Hamsikker: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel (20 page)

Rose pushed open the door. The room was dark, and just like theirs, it had an old wooden desk pushed up beside a wall. The blinds were drawn open, and Rose could clearly see Gabe and Mara sleeping in the middle of the room. Rose could hear them softly breathing.

“Too easy,” she whispered as she crept over to them, and knelt down beside Gabe. His gun was beneath his pillow, the butt just sticking out. Wise man, thought Rose. She could try to slip it out from under him, but he might wake and grab it first. It was too risky.

She raised both knives in the air, keeping one of them just inches from his neck, and the other above his chest.

“Stick, or twist?” Rose said, weighing up her options. She would need to be quick. Once she’d stuck Gabe, she would have to move swiftly over to Mara. She didn’t want to get drawn into a fight. It would be best to get it over with quickly.

Gabe rolled over, his ample belly pulling the blankets with him, exposing his pale skin.

Rose smiled. “Stick.”

“Stop!” yelled Javier.

He appeared in the doorway and Rose looked up in shock. What was he doing here? She looked down at Gabe, who was staring up at her, his eyes open wide in disbelief, unsure if he was still dreaming.

“My thoughts exactly, you bitch,” said Mara. She was brandishing a gun which had been hidden beneath her pillow, and was now pointing it straight at Rose.

“Mara, put that down,” said Javier. He stayed in the doorway, unsure whether to approach or not. He couldn’t get to Mara without her getting off at least one shot.

“Rose, you put that fucking knife down,
now
,” demanded Mara.

Rose looked at Javier. Her shock had quickly gone, and now she was angry; angry that Javier had ruined her plan, angry that Mara had a gun pointed at her, and angry with herself for getting caught. She had forgotten Mara had a gun too. “Javier, help me. Take one of these knives and slit Mara’s throat.”

Mara pointed the gun at Javier. “Don’t you move, mister.”

“Rose, stop this. Come on over to me,” said Javier, his voice wavering. He knew Rose wouldn’t back down and he doubted Mara would either. There was a fierce determination about her, and her hands were steady as she held the gun.

Rose shook her head. “No. We have to do this, honey. This place is
ours
. We’re taking it.
I’m
taking it.”

Mara whirled her gun back to Rose, cocking the trigger as she did so. From less than four feet away there was no way she would miss. Javier could tell Rose wasn’t going to drop it. He felt weak at the knees, and his head was sore, but his senses were sharp, and he knew this was going to end badly. Nobody would back down, and he wasn’t about to let Rose take a bullet needlessly.

“Last chance,” said Mara.

Rose shook her head again. A tear ran down her face. “Fuck you. Gabe’s mine now.”

“No!” Javier heard the word ringing in his ears, but he didn’t know if he had said it, or Mara. Time was up. He ran into the room as Rose plunged a knife downward, and Mara fired.

Outside the clubhouse, if there had been anyone there, they would’ve heard plenty of screaming and shouting, and seen the blinds to the room suddenly splattered with fresh blood. There were muffled thuds as a fight broke out, and eventually, silence.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Jeez, that hurts,” said Mrs Danick rubbing her ankle.

“Fix it up as best you can,” said Erik, “we have to get moving.” The fields were filling with the dead. From all directions they came, trudging through the mud, stumbling through ditches, and blindly walking across roads ignoring any obstacles in their path.

“What happened?” asked Jonas as he caught up with them. He ignored Dakota who had gone to stand by Pippa. Mrs Danick was sitting on the road, her ankle being strapped up by Terry.

“I just tripped,” said Mrs Danick. “Wasn’t looking where I was going. Stupid. I should’ve just shot it.”

“Settle down. You’re fine,” said Terry. “It could’ve been a lot worse.”

“
He
came off second best,” said Erik pointing to a corpse a few feet away. “Jumped out of the undergrowth. Well, I say jumped, more like crawled. See, his legs are gone, probably gnawed off by dogs, or rats, or something. Anyway, caused us a bit of a shock. Mrs Danick tripped, and Peter finished him off.”

Jonas looked at Peter. He held Erik’s baseball bat in his hands, sticky with blood. Freya stood by his side, scuffing her shoes on the road. Peter didn’t look very proud, or even pleased he had helped. He just looked tired.

“All done,” said Terry. He helped Mrs Danick up to her feet.

“Can you walk?” asked Erik.

Mrs Danick put some weight on her ankle and winced. “I’m not running a marathon anytime soon, but yeah, I can walk.”

“Right, let’s get going then,” said Erik taking the bat from his son. “I’m sure we’re almost there.”

“I hope so,” said Quinn. “They’re getting closer.”

“You want me to do anything?” asked Jonas.

Erik passed the aluminium bat to Jonas. “Just watch our backs.”

As they all trooped off, searching for the entrance to the golf course, Jonas watched Dakota. She was chatting to Pippa, as if nothing had happened. There was no way she could be serious about finishing with him. They had been married so long that it was as if she was part of him, and he was sure she felt the same. She was just confused, and upset about what Tyler had said. He couldn’t blame her for that, but it wasn’t fair to put it all on him. Jonas knew he was going to have to let her deal with it the only way she could. She would keep running it over in her mind, thinking it through, and then she would see sense, and that he’d had no choice.

A groan from his right brought his attention to the field. A zombie was no more than fifteen feet away, and as it neared Jonas, it seemed to pick up speed, as if it found more energy from being so close to its prey. Jonas waited for it to get closer, until it was close enough to smell, and then he swung the axe at its head. The zombie fell to the ground, and Jonas bashed its head in, smearing its brains all over the road. When he was done, he jogged to catch up with the others, constantly looking out for others that got too close. Killing was getting easier, as if it was just another chore to do that had replaced taking out the garbage, or mowing the lawn. It worried him that it was becoming so easy to smash another person’s head in, no matter that they were already dead. If it became too easy he would let his guard down, and then accidents happened. If Dakota wanted to give him the silent treatment, if she wanted to beat him up for a while, he would take it without complaint. He was still going to watch out for her, and she couldn’t stop him from loving her.

“This it?” Jonas heard Quinn ask, as the road widened, and a side-road led up to a larger section of the fence.

“Guess so,” said Erik.

There was a large billboard on the side of the road with a picture of a woman in a bikini drinking a new brand of soda. Somebody had painted over the soda’s name, and in thick, black paint, it read ‘Turn back - dead inside.’

Quinn rubbed her face, and then ran her hands through her short, black hair. “Not the friendliest welcome sign I’ve seen,” she said.

“Think they sell those at Walmart?” asked Mrs Danick.

“I think it’s a ruse,” said Erik. “I think someone painted that to keep people away. People like us.”

“Or it could be true,” said Dakota. “What if there’s nothing in there but more zombies?”

“Only one way to find out,” said Erik. “Problem now is figuring out how to get in.”

Jonas noticed the solid grey fence they had been walking around had ended by the main entrance, and been replaced by an ornate steel grill. It was even higher than the fencing, at least fifteen feet high, and surveillance cameras were perched atop the structure. Erik was pushing and pulling on the gate, but it was securely locked, and brute force was not going to be enough to open them.

“You think those work?” asked Jonas pointing at the cameras. “Maybe if they see us, see that we’re alive, they’ll open up.”

Erik chewed on a piece of licorice whilst he looked up at the cameras. “No. There’s no power on them. I think they’re dead. If they do still have power inside, they’re probably saving it for the necessities: hot water and cooking, that kind of thing.”

“This is great,” said Terry. “All this way, and we can’t get in?” Terry began pacing up and down in front of the gates. “What about our guns? Can’t we just shoot our way in? Blast a hole in the fence?”

“We could probably punch a hole in the metal big enough to get through yes, but that would ultimately defeat the point of getting in. Not only would we use up all our ammo getting in, but the noise would draw every dead fucker for miles around, and we’d leave a nice big hole for them to follow us through. No, shooting our way in is not an option,” said Erik.

“Well what then?” Terry shouted. “We lost Randall today, Tyler too, and now it seems like you’re saying we’re fucked. Look, we’re getting inside no matter what, whether we go over or through, we
are
getting in there.”

“I just don’t see how,” muttered Quinn. “If we rule out blasting our way in, there’s no way of climbing over it, even if we could navigate over the barbed wire. Damn it.”

“You’re right,” said Jonas. “We can’t blast a hole in the fence, and we can’t climb over it.”

“So tell me something I don’t already know,” said Quinn. She looked at Jonas expectantly, waiting for him to follow up his statement with an explanation.

“So we go under it,” said Jonas.

“Are you crazy? Do you know how long it would take us to dig under that fence?” asked Terry. “Need I remind you that we have a hundred zombies behind us, and no way of digging a tunnel in the next five minutes, except with our bare hands?”

“No, I think I know what he means,” said Mrs Danick. “I should’ve said, but there was a ditch just back there where I fell. It’s some sort of outlet pipe I think.”

“Exactly,” said Jonas. “Probably carries storm water away from the golf course. It came out right beneath the fence. We can crawl through it. I’d bet anything we’ll come up on the other side.”

“Probably not smelling of roses though,” said Quinn.

“Let’s check it out,” said Erik. “I don’t like the look of those fields. Pretty soon we’re gonna have a lot more to worry about than how to get over a fence.”

As they hurried back to the outlet pipe, Jonas looked around at the dead roaming the fields. Did they think anything at all? Did those people know who they were, or remember anything of their humanity? Were they just empty shells, parasites, or leeches looking to feed? They certainly didn’t worry about anything, or about others. There was a simplicity about their existence, as if they were the same as wild animals, living only to live, and not having the worries of humans.

“Gold,” said Erik.

He was crouching down, examining the outlet pipe that ran into the ditch close to where Mrs Danick had fallen. The ditch was dry, and the pipe seemed to run under the fence. It went deep though, and got dark very quickly. As Jonas predicted, it was a storm-drain, used for overflowing water when the rain storms came. The entrance was easily large enough for someone to fit in.

“We’ll have to go single file and crawl through,” said Erik. “It’s going to be dark and smelly in there, so try to relax. Hold onto the person in front of you. With any luck, we’ll be up on the other side in no time. I’ll go in first, Quinn you follow. I want everyone else in the middle. Hamsikker, you happy to bring up the rear?”

Jonas agreed. He knew it was risky being the last through, in case the dead caught up with them, but if anyone else had volunteered for the job, he would’ve shot them down anyway. Erik was taking a risk by going first, and he had a family to look out for. Jonas wasn’t convinced he had anything to look out for, but he had to trust that Dakota would come round.

“I guess now’s not the time to tell you I’m claustrophobic,” said Terry.

“You’re right,” said Erik, “it’s not.”

Jonas watched as Erik hugged Pippa and Peter, and told Freya that Daddy was going to go into the pipe, and that everyone was right behind him, and that everything would be okay. The girl stayed silent, her body pressed close up against Peter, and one hand clutching the keychain Jonas had given her.

One by one, they got onto their knees, pushed aside the tall grass and weeds, and climbed inside the drain. Jonas watched as Erik disappeared, followed by Quinn, Pippa, Dakota, Peter, Freya, and Mrs Danick. Before he entered the pipe behind Terry, Jonas checked the road and the fields. The zombies were close, worryingly so, but there was enough distance that he wasn’t too concerned. They might find the drain, but he doubted they would have the intelligence to figure out how to crawl through. As he got onto his knees, and put his hands inside the concrete tunnel, he pulled the weeds back in front of the entrance, trying to hide it from view.

The tunnel was cold, and the walls were slimy. The sun hadn’t penetrated inside more than a few feet, and the further Jonas went, the more he disliked it. His legs soon became wet, and it was clear they were crawling through months of built-up rubbish, leaves and standing water that had turned to sludge. There were broken branches, and more bugs than he cared for. Small creatures scurried across his hands, flies bit him, and more than once, he had to brush invisible monsters from his face as the darkness swallowed him up. To his credit, Terry never said a word, and Jonas kept knocking into the soles of his boots. There was the occasional shriek from up ahead as someone put a hand on something that moved, but the group stayed quiet. In the blackness, Jonas’s mind imagined a host of creatures down there in the drain with him, as he was sure the others did too. At one point, he heard something moving around behind him, and he was worried a zombie had found its way in. He looked around, which was pointless as he couldn’t see anything, and he batted an arm around, finding nothing but air. There was a squeaking sound, and then the noise stopped. They had probably disturbed a rat, and he tried to stop his mind from conjuring up images of giant rats with razor sharp teeth nipping at his heels.

After a few minutes, the darkness turned to grey, and he could make out the outline of Terry’s body. A minute later, and the grey turned to light. Suddenly, Terry stopped moving, and Jonas hit his legs. When Terry didn’t move, Jonas whispered to him.

“What’s happening?”

“I can’t tell,” said Terry. “I think we’ve reached the end. Hold on, I can hear them talking.”

Jonas waited, trying to listen to the faint voices from up ahead, but they echoed around mixing with each other, making it impossible to tell what was being said.

“There’s a grill,” said Terry. “Erik’s trying to open it.”

Jonas hadn’t thought about the other end. He had assumed it would be open, but of course, it was likely to have a grill over it. If Erik couldn’t get it off, they were going to have to back-track. With the time they had spent in the tunnel, if they went back now they would come out onto a road full of zombies. They couldn’t stay put though. Jonas wondered if he had led them all down a dead-end. It seemed like everything he did at the moment turned to crap. He wanted to get out of the tunnel so badly. The air was damp, and the smell was foul.

“You okay, Terry?” asked Jonas.

“Sure. Just tell me that’s you holding onto my ankle, right, Hamsikker?”

Jonas realised he had been gripping Terry’s right ankle, and let go. “Uh, sorry, kind of forgot about that. I’m sure we’ll be out of here in…”

There was a huge clattering sound that rung in his ears, and then they suddenly started moving again. It appeared that Erik had gotten the grill off, and Jonas breathed a sigh of relief. His friend had never let him down, and once again, he had pulled through. He felt bad about the fight at the farmhouse, and knew he had to make amends. Erik should lead the group from now on. Being a cop, he had the training and knowledge to deal with most situations, and he could handle himself. Jonas wanted Erik to take over on his own. A small part of him knew he was being selfish, that he was using Erik as an excuse to shy away from having to make the hard decisions, but he had been faced with so many lately that he just couldn’t do it anymore. It had cost people their lives, and possibly cost him his marriage.

Terry’s legs shot up into the air, and Jonas realised they had reached the end of the tunnel. He climbed up out of the drain, and Erik’s thick arms grabbed him, helping him up. Warm sunlight dazzled his eyes, and he rolled onto soft grass, his eyes watering at the sudden light that blurred his vision.