Dead Stop (6 page)

‘Give me the gun, then,’ I said. ‘I’ll shoot it.’

We were backing away towards the cabin now, the zombie lurching towards us.

‘No fucking way,’ said Mike, clenching his shotgun tighter. ‘This gun is licensed. You shoot a guy, it’s me in trouble.’

‘What sort of poacher has a licensed gun?’ I snapped, increasingly infuriated by this conversation.

‘I only poach at the weekends,’ Mike shouted. ‘The rest of the time I sell real estate.’

That was it for me. Mike’s shouting might draw more zombies, and even if we retreated inside the cabin, that wooden door didn’t look capable of standing up to a prolonged assault.

We needed to kill this thing, now. I’d evaded the zombies so far, but going into the lab I knew that wouldn’t last forever. I needed to face them, and this might as well be my first try, just one on its own, away from the rest of them.

‘Fuck it,’ I said and lurched over to the cabin, where my hockey stick was leaning against the wall. I grabbed the handle with one hand and lifted it, holding the handle further up with my other hand so I could put my whole upper bodyweight into any swing.

Not that I had much upper bodyweight, but if I couldn’t deal with one of these things now, I’d be fucked when I encountered them as a group.

I turned around to see the zombie in the lab scrubs lunging towards Mike, who was still stumbling back towards the cabin, mumbling some kind of placating words. I don’t know what kind of denial he was in about what that thing had just done to his friend, but he was about to join him.

I ran at the zombie, swinging the hockey stick towards its head with as much force as I could manage.

When the stick made contact, pain lanced down my arms and jolted through my body. Slamming that hockey stick into the zombie was like hitting a brick wall, and the blow sent
me
reeling backwards.

I steadied myself and turned to see the zombie staggering. There was a blackened, bloody gash down its forehead and nose. I hoped that the old movie cliché of destroying the brain would work here—not many things can survive without a brain, except maybe chickens, and I was fairly sure this thing wasn’t much like a chicken—because this was taking a hell of a lot of effort.

I came in for another swing, this time bringing the stick down on the top of its head. There was a big cracking sound, a horrible crunch to match the one that shuddered through my limbs as the stick made contact.

I don’t know whether I had broken its neck or caved in part of its skull, but the zombie went down, knees crumpling beneath it, keeling over onto the grass.

Whatever I’d done, it seemed to have killed it. This was not like someone being knocked out or passing out, no flailing of limbs or twitching—it was, to drag out another cliché, like a puppet with its strings cut. It had been moving, and now its every cell and limb was dead weight.

I leaned over it, just in case, hockey stick raised for another blow. Dead eyes stared at nothing. The body didn’t move a bit. Looking closer—though not too close—I could see a nasty bloody mess in the top of the zombie’s skull, seeping through its hair.

I’d killed it. And I felt like shit.

Not emotionally—I had a long-held belief that the dead should stay dead, and was too hopped on my own adrenaline for emotional introspection—but physically. My arms hung limply at my side, and I felt like I’d come very close to dislocating my shoulder.

No fucking way could I do that again in a hurry.

As for dealing with more than one of those things with a hockey stick?

No chance. I’d be swarmed.

I needed Mike’s gun. Or someone’s gun, anyway.

‘Shit, Steve. Shit, shit, shit,’ Mike was saying, leaning over his friend. From here, I couldn’t see what state Steve was in, but it was obvious from Mike’s burbling that there wasn’t any hope.

‘We need to get inside,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing we can do for him.’

I tried not to sound elated—the poor bloke’s mate had just died, after all—but I was rushing, I couldn’t help myself. As painful and hard to repeat as it had been, I had taken on the undead and killed it, and while it had been physically agonising, the sense of relief and achievement was intoxicating.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Melissa, and I turned to her in shock and laughed. In all the chaos, I’d forgotten she was even there.

She looked concerned, standing translucent against the night. In that moment I wanted to kiss her, as if that was even possible or made sense or wouldn’t just alarm her even more.

Shit, this time I really was losing it, wasn’t I? After years of creeping around ghosts, I’d found something undead I could unleash my anger on and it was making me giddy.

I needed to get inside, calm down and get those guns.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.

She nodded slowly, uncertain.

‘I don’t give a shit if you’re fine,’ said Mike. ‘Steve is dead and you just killed that man.’

‘I know and I’m sorry,’ I said in a stage whisper. ‘But that wasn’t a man, it was a zombie, and we really need to get inside before more of those things come.’

Grabbing Mike’s sleeve, hoping that he wouldn’t turn the shotgun on me—and, in my deluded, blood-rushing post-kill state, kind of hoping he would because
fight!
—I tugged at him in the direction of the cabin.

He swore under his breath and, leaving his dead friend behind, staggered after me.

I bolted the door once we were both inside. I knew it probably wouldn’t do much good if we got swarmed, but it made me feel better, and would probably do the same for Mike too.

Although there was a perfectly good seat a short distance away, Mike swung around and slumped against a wall, the thin wooden side of the cabin creaking ominously as he leant against it. This place really wasn’t going to serve as much of a fortress.

When he looked up at me he had tears in his eyes, and anger and grief seemed to be pulling his face in different directions.

‘What the fuck is going on out there?’ he asked, voice cracked with emotion.

‘There’s been a breakout at the lab, just like I said. It just wasn’t dogs.’ I realised I wasn’t a hundred percent sure of that, and turned to Melissa. ‘There aren’t any dogs, are there?’

‘No dogs,’ she said, then belatedly added: ‘As far as I know.’

‘We—I—don’t think there are any dogs out there,’ I said. ‘Just humans that ended up like
that
.’

‘Zombies,’ said Mike.

‘Zombies,’ I repeated, exchanging a look with Melissa.

Mike followed my eyeline to where Melissa was, which from his perspective was an empty part of the cabin.

‘Is there another bug in here?’ he asked. ‘Or are you just crazy?’

No way was I getting into the ghost thing. He might be ready to believe anything now, but I wasn’t not sure his nerves would take it.

‘Something like the latter,’ I said. ‘But that thing that killed your friend, that was real, and there are more of them out there. That’s all you need to know.’

Mike looked at me as if what I just said was crazier than talking to the wall.

‘There’s plenty more I need to know, you cocky English bastard,’ he spat. ‘Why would anyone turn people into those things? How did they get out? And what the hell are you doing out here?’

I sighed—this conversation was going to be difficult—but I tried to not be too patronising and British about it. I couldn’t fault him; those were good questions.

‘The first two I can’t help you with,’ I said. ‘As for me, I’m trying to get back to the lab. A... source has told me there’s a way out if I can get there.’

‘Don’t you have a car?’

‘It’s broken down,’ I said, then something occurred to me. ‘Do you have a car?’

The rush from killing that one zombie was beginning to fade, and the reality of how it had played out—that it was very hard work, and it was probably luck that had won the fight for me—was beginning to sink in. If there was an easier way out, I should take it.

I felt a twinge of guilt about Melissa, her zombified corpse, and the deal I’d made with her. But then I’ve never been fussed about honour and all that crap, and my desire for survival was beginning to overwhelm my sense of decency.

‘You can’t just leave me here—’ Melissa started, but I wasn’t listening.

‘Steve’s truck is parked to the west, on a side road,’ said Mike. ‘We trekked the rest of the way.’

‘How far?’ I asked. Melissa was still protesting, but I screened her out.

‘About five miles,’ he said. ‘It’s through some heavy woods. We always took our time, stayed in the cabin overnight.’

Shit. That was too far, even armed and with torches.

‘That’s too far,’ Melissa was starting to say.

‘Yeah, I know,’ I said, irritated.

‘About the truck?’ said Mike. ‘Then why did you ask?’

‘Sorry, that’s not what I meant to say... I think it’s too far away. We’re better off heading to the lab.’

‘You want to head to the centre of this shitstorm,’ Mike said slowly, as if talking to an idiot. ‘So you can get out of it?’

‘That’s about it. That’s not quite all, though.’

I could use his help, I knew that. Even with a gun, I’d be better off accompanied by someone who could actually fire one of the damn things.

So I told him about the money. I squished the details—I didn’t mention Melissa’s ghost, and I said that I needed to destroy something there, without specifying that the ‘something’ involved was a specific zombie. But I gave him the basics. At this stage I’d settle for half a fortune and getting out alive.

Melissa just seemed pleased we were back onto her plan.

‘Are you in?’ I asked Mike.

‘Fuck,’ he said, eyes narrowed. ‘Do you think this money is stolen from the company?’

I’d been thinking about that one a bit, at the back of my mind. About Melissa’s knowledge of the site, why she would have an escape route planned in advance and why she had a secret account with so much money in it. I was beginning to suspect that, if she was an accountant at all, she was an accountant who had been taking a slice for herself.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think it probably is stolen.’

Melissa straightened, staring straight at me, but said nothing.

‘In that case, I’m in,’ Mike said. ‘Those bastards had the banks foreclose on all our property around here. It’s why Steve and I have been sneaking in—these used to be our woods to hunt, damned if we’d let the company stop us. But if there’s a bigger way to hurt them, and get some money back, then I’m all for it.’

I was about to open my mouth, but he waved me silent.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a gun.’

As Mike opened the gun cabinet and started to pile kit onto the table, I made my own quick assessment. I’d managed to kill one of those things with a glorified stick, and now I had both a new, living, ally and some heavier weaponry. Things were looking up.

In spite of my own miserable nature, I was beginning to entertain the possibility that this might actually work.

CHAPTER FIVE

M
Y OPTIMISM EVAPORATED
the moment we caught sight of the lab complex.

We approached it from over a slight rise near the farm, and I found myself looking down on a cluster of drab, artificially-lit buildings set in a shallow valley. It could pass for any university science park or business estate at night, tarmac and prefabricated concrete punctuated by half-hearted patches of shrubbery.

From up on the hill I could hear the low hum of generators and aircon, the ominous buzz that breaks the countryside silence when the noise of daytime activity has stopped overnight. Anyone who’s walked around the outskirts of a town at night will know it.

There were other noises overlapping with that hum. The low moan of the figures I could see shambling between the buildings, following the well-lit paths as they probably had done in life.

Then a harsher noise still: gunshots, echoing across the valley. I couldn’t tell where they were coming from, but somewhere to our left I could just see that the road I’d crossed earlier curled around to meet the fence that surrounded the site, the entrance somewhere out of our sight. Was someone fighting their way out?