brother. To the now open door of one of the cottages on the left. To the tall woman with short, black hair sprinting towards Danny. Sprinting into the mass of zombies. Realising her mistake. Trying to turn. Slipping, falling into two of the undead. Screaming as, on her hands and knees, she tried to crawl away from them. Elbows already bloody.
A zombie, a bald, fat man with its shirt torn open, falling to its own knees and sinking its uncannily white teeth through her jeans into her calf muscle. A spurt of blood arcing up into the air and spraying the nearest creatures.
Those that the blood hit stopped and started licking the liquid off themselves. Her head being thrown back as she yelled for help. A second zombie falling onto her, ripping at the back of her neck with teeth and fingernails, tearing the flesh, its face becoming a mass of blood and gore. And then her eyes met mine. One of her hands reached out for me. She mouthed the words help me.
The child zombie, the boy who had been crawling behind the rest of them, had finally caught up. Her throat was at the perfect height and he sunk his teeth into her wind pipe, snapping his head backwards, his mouth full of skin and gristle. And then she was engulfed by even more creatures. They squirmed over her wriggling body like a fisherman’s box full of maggots. For being so unsteady on their feet, they fed with a frenzy that had frozen both me and Danny to the spot.
Was it because we both knew who she was?
That she was Missus Pound, who we saw walking her dog, a friendly golden Labrador, past our house on a regular basis? That she always had time to stop and say hello? That one of the zombies now emerged from the scrum, using others of its kind as crutches as it pushed itself to its feet, with her arm, torn off from the elbow, held like a chicken leg? That her blood was running down its chin and it was taking the time to push the droplets back inside what was left of its lips with fingers that were already caked in dried flesh?
Yes, it was because of all of those things.
But what got us moving again was when another of the zombies pushed and pulled its way to its feet, its fingers still wrapped around her hair, with the rest of her head swinging, a section of her spine visible and the last of her blood dripping onto the road. The creature raised its prize up to eye level, confused as to what was weighing its arm down, and simply discarded Missus Pound’s head into the gutter and began walking again toward the fresh meat at Danny’s feet. Slowly, most of the others followed suit, leaving three or four of their hellish cohorts licking her blood off the white line in the middle of the road.
The roar of Danny’s bike brought my focus back to the task in hand. He popped the front wheel up the curb and was gone through the archway. I advanced across the bridge and turned right, to the front door of the shop, and signalled wait with a raised left palm. I could hear Danny’s bike in the near distance, still too far away for my liking. I looked back inside the shop and by pointing made it very clear that the dark-haired girl was to get on the back of my bike, and the blonde was to get on the back of Danny’s.
They nodded their understanding just as I caught the first sight of my brother. He’d made it. He went past me with a hand raised, and used the junction as his turning circle and also as a chance to check if the zombies were on their way back. He pulled up behind me and shouted, ‘We’re good to go! They’ve not started coming back yet.’
I made the universal rolling hand gesture for come on to the girls, and after a loud click from the lock they pulled the door inward and exited quickly, each jumping onto the pillion seat of our bikes as directed and gripping on tightly. The man with the keys, Simon, just stood in the doorway, staring at us with a moronic smile on his jowly face.
‘Lock the door,’ Danny shouted, and pulled forward and around my bike before setting off down the road at a slow and steady pace.
I tucked in behind him, worrying if any cars had blocked our path down Mill Street. But there was nothing to worry about. The road was long and straight so Danny accelerated, keeping to the middle of the street. In seconds we were turning right into the car park. The lush grass of the cricket pitch was in front of us, but we drove towards the tennis courts and pulled up at the furthest extreme of the tarmac car park, taking a big loop before stopping so the bikes were facing the exit.
Before turning off the engines, we scanned around us for any signs of movement, and, seeing that there wasn’t any, we each pushed the red button that cut the power, withdrew the key, and stashed it in a deep pocket. The girls got off the bikes and clung to each other. They were understandably terrified.
‘We’re heading that way,’ I said, pointing towards the bank that led to the river. ‘We’re going to jog, not sprint. Just stay with us.’
Danny pulled his modified motorbike chain out from inside his jacket and set off, leading the way. The girls went next and I brought up the rear, having paused for a second to extract the cut-off bat. I jogged backwards, making sure there was no reason to turn this into a race to the river. All was clear, and I knew we were going to make it.
* * *
‘Okay,’ whispered Danny through his visor as we crouched low at the river’s edge. ‘Head straight over towards that log. We’ve stashed weapons there. And then head for the grey wall, just off to the left. Can you see?’
Both of them nodded. Luckily, they were both wearing flat shoes and jeans, or the next part of the rescue could have been a total farce.
‘Ready?’ asked Dan, and we all nodded.
He went first, slowly picking his way across the river, using the biggest of the stones to cross on, making a real effort to exaggerate where he was going to step next so the girls would know the way. He needn’t have bothered. When it was their turn, they simply flew across, not caring if they stood knee-deep in water, as long as they could get to the other side and arm themselves with one of the sharpened poles.
I joined them last, surprised by the lack of drama, and noise, that the four of us crossing the river had caused. We edged through the trees, spread out with the girls in the middle and Danny and me on the flanks, when Nick’s voice, barely more than a whisper, started repeating, ‘Clear, clear, clear.’
‘Go, head for the ladder,’ I said, pointing to the middle of the wall where Nick had already dropped our escape route into place.
He stood on the wall above the ladder, gripping it firmly as first and then the other girl clambered to the top, dropping the sharpened poles to the side of the wall as they went. I pushed Danny in front of me and finally followed him myself. When I reached the top, I tore off my gloves and dragged my helmet off my head, inhaling the fresh, clear air in huge gulps. We’d done it. The first two were safe. Danny and Nick were hugging each other, the girls doing the same.
‘Are you both okay?’ I asked as I pulled the ladder back up to the top of the wall, and then carefully swung it down the other side, back into the safety of the garden. I dropped my bat over too, Danny following suit with his chain.
‘Yes, yes, thank you,’ the dark-haired one whispered, tears streaming down her face, still grasping the hand of her blonde friend.
‘Hey, you’re going to be okay now,’ I said, ushering them to the ladder, and one by one we made our way down, walking up to the back door of the house, everyone politely introducing themselves despite the bizarre nature of the situation. The dark-haired girl was Claire, one of the hairdressers, and the blonde, Susan, was one of the trainees. They both looked like they hadn’t slept at all through any of this, and when Jenny met us on the decking they virtually fell into her arms.