“Jesus, my head feels like it’s up my arse.”
“It fucking
is
, you prick. What the fuck were you thinking, Al?”
Al did not reply. He felt ashamed for the mistake he had made. At the time, he was sure that his actions would cause no harm, but he had been proven very wrong. They had very nearly been killed twice within the last five minutes, and they were far from being out of the woods yet. He grunted and shook his head violently, attempting to force his senses back into some sort of order
In each direction the wall continued, running across the backs of the stores and businesses along the main street and paralleling an alleyway to the rear. The bricks at the top of the wall were wide enough for them to walk along, but in their current state, still reeling from the shock of the explosion, they both doubted that their balance would be up to the task.
“I’m not too keen on the idea of walking along this tightrope. Half the bricks are probably loose, and I feel like I’m shit faced.”
“What choice do we have? We can’t drop into the alley, we’ll be trapped,” Al stated, looking down at the dark channel to their left, and then at the jagged remains of the rear door to the shop on their right.
From within the dust that continued to swirl through the air, and they could hear the voices of the dead. Then the first of them emerged from the doorway. The dark and shadowy figure staggered on unsteady legs, its knees buckling with every step. Its black sunken eyes locked on to the two men atop of the wall, framed in the moonlight. It increased its efforts to close the distance. The reanimated corpse stumbled and lost its balance, tumbling to the side as one of its wrecked legs gave way from beneath it with a sickening crunch. More bodies spewed out from the ruined store, trampling over the first as it writhed on the ground, and began advancing on the wall at the rear of the yard.
“You really are a prick,” Tommy spat, and began to push himself up, carefully correcting his balance before helping his friend to his feet, and then turning to begin their precarious walk along the narrow bricks.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’ll soon forgive me the next time it’s
your
turn to fuck up,” Al grumbled under his breath as he began to slowly walk the wall.
They left the yard filled with the walking dead behind and steadily advanced along the narrow bricks, stopping periodically to adjust their balance before continuing. They frequently scanned the alleyway below them and the rows of yards that they passed, checking for unseen dangers as the moans of tortured souls cried out from behind them. It seemed to be taking them forever as they tiptoed by the dark pits of the buildings to their right. Most of the yards were devoid of anything moving, but a few contained the wails of the dead from within their blackness. At these points, the pair involuntarily increased their pace, wanting to get away from the clutching hands that slapped and clawed at the walls beneath their feet.
A hundred metres further on at the far end of the wall, they paused and squatted low to the bricks that they were perched upon. There they remained, still and silent, watching the streets and buildings all around them. A road was running across their front, joining onto the main street just thirty metres to their right. The noise from that area was enough to chill their blood as thousands of the infected headed for the ruined store. The city was stirred up. The explosion had attracted every walking corpse for miles around, drawing them into the area. From all directions, ghostly figures lumbered out from the shadows, headed towards the throng of animated cadavers that had piled into the road where the smouldering store sat. The air buzzed with the sound of their conjoined voices as they moaned and howled with excitement.
“There it is,” said Tommy in a whisper.
To their front, roughly seventy metres away, a large building rose up from the ground like a huge, black monolith. As they squinted through the pale moonlight, more detail became apparent, and they were able to identify the entry and exit ramps leading into the multi-storey parking complex. The individual floors were visible, the pale grey concrete facades that separated the levels contrasting against the dark interior spaces above and below them. In the low light, and the circumstances, it looked terrifying.
“What about any defences?” Al asked from over his shoulder. “Can you see if there are any or if they’re still intact?”
“Not sure, mate,” Tommy replied with a shrug and a shake of his head. “But I can’t see any of these sacks of shit coming from there, so maybe the place is still secure. I suppose we’ll only know when we get there.”
With every caution, the pair descended from the wall, lowering their legs and hanging by their hands, allowing their bodies to settle before they dropped onto the floor of the alleyway. On the ground, they waited for a moment, tucked away into the shadow of the wall and double checking their surroundings and the street ahead.
Out to their front, a number of festering bodies ambled along the road, but there were none close by. Most of the dead in the area had already made their way into the adjacent street and only the stragglers remained, dragging their crumbling carcases along the pavements and tarmac, hoping to join in the frenzy taking place in the next street.
Al took the lead and crept forward from the shelter of the alley and out into the street. He walked in a crouch, keeping his rifle tucked in close to his hip. A silhouette to their left, just ten metres away, let out a series of grunts and gargles when it saw them. It began to stagger towards them, its legs wobbling and threatening to collapse as it raised its hands and began snapping away with its jaws.
Al stepped forward, and with the butt of his rifle raised, swung the weapon down. It impacted against the creature’s head, cracking the parched bone of its skull, and breaking the leathery flesh of its face. It let out a huff as its jaw fell free from the rest of its head. For a short moment, the body remained standing upright in the street with an almost surprised look on its heavily decomposed face. Then, the brain having been splintered by the fractured cranium, it dropped. The noise of its delicate bones as it hit the floor rattled through the street, sounding like a sack of hollow logs being dropped on to a hard surface.
The further they walked into the open, the more of the adjoining avenues they could see. Behind them, a mass so dense that they were packed into the street shoulder to shoulder, pulsed and throbbed with the pushing and shoving of the dead as they fought to get closer to the source of the disturbance. The pair of them gingerly crept silently toward the parking garage, headed away from the crowd at a snail’s pace, and doing all that they could in order not to attract any attention.
Ahead of them the parking building loomed, casting a long shadow out over the smaller buildings around it, and revealing nothing of what lurked within its black recesses. Soon they were within its shadow, still moving slowly as their eyes nervously scanned the area around them. Corpses were still appearing from other streets, following the noises created by their fellow infected, but the two living men remained unnoticed, for the time being.
A clatter rang out behind them as one of the meandering bodies collided with an overturned shopping cart. Al and Tommy froze, slowly pivoting around and facing in the direction of the threat. There, the emaciated body of a woman ambled through the wreckage of the street, snorting and growling as she dragged her feet along the weed covered tarmac. She did not look in their direction, but kept her gaze fixed on the ground beneath her feet. Al nodded to Tommy, and they continued forward.
They drew closer, scanning along the length of the huge parking building with the barrels of their weapons pointing in whatever direction they looked, ready to fire should the need arise. At the slipway, they began to see the corpses of dozens of bodies, decayed to the point where they were nothing more than bones covered with scraps of clothing, and being slowly overwhelmed and swallowed up by the tangles of weeds and moss that had begun to creep over them through the years.
At the ramp, they saw the barricades. Made from large trucks and vans, their tyres destroyed and rendering them completely immobilised and virtually impossible to move, the defences put into place seemed to be still intact. Three or four heavy trucks were pushed up to the gap of the entrance ramp, sitting flush with the walls, and with no gaps that could be exploited. From what Al and Tommy could see, nothing could get by them or force them out of the way.
Over at the exit ramp, they saw a similar set of defences. There was no indication that the blockades had been breached and beyond them, in the gloomy interior of the parking levels, there was no sign of the dead, only the hollow moan of the wind as it blew in through the open levels of the parking complex.
“Doesn’t look like they got in here,” Al surmised as he scanned the darkness, looking for the smallest hint of movement within the ground level parking bays.
All around the perimeter of the building, the remains of men, women, and children lay scattered and piled together where they had fallen, many years before. The two soldiers paused and looked up to the roof of the building, realising that these bodies had been the result of people firing down from the rooftop. For the living, with strength, agility, and intelligence, it would be easy to enter past the obstacles. However, for the hordes of dead, the parking complex with the heavy and immovable vehicles blocking the entrances was an impenetrable fortress that could not be breached.
They waited for a few minutes, watching into the blackness of the parking area, and ensuring that the ground level did not contain a thousand corpses lurking in the darkness and watching them with hungry eyes. The building was as silent as a tomb. Not even the squeak of rats came out from the darkness.
“Okay,” Tommy began in a hoarse whisper and moving towards the nearest barricade. “Time to get in and see what’s what.”
He wanted to get off the street. He felt exposed and open to attack, and he wanted to get into cover. He turned to grab the attention of his cohort, and saw that the Al’s eyes were fixed on something else. Something behind them. He turned, following the gaze of his partner, and saw a wall of black and grey, spilling out from the street where they had entered into the store. The dead were advancing towards them. At just a glance, it was clear to them that the mass of bodies knew the two living men were there, and they were making a beeline for them.
“Oh, fuck me,” he gasped, staring at the scene that panned out before them. “How the fuck did they find us?”
“In,” Al yelled with urgency, as he snapped out of his shocked silence. He began pushing against his friend, unable to take his eyes away from the horde. “Get in. Up, over the trucks. Fucking get in, Tom.”
They scrambled up and over the fused vehicles, their boots scuffing against the rusted frames as they grasped for a foothold. As they bounded over the hoods and roofs, the steel flexed beneath their weight and let out hollow metallic clunks that resonated loudly through the open space of the ground level. The noise that the men made no longer mattered, but getting over the barricades did. Dropping down onto the other side, the two soldiers turned and peered back through the twisted metal and broken windows of the trucks, staring in shock at the mass of dead that shambled towards them.
Shaking his head with his eyes alight with fear and confusion, Tommy struggled to form his words.
“How…” he stammered. “How the fuck did they know we were here?”
He glanced across to his friend who had a similar expression etched into his face. Both of them were shaking their heads, their mouths hanging open at the immensity of the crowd that staggered towards them.
“Do you think this is what happened to the others? Is there something here, or on us, that attracts them?”
“Fuck knows, mate.”
Al just shook his head slowly, unable to make sense of the situation, his eyes fixed on the sea of gaunt and decomposing figures.
“Come on.”
They turned and headed deeper into the gloomy parking level. The noise behind them began to build, and as their pursuers reached the barricades, their haunting moans filled the spacious base level of the complex, sounding like a howling wind tearing through the hollow building and searching hungrily for the living.
Sprinting through the rows of parked and ruined cars, the two men reached a door set into a wall in the centre of the ground level parking area. The crescendo of the dead howls and the beating of fists against the barricades behind them was growing intensely. It was enough to make them feel nauseous, knowing that the infected were in pursuit and in vast numbers. A quick check revealed nothing in the immediate area, but the cold darkness on the other side of the door made them hesitate.
Al led them inside, forcing himself to confront the unknown with the barrel of his rifle pointed into the blackness. Tommy followed, sealing the door behind him, and feeling a shudder run along the length of his spine. Once inside, the voices of the dead sounded more distant and less of an immediate threat, but neither of the men were left in any doubt that they were surrounded and with no immediate chance of escape. The building was completely enveloped by a sea of rotting bodies.
A set of stairs appeared from within the blanket of darkness. The cold, hard steps, damp from the moisture in the air and illuminated by their torches, led up towards the next level. With no other choice they began to ascend, slowly moving higher and aiming their rifles in front of them as their footsteps echoed through the dank stairwell. They remained tense and alert, expecting a gnashing face to lunge at them from any of the countless dark corners, and at any moment.