She eyed the people in the painting; the vibrant colours and the tranquillity of the setting. She longed to see such a place again.
“Beautiful,” she whispered.
An hour later, and she was making her way through the dark and damp corridors again, headed for the perimeter. Pushing her way through the doors, she walked across the gravel and mud and over towards the rickety shack that housed their communications centre at the foot of the wall. She pulled the cold and wet canvas sheet to the side, a wave of heat and light suddenly blasting against her face and making her squint and cough. It was a shock to her system after the chilled air outside.
Stepping through and into the smoke filled room, she looked across at the two men who were sitting at the small table, playing cards and looking bored. Neither of them bothered to look up or acknowledge her. They were apathetic, and she could see that they were stuck in auto-pilot, fulfilling the same mundane tasks, and carrying out the same repetitive duties, day in and day out.
“Anything?” she asked after a few moments, feeling obliged to break the oppressive silence and make her presence known.
“Not a murmur,” the older man replied from behind the burning cigarette that was clutched between his teeth, his attention remaining fixed upon the playing cards he was holding in his hand.
Ron was ancient. Even when Tina had first arrived at the base after Al and Tommy had saved her, the man was much older than anyone else there. He had at least twenty years on the next oldest member of the survivors and he looked it. His nicknames had gone from the likes of ‘Grandad’ and ‘Old `un’, to ‘Fossil’ and ‘Dracula’. Despite the fact that he was never seen without a cigarette in his mouth, and never exercised, Ron seemed to be impervious to the ravages of time. His body aged and his features were that of a man in his eighties, but he stubbornly clung to life with a grip that defied his years and his lifestyle. Rumour had it that he was actually one of the undead but had not yet realised it. He was extremely ill tempered and everything was an inconvenience to him. Tina had long since learned to avoid him, but from time to time, communication between the two was unavoidable.
She waited to see if anything else would be said or if Ron would even look at her and offer any kind of enlightenment. She knew that it was futile, and she was not disappointed when the old man continued to ignore her as though he had forgotten that she had even entered the room. She looked over towards the VHF radio that was sitting on the table beside him. Tina could see that it was switched on, and the handset was close by. If there were any news, and despite the inconvenience to him, she was sure that Ron would pass it on.
“Nice talking to you, Ron,” she finally said, and turned to leave.
“It’s only been a couple of hours, Tina,” a voice said after her.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw the face of the other man in the communications room looking back at her. His name was Gary, and he was much younger and more cooperative than Ron. He had been there from the beginning, joining the survivors in the base as a civilian, but learning to become a soldier over the years through necessity. Four years earlier, Tina had assigned a number of the survivors, including Gary, to Ron as apprentices. They all knew that Ron would not last forever, and when he was gone someone would need to take over as the communications expert.
“Thanks, Gary. I’ll check in later.”
She closed the canvas flap and headed for the steps leading back up on to the perimeter wall. Footsteps rang out behind her as she ascended, and she turned to see that Gary had followed her. They stood side by side for a while in silence staring into the great nothingness that surrounded the FOB.
“Ron’s an arsehole,” Gary finally offered. “He’s bloody hard work at times.”
Tina nodded with a slight smile and a shrug of her shoulders, her eyes remaining focussed on the wall of blackness around them.
“Yeah, he always has been, and he seems to be getting worse.”
“He’s like one of those grumpy old men that every street had when we were kids with a huge collection of confiscated footballs in his shed.”
Tina laughed, picturing Ron in that exact same light, snatching away anything that landed in his garden, and refusing to hand it back to the pleading children of the neighbourhood. They both fell silent again, lost in their own thoughts for a while.
“You’re worried about them, aren’t you?”
“Al and Tommy, you mean?” Tina clarified, knowing that she did not really need to. “Yeah, I don’t like the waiting and not knowing.”
A sudden gust of cold wind wafted towards them, hitting the base of the wall and travelling up over the parapet. Both of them grimaced at the foul stink that the breeze carried and the discomfort they felt against their exposed flesh. In unison, they hunched their shoulders and stuffed their hands into their pockets.
“They’re the best we have,” Gary continued in a reassuring voice, hoping to put Tina’s mind at ease.
Despite her efforts, he had always been able to see beyond her façade of cold indifference. They all could.
“They know what they’re doing better than any of us,” he continued. “They’ve been out there a million times.”
“That’s what worries me.” She turned and looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Look around you, Gary. All we have left are semi-trained civilians and a few of the original platoon that was assigned to the base. The rest are gone, dead, including the pilots. Those two lunatics out there are our best hope, and if they don’t come back, we’re fucked.”
Gary watched her, thinking on her words and understanding that without Al and Tommy, it would be virtually impossible for them to make it through the wilderness. Finally, he shrugged, clearing his throat and stomping his feet against the steel grates of the walkway.
“I think you worry too much, boss. I’m sure they’re both just fine.”
3
“Fuck,” Al howled, squeezing back on the trigger. It was more of an instinct than a consciously thought out reaction.
With a burst of rapid flashes, the first of his rounds spewed from the barrel of his rifle, ripping through the space between him and the ghouls that were standing in the doorway. Pieces of shelving fragmented as the hot, metal slugs punched through them, sending up chunks of jagged aluminium in all directions. Others thwacked into the walls and the window frames, flinging clods of mouldy plaster and rotten wood through the air. In the glow of the eruptions, the face of the approaching corpse was highlighted for a split second, its head instantly snapping backwards as one of the bullets punched a hole through its face and into its skull, spattering the remains of its decomposed brains across the shelves behind it. It veered off to the side, dropping to its knees, and then smashing face first into the floor.
In the restricted space of the store, the report of the rifle fire was painfully loud, causing the air pressure to change violently despite the suppressor attached to the barrel of Al’s rifle. More shots exploded from close by as Tommy stepped into the fight, moving to the right of Al and creating a base of fire from where they would attempt to batter back the crowd before they came too close. More heads shattered as the speeding bullets ploughed through them, sending up clouds of fragmented bone and putrefied brains into the atmosphere of the shop. Already, the smell of rotted blood, fetid internal organs, and cordite was rapidly mixing into a noxious stench, stinging at the eyes of the living. The corpses continued to drop.
“Cover the right,” Al screamed as he loosed off another volley of shots. “They’re coming through the fucking windows. Cover the right, Tommy.”
Tommy turned to where Al was indicating. A throng of dark shapes were clambering over the low sill of the large window that covered the majority of the store front. He turned his barrel and fired, the tracers tearing their way through a number of the infected, causing them to glow from within as the magnesium burned right through their dried and withered bodies and causing a few of them to spontaneously combust.
There were too many of them. Dozens of the infected bodies were pouring in from outside, relentlessly trampling over the mutilated corpses of the fallen as they advanced on the two living men, howling lustfully while they dragged themselves into the building.
“Watch your left,” Tommy cried across to his partner.
Al turned in time to see that one of the infected, its legs having been severed at the knees, was crawling along the floor through the aisle on the left. It was now only a metre away and could very easily have taken a bite out of Al before he even knew it was there. He blasted its head wide open with a single shot. He turned and glanced at Tommy, giving him an appreciative nod in way of thanks.
They continued to fire into the tide of rotting flesh, their empty cases piling up at their feet as they struggled desperately to halt the progress of the crowd. Their weapons jerked and chattered endlessly as scores of the dead tumbled, but they were steadily being forced back as more and more of them spewed in through the gaping windows and shattered doorway, wailing with excitement as they caught sight of the living.
There was no way that Al and Tommy could stem the flood and they knew it. For every one of the dead they managed to kill, five more would take their place in the line. The men continued to move backwards, deeper into the shadows of the building, relinquishing ground under the enormous pressure as the rotting corpses pressed their attack. Their rate of fire would have forced a living enemy to retreat, but the reanimated bodies, uncaring about the bullets that ripped through the air, never took a step back. Their only concern was to reach the men and strip the flesh from their bones.
“Magazine,” Al yelled, hitting the release catch and dropping the empty to the floor.
Grabbing a fresh one from a pouch on his vest, it was slapped into place within the magazine housing, and the barrage of fire into the rotting mass continued without letting up.
“Here,” Tommy shouted over the roar of rifle fire and dead voices while grabbing hold of his friend’s harness and dragging him backwards into the dark storeroom behind them. “Get in, close the fucking door.”
The pair of them disappeared from sight and into a cavern of blackness. Once inside they began grabbing hold of anything they could use to block the entrance and give them a moment to form a plan of action. A plan that could get them out of the mess that they were in. Crates of beer, boxes of bottled spirits, even a rickety steel stacking shelf and a filthy old mattress, was thrust up against the door, creating a flimsy barricade that both of them knew would not hold for long.
“Grab anything you can,” Tommy ordered, throwing a wooden stool through the air and onto the growing pile.
Within seconds, rotting hands began to pound at the door from the other side, causing it to shudder against its hinges and lock. Heavy thuds, the sound of heads and bodies slamming into the thick wooden obstacle that separated them from their meal, boomed through the darkness, sending terror rippling through the bodies of the two trapped men. They slowly stepped away from the barricade, watching it with eyes as big as footballs. They knew that it would not hold, but if it could just keep them back for a few minutes, then maybe they could find a way out of the trap.
“What do we do? What the fuck do we do?” Al screamed over the noise, the pitch of his voice heightened with panic.
“How the fuck do I know? You got us into this mess.”
Together, with the narrow beams of their lights, they began to search for a way out of the storeroom. At the far end a door blocked their path and they quickly realised that a gate of rusted iron bars reinforced it from the inside. Many years ago, it had prevented thieves from breaking in, but now it impeded the flight of the living from the undead. Al pulled against it and felt that it was set solid into the frame, secured by two large and rusted padlocks at the top and bottom. He pulled again and again, rattling the bars and snarling with frustration. It was locked tight, and it was clear that they would not be able to pry it open with sheer brute force.
“You utter fucking cunt…” Al snorted with anger, as he gave the gate one final and forceful tug.
They looked up to the ceiling, hoping there may have been a skylight, or trap door, anything that would give them a glimmer of hope. Nothing. The ceiling was solid and provided no way out for them. There were no windows in the room apart from a tiny slit just below the line of the ceiling that neither of them would stand a chance at squeezing an arm through let alone their whole bodies.
The door continued to shake and rattle under the dead assault. The sound of splintering wood and the creak of nails being prised from the frame rang out through the murky room as the door began to give under the combined weight of the creatures that were mercilessly battering at it from the other side.
“Shit, we’re fucked, Tommy. They’re coming in. The door’s going to give. We’re fucked, mate.”
Without a word, Tommy reached into one of his pouches and pulled out a beige, shapeless lump that was wrapped in cling film. They glanced at one another and understood what needed to be done. Together, they moved towards the rear of the room and the iron bars that thwarted their escape. All the while, they kept an eye on the door leading back out into the shop front as it creaked and groaned in protest.
“How much do you think?” Al asked.
“I don’t know,” Tommy replied, shaking his head and staring at the object in his hand. “I’m no expert at this.”
“Fuck it, use half, and we’ll just have to hope for the best.”
They pulled the doughy material into two pieces and pressed the plastic explosives up against the locking mechanisms of the barred gate. Next, they began to unravel the cord, attaching it to the detonators embedded in each piece of explosives.
“Grab the mattress.”
“The mattress?”
“Yeah, the frigging mattress. Hurry up.”
Al turned and did as he was told, pulling the filth stained mattress from the disintegrating barricade and then standing for a moment, holding it under his arm and unsure of what to do with it. He glanced at the metal bars, at the explosive charges, and then down at the mattress in his hands.
“I don’t think this is going to help, mate,” he said casually, and with an air of scepticism for the plan that they had put into motion.
“It’s better than nothing,” Tommy grunted back at him, as he carried out a final check on the detonators. “Unless you want to just stand there with your fingers in your ears?”
Tommy made his way across the room towards Al who was still standing with the mattress under one arm and watching him intently. Unravelling the detonating cord and pulling the primer from his vest, Tommy snatched the puny mattress from Al and threw it into the far corner.
“Get down behind it. I don’t know how big this thing is going to be. It’ll probably take the whole building down, but I doubt we’ll know much about it.”
The door beside them cracked, and the lock buckled. The boxes and crates shifted slightly as the lower half of the frame was pushed away from the wall, their glass contents clanging against each other from inside.
Behind the mattress, the two men hunkered down, tucking their knees into their chests and burying their heads into their torsos like turtles. They stole a breath and then exhaled, ready to hold it and avoid having their lungs explode from the pressure wave of the detonation.
“Ready?”
“Just fucking get on with it, will you?” Al grimaced, shutting his eyes tight beneath the rim of his helmet.
Tommy hit the trigger and the air was suddenly sucked from the room. At the same time, a blinding flash that lasted for just a fraction of a second, bathed everything in an intense white glow. A crack like the sound of thunder going off just above their heads threatened to smash the skulls of the two men as the shockwave ripped through the small enclosure, fracturing the walls and the foundations of the building. The pressure was immense, knocking the air from their bursting lungs, and squeezing their bodies to the point that their bones threatened to break. Their brains rattled around within their heads, sending them spiralling towards unconsciousness and disorienting them as their ears ruptured from the weight of the explosion. They felt their bodies being pressed into the wall behind them, and then simultaneously pulled away by an almighty force as they howled and clung to the flimsy mattress.
Dust, smoke, and debris flew in all directions, slamming into the walls and door, and burrowing into the feeble shield that the men used as their only protection. The barricade was flung apart. Bottles cracked and cans burst, adding to the storm of shrapnel. The door that held the swarm of dead at bay buckled and caved outward as the pressure wave blasted its way through the room at lightning speed, searching for a way out, and passing through the point of least resistance.
The ravenous bodies beyond were flung in all directions, scattered throughout the store, and sent crashing into the shelves and walls. The assaulting corpses closest to the barricade disintegrated as their withered frames succumbed to the enormous shock of the detonation. Parts of them were hurled far and wide, their splintered bones acting as secondary shrapnel, and causing more carnage as they flew at high velocity through the air.
With their ears ringing and their vision dancing, the two men pushed the mattress to the side. Writhing on the floor, they both fought hard to regain control of their senses, coughing and groaning while trying to climb to their feet. Using the wall and one another for support, they grabbed for their weapons, readying themselves to fight off any attackers that managed to continue the assault. The room was filled with dust and smoke, adding to the already dark surroundings and making it impossible for the soldiers to see where they were going or find their bearings.
“I can’t see a fucking thing,” one of them hollered through the darkness, reaching out and trying to feel for his friend.
“This way,” the other groaned.
Together, they staggered through the chaos, kicking bottles and other debris across the floor as they stumbled towards where they hoped was their exit. They moved with their hands out in front of them, feeling their way along the walls, and hoping that they were not headed back towards the main part of the shop.
Through the swirling dust, they began to make out a faint glow. It was the doorway that led out to the rear of the building. It had been ripped from its hinges along with the bars and a large portion of the wall. With all the coordination that they could muster, they swayed and lurched towards the gaping hole. The dim light of the moon showed them the way, growing brighter as they drew nearer. Behind them, as they slowly and clumsily made their escape, the groans of the dead and the sound of shuffling feet began to emanate from the store front again. The infected were returning to the offensive.
Outside, while tripping over large clumps of brick and the remains of the door, Al and Tommy found themselves in a small and narrow yard with high walls. They turned to their left, following the wall of the building, and hoping to find a gate that exited to the rear and onto an adjacent street.
At the far end, they found nothing but a huge tangle of thorn bushes and weeds blocking their path and the exit from the yard. With no other option, they began to climb, using an old corroded dustbin as a step to help propel themselves upwards while clutching onto the vines and grimacing as the thorns pierced the leather of their gloves and cut deep into their palms. Struggling with their balance and coordination, and unable to focus their eyes properly while their ears still rang with the deafening bells of the blast, they hauled themselves to the top of the wall. Once they were both safe from ground level they paused for a moment, catching their breath and checking their surroundings.