The two living men stepped out from the shadows and surveyed the aftermath of the decaying exodus with wonder and disgust.
With a sigh of relief they continued, creeping along the street, and using the weather beaten vehicles as cover. A few metres further along, and they needed to side step a body that clawed at the pavement with its deteriorating fingertips while the remains of its internal organs trailed behind it in long strands, appearing like a black oil slick in the ghostly moonlight. The skin of its hands was worn to the bone, and with each rasping grasp at the hard concrete, it wore away more of its crumbling fingers.
As it saw Al and Tommy appear in front of it, a hoarse gargle seeped from its torn throat. Its face turned up towards the two figures and its one remaining eye, black and lifeless, locked on to them as its jaw began to spring open and snap shut. It clutched at the ground with more vigour, attempting to drag itself along at a quicker pace to get within reaching distance of its prey, but it was no match for the two fast moving men.
Al stepped to the side and raised his leg so that his thigh ran parallel to the ground and his heel hung poised above the creature’s head. For a second he stared down into the decaying eye, and in that fleeting moment imagined what the person below his boot may have once looked like. It was a habit that sometimes got the better of him when observing the poor victims of the plague. Despite their appearance and the danger, there were times when he could not help but remember that the vile creatures were actually once living people.
The snarling corpse slithering along the roadside had been a man once upon a time. A living, breathing, thinking man with his own feelings and views on the world, and his own cares and concerns. He may have even had a family who loved and cared for him; had worried and searched endlessly for him when he had failed to return home. Al’s thoughts were fleeting, and the man beneath his boot once again became an inhuman monster that needed to be destroyed on sight without consideration of what it had once been.
With all of his weight, he brought his foot down, driving the heel of his boot into the face of the dead man. He felt the bone break. The shock of the impact travelled the length of his leg, and as the skull was ground into the hard surface of the pavement, Al felt his leg come to a sudden stop. The head splintered and collapsed inwards, oozing out the black gloopy mess which was all that was left of the dead man’s thoughts and feelings.
They continued on, carefully making their way through the destroyed and infested town towards their target. In the distance, they could still hear the crowd that had passed them by rampaging through the lanes and sweeping through the buildings.
“Right at this next junction,” Al whispered to Tommy as they patrolled one behind the other, and hugging the shadows. “Then it should be there, on the opposite side of the road and at the far end.”
“You sure it’ll still be there?”
“Fucked if I know, but it’s where they were when we lost comms with them. Anyway, why wouldn’t it still be there? It’s not exactly a stack of newspaper.”
Their mission had two objectives. One was to reach the bus depot, and once there, identify any vehicles that were still in working order and could be used to transport the rest of the survivors away from the FOB. The vehicles would need to have been protected from the elements and secured inside the large storage units found at most depots because anything left outside would have long since seized up and would be of no use to anyone. They both knew full well that their task was a long shot and likely to bear no fruit, but they needed to try. Things were becoming desperate for the survivors, and it was only a matter of time before they needed to abandon the base.
For a number of months, the base had been in communications with another group of survivors who claimed to be living safely on a small island off the English coast. However, they would not specify which island. Everyone knew that most of the islands around the UK had been occupied by the remnants of the government and the British military in the first years following the outbreak, but war between different factions had engulfed them, and only a few had escaped the onslaught.
Back at the base, they were sure that the survivors they were talking to could not possibly be on the Isle of Wight or Jersey or any of the other Channel Isles for that matter. Since London had been flattened by a ten-megaton nuclear warhead over ten years earlier, and thanks to the prevailing winds, the English Channel was considered as being radioactive and uninhabitable along with much of the south of the country. However, even with little information and the people on the other end of the radio reluctant to give their exact position until they were sure they could trust the people in the FOB, the survivors needed to begin their own preparations for an evacuation.
For years the base had been surrounded by the dead that were laying siege to them. Fresh water and food had become scarce, and people were reluctant to venture out from the walls in order to conduct scavenger missions. All the food within a large radius of the fortress had either been scavenged or had rotted away, and raiding parties, usually led by Al and Tommy and other veterans, were having to venture further out from the protection of the base. There was nothing left now but desolation and the never-ending fight for survival.
Some teams failed to return from their missions, and it had been some years since anyone came back with anything resembling a significant find. The people of the FOB were no longer viewing themselves as the living, but as the dead with a stay of execution. With all their resources close to exhaustion, it was time for them to leave.
The main problem was, three weeks earlier the base HF—high-frequency—radio had packed up on them. Despite their efforts, they were unable to fix it. The silence, after communicating with other survivors and feeling a degree of hope, sent many into despair. They were desperate for information and clung to the prospect of joining other survivors in a safe place where they did not need to cower behind thick, high walls.
The only other HF radio set that they knew of and could still be in working order had gone silent three years before. A team out on a supply run had gone firm at the top of a multi-storey car park building. The last that anyone had heard from them was that the men had been surrounded and were trapped and with no way off the roof. It was a long shot, but Al and Tommy hoped beyond hope that the radio would still be there and remained serviceable. With no one else willing to step forward, the two veterans had volunteered to search for the vital piece of communications equipment as their primary objective.
Tina herself had intended to join them, but a mini-mutiny had broken out between the three of them, with Al and Tommy refusing to go if she insisted on accompanying them. It was not that they did not trust or value her abilities. On the contrary, she had proven herself just as many times as they had over the previous twelve years. Their insistence for her to remain at the base was because Tina was their leader and the one person that everyone turned to in a crisis.
When Al was shot in the head, it was Tina who stepped up and led the survivors. She rallied them and restored their will to fight, their cohesion, and their morale during the dark weeks that followed. When Al finally recovered, he stepped back into a community that had a new commander and no longer needed his reluctant leadership, and he was more than happy to step down. Now, with the situation steadily deteriorating, if Tina went out and failed to return, the base would soon fold without her.
“Shit,” Tommy hissed, coming to an abrupt halt at the corner and stepping backward, almost colliding with his friend behind him.
To their left in the adjoining street, a crowd of bodies stood motionless and staring at the ground like grotesque statues that were frozen in time. They had congregated together for some unknown reason, and with nothing to further stimulate them, had all remained there crammed together and becoming dormant. The pale light from the moon reflected from the hundreds of bare skulls, the flesh having rotted away and the bone becoming whitened from the elements as they remained exposed to the sun, wind, and rain, season after season. It was hard to tell where one figure started and another ended. They had been transformed into a wall of mottled greys and browns that were fused together with inactivity, grime, and decay.
The two men remained still and carefully watched the macabre barrier of gaunt figures, searching for any sign that they may have been seen by the thousands of eyes that stared, completely oblivious to everything around them, at the asphalt beneath their rotting feet. It was hard to imagine them as having once been living people. In the early days, despite their appearance, they were clearly the bodies of human beings. Now, dried and withered, most of them skeletal and blackened through the ravages of time, it was difficult to believe that they had ever been anything other than the monsters that they were.
Carefully, taking slow and deliberately placed steps, the soldiers turned into the next street. They hugged the wall as they moved, avoiding detection from the swarm in the road behind them as they clung to the dark shadows of the buildings that flanked the road. Every fibre in their bodies urged them to run, but their experience and discipline prevented them from doing so. The infected were attracted to sound and movement, and two fast moving objects, possibly making noise as they sprinted along the street, would surely draw the attention of all the dead eyes in the vicinity. They were in the heart of enemy territory, and they needed their nerves to be as tough as steel. Al always compared it to placing their feet inside a bear trap, hovering just above the pressure pad, and taunting it with their boldness.
Further along, out of sight from the throng of frozen corpses, Al suddenly stopped and stared at the open door of a building on the left side of the street. He stooped, squinting into the gloomy doorway and wrecked windows while attempting to penetrate the thick blanket of blackness that glared back at him from inside.
“Wait,” he whispered, gesturing to Tommy and nodding towards the entrance. “We should take a quick look.”
Above the doorway a faded and weather beaten sign stubbornly clung to its brackets. Tommy took a step closer, struggling to identify the building.
“Are you fucking serious?” he hissed back at Al when he was finally able to recognise the lettering. He was standing in the middle of the street and suddenly feeling exposed. “We can’t be fucking about right now, dickhead. We’ve got more important things to do.”
Al turned to him, his face clearly showing that he had no intention of continuing with their mission at that moment. He shook his head and began to step away towards the gaping doorway.
“It’ll only take a minute,” he reasoned, beckoning for his friend to follow him. “We’ll be done before you know it.”
Without another word he turned and headed towards the dark, cavernous entrance leading into the store.
“For fuck sake,” Tommy grumbled, falling into line behind his partner, knowing that he could not convince his friend to continue until he was satisfied and ready to do so on his own accord. “You’ll get us both killed one of these days.”
“Shut up, you big girl’s bra.”
He followed Al towards the building and paused at the gaping doorway, glancing to his left and right, peering along the street in both directions. Suddenly, he could feel the cold, damp air penetrating through his clothing, seeping through his flesh and into his bones, and causing him to shiver. The area was still and silent, but he felt unnerved. He knew all too well that it would not take much to change the current state, and he cursed his friend under his breath for forcing him into a situation that could very easily go wrong. Another shudder coursed through his body, causing his spine to twitch and his skin to form goose-bumps.
“Fuck sake,” he grumbled again, and stepped through the door.
Once inside, they treaded carefully through the almost pitch-black interior of the shop. They stood side by side staring into the darkness and focussing all their senses as they watched and listened for any sign of movement from within. They stepped forward, the soles of their heavy boots lightly crushing the carpet of broken glass that was scattered across the pale linoleum floor. The sound of the small glass cubes shifting and breaking under their weight was deafening in the otherwise silent air and seemed to echo loudly through the small supermarket they had entered in to.
Slowly, their eyes adjusted to the gloom and more of the shop’s interior came into view. Two rows of shelving ran along the centre of the spacious room, dividing the store into three separate aisles. Close to the door where the two men lingered, they could see a number of bulky objects lying on the ground. Overturned shopping baskets, boxes, and crates cluttered the aisles, creating obstacles that would cause a racket if disturbed.
Then there were the dead bodies. Dozens of them. All mixed together and rotted away to nothing but bone and tattered clothing, illuminated in the faint moonlight that filtered in through the shop front. The building reeked with the familiar must of old decay and rotting wood from the years of exposure to the elements, but there seemed to be no indication that the living dead were inside.
Deeper into the store along the aisles the ambient light failed to penetrate far enough for them to be able to see, so they reached for their lights. The tiny narrow beams, giving off just enough light to see the immediate area around where they were aimed, swept from left to right as the soldiers checked for any unseen dangers. They carefully walked along the aisles, checking the shelves for anything of use, and headed towards the checkout counter at the far end. They periodically glanced back over their shoulders to confirm that the street beyond the entrance remained empty.