The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 4) (45 page)

“Probably. Safety in numbers and all that, I’d imagine.”

For a while both of them stared out of the window in silence as the bus slowly travelled through the seemingly unending curve in the road. They watched the majestic movements of the herd, feeling their own bodies begin to warm at the sight of something that had long since been considered a thing of the distant past.

Some of the animals, particularly the agile giraffes and imposing elephants, stared back at the vehicles, watching them with suspicion as they trundled along the road. They turned their bodies towards the potential threat while continuing to lazily chew their clumps of grass. The smaller and younger members of the herd hearing the grumble of the bus retreated and tucked themselves in close to their mothers, while other animals scattered and fled away from the road, startled by the sound of the engines and instinctively taking flight.

A smile began to grow on Tina’s face as she suddenly became aware that not everything in the world was dead or slowly rotting away. For years they had seen nothing but death and devastation, the beauty of the world gradually fading from the landscape and being replaced by the dreary and desolate remains of cities that were inhabited by the decomposing corpses of the dead. Now, right in front of her, she could see hope once more.

She was slipping into a daydream, entranced by the beauty and innocence of the massive herd. Ignoring the growing frost, and with the fading sun casting its red tinted rays over the hills and long grass, the scene could easily have been mistaken for a landscape in Africa. With a stretch of the imagination, it could have almost been like watching one of the nature programmes that she had been so fond of in the old days. All that was missing was the husky, hypnotic voice of the narrator giving his commentary on the daily lives, habits, and characteristics of the various animals.

“Stop, stop, stop,”
Stan’s voice screamed through the radio, violently ripping Tina from her reverie.

“Contact front,” Charlie snapped suddenly, bringing her attention back to what was on the road ahead of them. “Shit.”

As she turned she felt a slight change in the vehicle’s direction that was enough to force her to begin losing her balance. She reached out and grasped on to the driver’s counter to prevent herself from falling. In that moment, as the cup of coffee slipped from her grip and spilled over her boots and onto the floor, she remembered something else that had always been apparent in the nature programmes. Predators.

As the bus pulled out of the long bend and began to straighten up, the road ahead disappeared into a seething and bubbling flood of dark and twisted shapes that were all mingled together and indistinguishable as individuals.

No one had seen them until it was too late, the wide arc of the road and the thick tree cover to their right obscuring what had been happening around the curve. A collision was now unavoidable. Charlie turned the wheel, resisting the urge to over-steer and send them careening from the road as the dark mass in front of them loomed. The first impact was a glancing blow as the bus veered to the left. The hollow thump of the body hitting the bumper travelled through the vehicle, and instantly grabbing the attention of everyone on board.

People yelped as they became aware of what was happening, clinging to the seats, handgrips, and one another as the hum of the dead that were blocking the road ahead broke out like a thunderstorm. Some of the passengers that were too slow to find a handhold tumbled from their seats and into the aisle, landing on top of one another and screaming with pain and panic. The vehicle lurched and swayed as more clunks and bangs rang out from the front, sending twisted figures flying through the air and falling beneath the heavy tyres.

Charlie stomped down on the brake, and the wheels instantly locked and lost traction on the frosty road surface, sending them barrelling headlong towards the wall of infected. The tail of the bus began to oscillate, swaying from left to right and growing in momentum while the howl of the breaks raged above the cries of the reanimated. He lifted his foot and pressed down on the accelerator, hoping to power through the skid and regain control of the sliding vehicle before it ploughed deeper into the throng of walking dead or slipped from the road completely. The people behind him screamed as they were jostled about, their rolling eyes witnessing the rapidly approaching carnage.

Stan’s vehicle had reacted with more agility. Al threw the wheel across, swinging them over to the left and swerving past the lead bodies while skirting along the edge of the road and the grass verge. They barely missed the lunging bodies and managed to slip through the trap before any of them were able to block their path. They continued on, smashing their way through the outer fringes of the crowd and committing to their course of action. Attempting to stop and reverse out of the area would be too risky. They could stall or become bogged down on the muddy verge without enough power to force their way through. They had no choice but to plough a path for themselves and hope that the bus made it through in their wake.

However, there was no way that the bus could swerve along the outer edge. It was too cumbersome with nowhere near enough manoeuvrability or power. Attempting such an action would result in them losing control and getting stuck, or worse, flipping the vehicle onto its roof. Pushing through the centre was also impossible. The swarm of dead there was already too densely packed for them to stand even the slightest of chances of ramming their way through to the other side.

There were more thumps and cracks as the heavy bus stormed deeper into the outer edges of the horde, batting them away in all directions and leaving huge smears of rotted human tissue that coated the windscreen.

“Hold on,” Charlie yelled.

Tina gripped tighter onto the counter with her arms almost being pulled from their sockets and her legs threatening to tumble away from under her as the bus swayed and jolted endlessly. The cries and howls of the helpless people on board continued to grow as they clung to whatever they could, waiting for the impact that would send them hurtling forward while the dead poured in through the battered doors and windows.

Again Charlie attempted to stop the vehicle before they were too deep into the horde. The bus slowed under his controlled braking, and before it had come to a complete stop and the infected were able to overwhelm them, he threw it into reverse. Again the wheels locked, and the engine squealed. The dead closed in, quickly swarming around the front of the bus and making their way along the sides while beating their hands against the panels and grasping at the window frames. Charlie pushed down on the pedal and began to steer them back along the road while struggling to see over the bobbing heads of the civilians as they panicked and climbed over the seats in their search for a safer place to hide within the passenger compartment.

“Down,” Tina called back at them as they wailed with fear and scrambled about. “Get your heads down.”

Charlie was fighting with the wheel, trying his best to keep the bus moving in a straight line as he attempted to reverse out from the seething mass that was rapidly gathering around them. If he was unable to get some distance fast, they would be completely surrounded within the next few seconds, and with no hope of smashing their way through and no chance of escaping from the besieged bus. They would be completely enveloped and trapped inside.

As the vehicle began to increase speed the tyres slid, abruptly spinning them to the right as they hit a patch of slippery ground. The steering wheel twisted in Charlie’s hand, almost breaking his thumbs in the process and forcing him to instinctively pull his hands away before one of his digits was traumatically removed. As the back end veered he reached for the wheel again in the hope of regaining control, but it was too late.

The long vehicle twisted in the road with its rear end leaving the tarmac and plunging into the soft mud at the roadside. As he grabbed the wheel again, turning it to the left and slamming the gear lever back into first, the engine beneath them groaned, sputtered and with a long, painful shudder it stopped completely. The vehicle had stalled with its back wheels locked in thick mud, losing all momentum in either direction. The sudden silence consumed them for a few moments as wide, bulging eyes turned to one another in the realisation that their situation had just worsened dramatically.

Charlie turned the key, but the motor refused to do anything other than emit a low grinding noise that was rapidly fading with each attempt. He helplessly stared down at the dashboard lights as they burned and faded with each turn.

“No, don’t do this now, you bastard,” Charlie snarled while stubbornly twisting the key in the ignition and banging his fist against the wheel. “No, no, not now. Come on. Not now, you fucker.”

Tina could do nothing but stand and watch him, willing him to get the engine to turn over and at least give them another chance at getting out of the mud. She looked to her left and saw the lumbering bodies as they approached. The first of them were only a few metres away and reaching towards the trapped vehicle and its passengers. Their fists began to beat against the body of the bus, weak and intermittent at first, but soon growing into a deafening drumroll as more and more of the infected arrived and began to scramble around them, pounding their hands and bodies against the thin sheets of aluminium that protected the terrified people inside.

“Come on, come on,” Charlie continued to plead with the motor, ignoring the cracks and bangs that were echoing around him.

The door rattled as a snarling face slammed up against it. Tina jumped to the side and impulsively threw herself against the entrance, wedging her feet into the step and preventing the door from collapsing inwards as more of the dead arrived at the weak point and started to hammer away at the glass.

“Get something to block the door,” she yelled out to the people that were creeping along the central aisle towards the rear and staring back at her with bulging eyes and gaping mouths. “Fucking help me.”

Her body convulsed as a group of the infected assaulted the door, sensing its weakness and realising that it was their best chance of gaining entry. Her knees buckled and her head snapped back as the door rocked again. She screamed in frustration as she heard the glass began to crack in their rubber frames.

“Help me.”

A number of the passengers suddenly sprang to life and came bounding forward and led by Tommy as they charged towards the front. Somehow, he had emerged from his fevered delirium, his survival instincts thrusting their way to the fore. He jumped down beside her, his pale and drawn face glistening with sweat while his eyes burned with fever. He threw his body up against the door and forced his shoulder in against the hinges.

“The seats,” he yelled back to Paul and Frank who had also arrived to help. “Rip the seats up. Get them up against the door.”

While Charlie repeatedly turned the key and felt the motor becoming weaker but was unwilling to give up until the last of the power was gone, the others began to tear the interior of the bus apart, ripping out the seats and benches and piling them up in front of the door.

Children were crying as they clung to their parents, and Jeff was barking relentlessly, pulling at the leash around her neck that was tied to one of the handrails and preventing her from jumping through a window and instinctively attacking the infected. Someone fired from the rear, the crack of the round from such close proximity causing everyone to flinch and a few people to cry out.

“Save your ammo,” Tina shouted, seeing one of the militia guards wielding his rifle.

The man looked back at her and then down at the magazine attached to his weapon. He understood what she was saying and why. They had very little left, and every round counted. Especially if they were going to eventually be needed for themselves.

The bus was rocking from side to side as the dead pressed themselves in on them. Their hands reached up and groped through the empty window frames, hoping to grasp hold of a warm body and then drag them out. The reanimated did not have the strength to grip on and heave themselves up into the vehicle, and nor did they have the intelligence to work as a team and begin raising one another up so that they could climb inside. Instead, they contented themselves with a dogged assault on the outer shell, hoping to gouge their way through.

There was no sound coming from the motor now. The dashboard lights were dark, and with each turn of the key Charlie became more convinced that the bus was completely dead. He sighed angrily and pushed his head back into his seat while staring out at the hands that slapped against the glass in front of him and the sea of deformed faces beyond. As the sunlight continued to dim, the dead became nothing more than a black, broiling liquid that swept around the broken down vehicle, threatening to cascade in on them at any moment.

“Give it up, Charlie. It’s no use,” Tina shouted as she and the others began backing away from the doorway and the tangled barricade.

He climbed out from his seat and headed towards the rear. He grabbed the radio, hearing the static hiss and a faint voice above the relentless groan of the dead voices. The rear was crammed to bursting point, with everyone pushing as far back as they could to keep away from the front of the bus and the flimsy doorway. More seats were being ripped up and flung towards the barricade, almost blocking the driver’s compartment and the aisle completely

“Charlie, you there? Send sit-rep,”
Stan’s voice rustled.