The Dead Walk The Earth II (4 page)

With the first of the infected at less than fifty metres away, they needed to move. If they stayed where they were they would be discovered for sure. Marty just hoped that their presence was not already known.

He led Bull and Danny towards the nearest of the open doors. His intention was for them to hide in the shadows and wait it out until the herd of walking dead had passed through the area and allowed them to escape back into the vast countryside.

Just metres away from them as they headed for the buildings, a number of dark figures roamed through the gloomy street. Moving slowly and deliberately the three men hoped to bypass the dead that had still not yet noticed them. The swarm of bodies from the hill were already pushing their way through the gaps between the cars and their clumsy bangs and scrapes were attracting the attention of the others that were close by.

‘Bill Gates’ suddenly looked up from his computer and stared in bewilderment for a moment as the dark shape of Danny crossed his path. The longing moan rising up within the corpse’s throat was quickly turned to a gargle as the blade of the machete crashed down and split his skull wide open with a hollow cracking sound. As Danny pulled his blade free from the sucking mess of the man’s rotting brain, he was too slow to catch the laptop before it slipped from the creature’s grasp and clattered noisily to the ground.

The noise rang out like a siren. Everything in the area became still, including the three living men. The hundreds of nearby corpses slowly turned their heads and gazed in the direction of the commotion. Then their feet began to shuffle against the concrete as they converged on the disturbance. The questioning moans of the closest bodies were quickly joined by other voices as more and more of them began to follow.

“Bollocks,” Bull growled as he turned and headed for the nearest of the foreboding store-fronts behind them.

It was dark but nowhere near dark enough for them to remain unseen. With the noise of the falling computer, all eyes in the area were now firmly focussed on the three soldiers. It only took the nearest of the infected to recognise that they were living people and cry out hungrily and the whole pack were alerted and moving towards them.

Within seconds, the first of them arrived and charged. Danny turned to run just as a bright flash lighted up the area around him, accompanied by a bone shuddering crack as the high velocity bullet snapped at the air. Marty was the first to fire and his round exploded by Danny’s head and shattered the first of his targets. The body instantly dropped to the ground with a heavy thud as the first shot was quickly followed by another, then another.

Bull smashed and kicked his way through the debris that littered the area around the doorway of the nearest storefront. A quick scan of the interior and he was satisfied that there was no immediate threat and turned to alert the others.

“Here, rally in here.”

As Danny and Marty turned and began to head for the shop doorway, Bull began firing his rifle into the closest bodies he could see through the gloom. They appeared from all around. Some ran, others lurched, and Bull carefully picked off the ones that he perceived as being the most immediate threat. His shots were accurate and his tracer rounds glowed bright red as they burst from the muzzle of his rifle and punched holes through bone and tissue.

More and more of them appeared from the murky night. They trampled the bodies with gaping wounds in their heads, pushing forward from all angles.

“They fucking definitely know we’re here now,” Bull called out as the howls of the infected rose to a crescendo all around them.

Marty was in and already heading for the rear of the room and hoping to find a way out through the backdoor. Danny remained at the front and helped Bull to stem the tide as more and their fire dispatched more of the infected.

“On your left, Dan, on your left.”

Danny turned in time to see a body he had not noticed as it advanced along the shop’s exterior wall. It was just a few metres away and approaching him from his blind side. He swivelled and fired but his aim was off. The round missed and zipped out into the night as the creature lunged towards him. Danny fired again. This time his shot was accurate. It was impossible to miss as the corpse’s mouth was virtually over the barrel as the round punched a hole through its skull and spattered its decaying brains over a wide area. The body tumbled forward and crashed into the doorframe and landed in a heap at Danny’s feet.

“Through here,” Marty called out to them from the pitch-black interior of the building.

Bull and Danny turned and moved towards the sound of Marty’s voice through the virtual blackness. They found him in the next room standing by an open doorway and waving them forward.

“Out through the back and into the next street,” he whispered as they passed him. “We’ve broken contact so let’s see if we can sneak our way out of this gang-fuck.”

Bull led the way. He kept his finger running along the trigger-guard of his M-4 but he would not fire unless he really needed to. They had vanished from sight of the infected and stealth was their closest ally at that moment. It was pointless trying to shoot their way out. They did not have enough ammunition for that. They needed to find a place to hide and then hope to creep away when the streets were clear.

Behind them the infected had begun pouring into the store. The sounds of them crashing about in the darkness echoed for a great distance and attracted the attention of every corpse in the neighbourhood. In the street behind the row of shops Marty and the others hid in the shadow at the side of a house and watched as hundreds of roaming figures staggered by.

From every doorway and from behind every building they emerged. Some walked while others tore along the roads, flailing their arms and howling aggressively. Other bodies that were too badly damaged and barely able to move dragged themselves along the street to join in on the march of rotting flesh. The whole area hummed as they moaned incessantly. Swarms of buzzing insects filled the air in thick, dark, and shifting clouds that continuously swirled around the mass of wandering corpses.

“I think we should scrap the idea of having a nosey around,” Bull whispered into Marty’s ear as he kept one eye on the putrid river that flowed by.

The closest of the infected were just metres away from the spot where they were hiding. They trundled along, blindly following the bodies in front and headed for the next street.

Marty nodded.

All three of them sat huddled against the wall of the house and tucked in behind a large dustbin. In the street behind them, it sounded as though the dead were ripping the buildings apart with their bare hands in their search for the living. Windows shattered with ear splitting cracks and the sounds of wood splintering as doors collapsed and furniture was turned over, rang out endlessly as the crowds rampaged through the street.

They did not need to say anything but they all wondered how long it would be before the dead storm spilled into the next street and through the garden where Marty, Danny, and Bull took refuge.

“We need to move, Marty,” Danny suggested when he heard the crashes and bangs coming closer from their rear.

Marty shook his head.

“There’s still too many of them in the way. They’ll see us.”

“Fuck that, Marty. They’ll see us soon enough when they…”

Danny paused and turned to look back behind them. He squinted through the gloom and saw that one of the infected had stumbled into the narrow channel they had come through just moments earlier. He stood up and took a few paces towards it as he unsheathed his long blade and calculated his approach. It was the body of a woman. He could see nothing of her features but her voice still held the feminine tones in its grunts and rasps. She saw him and reached forward with her handless stumps which were all that remained of her arms. With a well-aimed thrust, Danny drove his machete through her face and at the same time raised his boot out in front of him. As the woman’s skull slid along the blade towards the hilt, Danny hit her in the chest with a forceful kick and sent her falling backwards into the darkness.

“As I was saying,” he continued as he squatted back down beside the others, “they’ll see us soon enough when they come crashing up our arses from the street behind us. We need to move, mate.”

“Okay,” Marty relented as he realised that Danny was right.

He could hear the approaching infected for himself and it was clear that eventually they would stumble upon them, en-masse. He thought for a moment as he watched the street ahead of them and began to form a plan in his head.

They could not turn back. There were far too many of them converging on the buildings there and if they attempted to hide in one of the houses, there was a good chance that they would eventually be discovered with nowhere left to run. Staying in the open was their best option at that moment. They had the darkness, along with their speed and agility to carry them through.

“Pass me your White-Phos, Bull,” Marty demanded.

Bull nodded and reached into one of the pouches on his assault vest and pulled out an L-84 White-Phosphorous grenade. It was roughly the size of a fizzy drinks can and light grey in colour with the letters WP stencilled across it in yellow. While it was commonly referred to as a
‘Willie-Pete’
by the American army, British soldiers had a more sinister nickname for it; a
‘Warm-Person’
grenade.

On detonation, the grenade emitted a bright flash and as the phosphorous made contact with the air, it would ignite instantly and produce a voluminous cloud of white smoke. They were often used as defensive weapons, creating a smoke screen for troops to withdraw behind but they could also be used offensively too. As a trench or bunker clearing weapon there were very few devices that could accomplish the task as well as a White-Phosphorous grenade. The chemical burned at such a high temperature that it was capable of searing its way through most materials, including flesh and bone, and there was nothing that could extinguish it apart from the total removal of its fuel source, oxygen.

Marty raised himself into a semi-crouch and kept his body pressed up against the wall. Inching his way forwards he peered out into the street and looked along the length of the road in both directions. Fifty metres to their left was a junction that joined onto the street behind them. It was packed with the bodies of the dead as they streamed in from all directions and made their way towards the commotion on the outer rim of the estate.

In the street behind them it sounded as though a riot was in progress. Screams and wails mixed with the sounds of hands beating down doors and smashing their way through the building interiors.

To the right, there was still a large number of the infected making their way along the road between the rows of houses but when compared to the junction on their left, that direction was the only real choice for Marty and the others.

Marty watched for a moment and made a mental note of their numbers. There were hundreds of the staggering corpses in the street but they were spread out enough for the living men to be able to sprint through, and providing that there were not too many of them further along the road where Marty could not see, they had a chance to get away.

“Okay,” Marty said as he crouched back down and informed the other two of his plan while holding the grenade up for them to see. “Once this fucker goes off, we make a run for it. Turn right onto the street and keep going until we’re clear.”

“That’s your plan? Throw a grenade and then make like Swastikas down the fucking street?” Bull asked sceptically.

Marty blinked and then nodded. At that moment, with nothing else in the way of a real alternative, it was the best he could come up with.

“Well it’s better than sitting here with our dicks in our hands,” Danny countered as he watched the advancing mass of shadows that were slowly approaching them from the rear. “Let’s just get on with it.”

“We wouldn’t be in this mess if Danny hadn’t wanted to take a trip down Memory Lane,” Bull grumbled to himself as he prepared himself for the coming sprint.

Marty placed his finger into the ring of the pin that held the fly-off lever of the grenade in place. He stood up, identified his point of aim, and then nodded to the others as he stepped out into the open. Before any of the infected saw him he pulled the pin free and cocked his arm back. With a powerful heave, he hurled the grenade to the far side of the street where it landed with a thud amongst the overgrown lawns of the houses facing them.

The infected closest to where it landed immediately turned and moved to investigate but before they had taken a step, the fuse ignited. A loud pop and a hiss was quickly followed by a piercing crack and a bright flash that momentarily lit up the entire street like a bolt of lightning.

Thousands of pieces of glowing phosphorous shot out in all directions at incredible speed, trailing clouds of white smoke behind them as they ploughed into the mass of reanimated corpses around the epicentre of the blast. Anything within a few metres of the explosion was instantly reduced to ash and charred remains. Further out, while a billowing pale cloud grew outwards across the street, the lighter particles of phosphorous reached the bodies that had remained unaffected by the initial detonation. They landed on flesh and cloth and instantly began to burn through their clothing and decomposing tissue. Within seconds, a number of staggering human forms were ablaze. As the soft tissue was melted away from their bones they continued to move, colliding with the others close by and spreading the fire from one to the next.