From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (84 page)

Day 104. Friendly double taps.

I had just packed as many bottles as I could stuff in my second backpack and was wondering how I would lug up two backpacks. I had done forced marches in the hills carrying much higher weights, but I was now more than a dozen years older than when I had first started playing soldier and, of course, I was down one leg. It was then past four in the morning and I wanted to be back up in the relative safety of the bungalow on the hill before the sun came up. I had just come out of the door when I came face to face with him.

My mask, which I had hoped would protect me against germs, worked against me, since I didn’t catch his stench. I saw that he was one ugly bastard as I shone my flashlight on him. His hair had come off in clumps and blood and pus was oozing out from sores and wounds all over his body.

He had that look. The same look I had seen in the first days when I fought to get to the bungalow. Eyes narrowed in hatred. No, hatred would be a wrong choice of word. That connotes the ability to feel some human emotion. The look They have in their eyes is more animal than human. Dilated pupils, narrowed eyelids and the sudden ‘pop’ in their eyes. Not a flash of recognition but more like the look of anticipation that an animal might have on seeing prey.

Of course, all that analysis comes with hindsight. At that time, I just dropped a backpack, took my pistol from my belt and double-tapped him. One shot to the mid-section and one to the chest. In case you’re wondering why I didn’t aim for the head as they show in zombie movies, ignore the movies.

Your chance of scoring a head shot in near darkness with a moving target is far lower than the movies would have you believe. Plus, as I’ve said, They go down without necessarily needing a head shot.

He went down and I didn’t wait to see what happened next but made a run for it. Another one came out of a corner from my left and not having time to shoot or to put down my backpacks, I just shouldered him out of the way and kept moving. I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder and I shouted in pain.

Whatever this infection does to people, it seems to make them bloody strong. I swung one backpack at his head and made good contact, but he didn’t seem to flinch. I had already learned that They have very different pain thresholds compared to normal humans, most clearly demonstrated when I kicked one of Them in the nuts in the early days only to see him not even slow down. So I dropped a backpack again and did the whole double-tap routine once more. Then I ran as fast as my one good leg would take me, praying all the time that I would not meet any more of Them.

Behind me, I could hear growls and roars as They emerged from the darkness, attracted by the commotion my shooting had caused. I didn’t look back once as I moved up the hill, trying to hold onto both backpacks and trying to block out the searing pain in my thigh from all the pressure I was putting on my leg.

I arrived at the bungalow at close to six, exhausted and barely able to stand.

What is clear is that my little sortie did manage to get their attention. All day today, They have been milling about below the hill and one or two of them screamed in the direction of the bungalow. If they were issuing challenges or abuses and hoping I’d come down, they were sadly mistaken. In this case, discretion is most certainly the better part of valor.

Day 105. Moreko Manchi.

If you’ve noticed, so far in this journal I have just referred to the bloody monsters I’ve run into as ‘Them’. When I began, I thought of saying ‘zombie’ and perhaps I have slipped into using that familiar term once or twice, but calling them zombies would be wrong. It would simply be using a term that we are familiar with from our own popular culture instead of seeing them for what They are. I should know – the irony in all this is that my one novel, the one that I never managed to get published, was a novel about zombies overrunning a border area and a beleaguered military unit that has to hold them off. I thought it was a cool story, and with my Army background, I thought the action was realistic. Of course, no publisher agreed with me. One of them at least had the decency to send not a standard rejection slip but a detailed personal letter telling me that the zombie genre was a bit crowded and I had to stand out somehow. I wish I could meet those editors now and tell them all I know about zombies.

We think of zombies as some sort of supernatural, undead monsters. The creatures I see all around me are not quite that. Sure, they are bloody tough to kill, and they tear into any human they see, but as I’ve said, they can be killed. It seems like they’re infected with something that makes them stronger and aggressive and makes them seem to feel no pain or fear. Part of me feels that if it is some sort of infection, there must be a cure. Of course, that assumes that there are any scientists left anywhere to cook up a cure.

I’m back again in the evening, with arms sore from chopping wood, but with something important to share. If you’re wondering why I was chopping wood, it’s simple. It’s mid-October and it’s already pretty chilly. In two months’ time, the temperature will go below zero, and I don’t know if the generators will keep the heaters going. I am sorted for food and water now for a week but the fuel for the generator will run out soon. I have no way of knowing how long I have, but I certainly cannot lug up drums of fuel up here.

So I was out chopping wood from the trees in the large garden behind the bungalow and using it to build small fires in the fireplace to give me both heat and light at night so that I can conserve the generator for when winter comes. On one of the trees, someone had etched in Nepali.

Moreko Manchi.

That means dead people in Nepali. It must have been left there by one of the Nepali minders who accompanied my boss’ girlfriend before they flew out in his helicopter. So, now my undead friends in the valley below have a name and now I shall sit by my fire, sip on some rum and watch the Moreko come out at night.

Day 106. King of the Hill.

I woke up this morning to the sounds of the friendly neighborhood Moreko kicking up a ruckus. When I went outside to take a look, I was shocked by what I saw. More than half a dozen of them were trying to climb up the hill to get to the bungalow, while a large mob was screeching and screaming below.

They may be terrifying, they may be hard to kill, but their fine motor skills are about as developed as those of a three-year-old with serious learning deficiency issues. Which was why the first of them to make the attempt lost his footing and went rolling down the hill, crashing into another one behind him. It was amusing at first to watch but three realizations hit me in quick succession.

First, they must have tried to climb the hill before, perhaps when I was lying blissfully drunk inside the bungalow. It was my sheer good fortune that they failed.

Second, they did have enough intelligence left to learn from their past failure – and that was perhaps why they had left me alone so far. By the same token, my nighttime raid had angered them, and they possessed enough co-ordination and communication to organize this attempt. I used to hope that they didn’t hold any grudges for all their friends that I had wasted, but now I wasn’t so sure any more.

Finally, they were not coming up the hill to welcome me to the neighborhood and to invite me over for tea. If they made it up, I was going to be mincemeat.

I ran inside to get the rifle and took position at a corner of the garden where I had a clear view of the Moreko climbers. One of them was now more than halfway up, laboring through the winding path that led up the hill, and had left his fellow climbers well behind. His slow but sure progress towards becoming the resident Moreko mountaineering champion was brought to an abrupt halt as a bullet took him in the stomach. He was more than two hundred meters away, and without a scope, I honestly counted a direct hit on the first shot as a stroke of luck, but as the Moreko climber tottered and fell off the edge of the path to be splattered on the rocks more than two hundred feet below, I could see the climbers following him hesitate.

I took aim and fired at the next one, sending dust rising up around his feet, but my third shot struck home, bringing him down with a shot to the neck. I had more than enough ammunition and if they insisted on climbing, I would just keep picking them off. I may not be good at too many things, and I positively suck when it comes to dealing with people, but one thing I do know how to do is to shoot. Plus, with the slow progress the Moreko were making up the hill, I had plenty of time to aim and to make sure my shots counted.

It took fifteen minutes, ten shots and four kills for them to give up and retreat down the hill. If the Moreko are indeed capable of learning, then I hope they learnt that at least for now, I am the king of this hill.

I’ve just poured myself a glass of rum to celebrate and my hand is shaking as I pick it up. Being good with a rifle and having won this round doesn’t mean that my nerves aren’t shot to hell.

Day 108. Under siege

I skipped yesterday because I felt there was nothing really to report. I’ve been spending the last couple of days chopping wood and also preparing my defenses. Yes, the hill is a great barrier but if the Moreko were to get up, the bungalow is a bad place to be holed up in. There are too many entrances and a large garden with trees and bushes that offer way too many hiding places. The only saving grace is that there is only one way up, a narrow path where at best three men can walk side by side. At first I had thought it a peculiar design choice, but my former employer had his reasons. He wanted his privacy and he never had to walk down – he only flew in a few times a year in his helicopter.

So I’ve been focusing on chopping down trees in the area leading up to the pathway, which both helps me build my stock of firewood and gives me a clearer line of sight to the approach. It’s funny how some training and instincts kick in without you really thinking about it. I never did tell you what exactly I did in the Army. I joined in the Infantry, in the Gurkha regiment, and after a couple of years was seconded to the Special Frontier Force. This was set up way back in the 60s to operate behind enemy lines in Tibet in case of another war with China. So a large part of my training was focused on escape and evasion, and that was kicking in now on overdrive. I jury-rigged some simple booby traps along the pathway. Nothing fancy of course given the limited material I have with me, but things that would slow any attacker down. Shallow holes with sharpened stakes that were covered with leaves, for example.

As I was laying my traps, I went down nearly halfway down the hill, and I saw a few Moreko looking up at me. I wondered if they understood what I was doing, but at any rate, none of them made any move towards me. By early afternoon I was satisfied that if any Moreko got anywhere near the top of the hill, I would get sufficient warning and have enough time to retreat to the room where I would make my last stand. It was a small attic on the second floor of the bungalow, with a hatch on the roof that swung down to provide a stepladder to climb up. If the Moreko did manage to get to the bungalow, my plan was to take my weapons and hide there, hoping that they would not have enough sense to find the attic.

I spent the rest of the evening moving some of my stocks of food and water to the attic – enough to last a few days at least – and then cleaned the rifle. It had served me well enough in the last battle, but it was an old piece and I disassembled and oiled it. The last thing I needed was for it to jam or misfire in the next battle. Oh yes, by then I was certain that there would be a next battle.

By sunset, the damn Moreko were back, screaming their lungs out at the bottom of the hill. The city was totally dark and it was hard if not impossible to make out their numbers, but it sounded like hundreds of them were gathered there. I had made a few torches – simple enough but effective contraptions of cloth tied around thick branches, and soaked in fuel – and had placed them along the pathway till about the halfway point up the hill. I had lit them before retreating to the bungalow and now watched anxiously for any sign of the Moreko as I ate my dinner of nuts and raisins. Several times I thought I saw shadows moving but they all turned out to be false alarms. By one in the morning I was so sleepy I had begun to nod off despite my best attempts and finally I gave in and slept.

I was awakened by an inhuman shriek and I literally jumped to the window, binoculars raised to my eyes. One Moreko had made it more than halfway up the hill and had got entangled in one of my traps. His right leg was bent at an awkward angle where it had slipped into the hole filled with sharpened stakes, and he was screaming out his rage as he stood there, his leg impaled on my trap. I screamed at him to shut up and put him down with a bullet to the head. Proud of my marksmanship, I hurled a few more abuses at the Moreko out there and waited. While no others came up the hill that night, they kept up their howling and I was unable to sleep for a single minute.

As the Sun rose and I looked down with bleary eyes, I saw a large crowd of Moreko gathered at the foot of the hill, staring up towards the bungalow. It was then that I realized that while my traps and defensive measures gave me some sense of security, my current situation meant that I was effectively a prisoner of the Moreko.

Day 110. Stir Crazy.

I am now actively rationing my food and water, since the bloody Moreko don’t seem to be budging. They don’t need food, water or toilet breaks and their constant presence means that I am not likely to get new supplies from town anytime soon.

I have spent the last two days just staring at the filthy bastards, hoping they go away, but they neither try and climb the hill nor do they disperse. There must be a hundred of them now and they are a filthy, ugly bunch. Looking through my binoculars reveals them to be a motley crew – men, women, children, young and old, all united in this bloodthirsty madness by whatever virus has afflicted them. All of them have the sores and boils that seem to be characteristic of the Moreko and most display horrid wounds they must have suffered when they were infected.

To call them a group or band is perhaps a misnomer. They do not seem to be organized and there is no discernible leader. It’s more like a pack of wild animals drawn to the smell of a kill. Every once in a while, some of them will turn on each other – frenzied, bloody affairs that end with one of them being torn apart. Once one of them falls, the others join in and bite and chew on the fallen Moreko. Quite a sickening sight, and I think I am going stir crazy just sitting here, waiting for them to go away, and impotent to do anything about it.

Part of me wants these fuckers to just come up the hill so I can get it over with. The small part of me that is still sane tells the other part to shut the fuck up.