Zombiekill (20 page)

Conan squared himself up and then planted a punch right in the center of Rilla’s face. The bridge of her nose broke instantly, and her unconscious body was knocked back into the seat behind her.

“Thank you,” said Butcher, as Conan calmly returned to his seat.

Tad approached the annex and veered the truck to the left to swing around. Victoria’s body was dragged along behind the truck, and as Tad swung around Victoria was slammed into the wall of the annex. Her body left a dent in one of the walls as Tad kept speeding the truck up.

“That has
got
to hurt,” said Verity, chuckling.

“Laugh all you like old woman,” said Butcher. “Forty seconds. You’re out, Conan. It’s between you and me now, Mom.”

The truck began to come up the driveway to the house, and Butcher could still see Victoria twisting and crying. There were faint cries coming from her body, but if he didn’t know who it was, he wouldn’t be able to recognize her. Her body was shrouded in blood and her face nothing but a pile of worn away bone and gristle, flesh dangling from it in places, and her nose and eyes just cavities showing her pain.

“Come on, Tad, finish it,” whispered Butcher.

Tad suddenly slammed on the brakes and Victoria’s body skidded along the drive until it caught up with the truck and bounced into the rear axle. The girl’s body was now still, and the crying had stopped.

“Boom!” Butcher stood up and applauded. “She’s gone. And that is almost a perfect sixty seconds.” He turned to Verity. “Unlucky. You lose again. One week’s latrine duty.”

Tad got out of the cab and walked around to the back of the truck where he inspected Victoria’s remains. Then he went back to the cab, turned the engine off, and ran over to Butcher with a smile across his face.

“Did you see that shit? She is
fucked
up. Her face is just gone, man. She looks worse than those walking corpses out there.”

“She dead?” asked Verity.

“Course she is. I don’t mess around,” replied Tad, defensively.

“Damn. I had two minutes.”

“Yeah, like I was gonna let it go that long.” Tad fished himself a cold beer from the cooler. “I don’t mess around. When I’m going to do something I just do it. I do
everything
fast.”

“One day, Tad,” said Butcher putting an arm around his brother, “you’ll learn that’s
not
necessarily a good thing.”

Conan let out a snigger.

“Okay, boys, I’ve had enough. Dinner’s ready.” Verity got up and began to walk back to the house. “You remember to make sure that dead bitch don’t come back. We don’t want a fucking zombie walking around the property.”

“Shit, I forgot about that,” said Tad. “You want me to do it?”

Butcher looked at his younger brother with something approaching pride. “Why not?” Butcher looked at the unconscious Rilla. “You did good, Tad. After dinner, if you clean up that mess you made on the driveway, I’ll let you have a go at our other guest before you go out on duty. Burn the remains and then get washed up. You’ve got a busy night ahead of you.”

Tad nodded. “Conan, lend me your gun.”

Conan looked at Tad disapprovingly.

“Come on, Conan. You never let me have a go with the Desert Eagle. Just this once? You always say it’s impossible to miss with it.”

“If you think I’m going to let you get your hands on my baby, you are very
very
mistaken, Tad,” said Conan.

“Tad, use your knife,” ordered Butcher. “We can’t waste the bullets, anyway, so get on with it.”

Butcher watched as Tad returned to the truck and the dead girl. “What do you say, Conan, one for the road?”

Conan pulled two more cans of beer out and tossed one to Butcher.

“Amen to that,” said Butcher, catching the can mid-air. “Ain’t nothing gonna stop us now. What did I tell you? This place is the fucking bomb. You want something, I get it. We got it made here. Those walls are gonna see us through this. We can do
whatever
we want.” Butcher watched as Tad rammed a knife through Victoria’s head. “Whatever we want, Conan. Ain’t nothing or
nobody
gonna stop us.”

CHAPTER 13

She tightened the straps around her shoulders and went through a mental checklist of everything to do. Whilst she knew it wouldn’t be easy, she had thought through exactly what she needed to do, and now that Attwood’s house was directly in front of her, the only thing left was to put the plan into action.

Charlie had traded in her UCLA sweater which had been ripped to shreds like the supple skin on her back for a close-fitting black gym top underneath a black roll-neck jersey she had found in her mother’s closet. On top of that she wore a black hooded dressing gown that covered her entire body. Her ripped jeans had been replaced with a fresh pair, and her left arm was wrapped in bandages. For what she was about to do she needed to be quick on her feet and had put on her old grey Converse sneakers. She wasn’t going to be winning any fashion awards, but she had dressed appropriately for the occasion and finished her ensemble off with a large Gerber Air Ranger that her father used to take out fishing. There were several knives in her father’s garage, but this one was the toughest one she could find. Charlie dry swallowed a couple of tablets and tried to clear her mind. The last twenty-four hours had seen her father killed, and her wounds were still to heal. After getting home before sunrise, she had tried to regain some energy and recuperate, but the knowledge that Victoria and Rilla were still in that house spurred her on. She’d washed out her cuts as best as possible and used her father’s whisky as anesthetic when she stitched up the open wounds. Her face has been the hardest and she had had to settle for doing a quick job. The stitches were ragged and crude, and the slashed skin on her cheek was going to leave a scar. Her whole body ached. Her left arm was almost useless, and she had resorted to wrapping the whole thing in bandages. She could still manipulate a couple of fingers slightly, so she lived in hope that it wasn’t damaged beyond repair. Her legs, too, throbbed with pain, and she had taken more painkillers in the last few hours put together than she had in the last few years.

Getting to Rilla was her main objective. Butcher had pretended to be Attwood, although she didn’t yet know why. Perhaps Attwood was a prisoner in his own home, or perhaps he was just using Butcher to get what he wanted. The fact that they had set those dogs on them told Charlie all she needed to know. Rilla and Victoria were in danger, and she had to get to them. Charlie needed to know what was going on behind those walls.

The black gown hid her well in the dusk that was settling over the Attwood mansion. It also hid her from the zombies. They still meandered around the property, around the fake moat and roads, and slipping through them unnoticed had not been as easy as when she had crawled out of the drain. The bloody knife in her hand was testament to how she had made it this far, and the next part of her plan was by far the most daunting and dangerous. Charlie glanced around her. There were four zombies close by, all men, all strong enough to take her down if they attacked her at once. She felt able to defend herself if they came at her one by one, but if she had learnt one thing from her experiences on the road it was that the dead were unpredictable. Being so close to them was unsettling, but she knew she needed them close by. Too few, and it wouldn’t work; too many, and her plan would go out of the window with the most likely result a painful death. Peering up from underneath her hood she saw the camera that they had missed the last time they had come here. It was nestled right in the upper corner of the building, almost hidden by an overhanging branch. She raised a hand and knocked on the door to the annex. Nothing happened, but she didn’t expect it to. She knocked again and then slowly lowered her hand and stepped back. The noise had instantly got the attention of the dead, and they began to converge on the doorway. Charlie held her breath and kept her head down, covered by the gown. If she was right, then the door would automatically open. Whoever was watching would see her and let her in. The zombies were out of range of the camera.

As the door clicked open, Charlie smiled. She pushed the door open gently and walked into the room. Just like last time, the door had opened for her. Despite knowing what she was going into, the stench took her breath away, the memories almost making her regret coming back. The floor was still stained with fresh blood, and the scratches on the walls and floor testament to the fight that had taken place only hours ago. As soon as Charlie entered the room she stood to the side and held the door open. One by one the four zombies followed her into the dark room. Once they were in she fished the small black doorstop from her pocket, jammed it into the doorframe, and slipped out of the room allowing the door to close behind her. She kept her back flat against the wall and sidled carefully to the side of the building out of shot of the camera. Now all she had to do was wait. The doorstop was so small as to be practically invisible in the darkness of the evening, and it had stopped the door from closing successfully. Whilst it appeared to be shut, the locking mechanism wouldn’t be able to snap into place, leaving her one opportunity before they noticed. Charlie bent down into the tall weeds beside the ditch and relaxed slightly. The zombies were all around her, and people on both sides of the wall were all too eager to kill her, but she had the advantage of knowledge. She knew exactly where they all were and what they wanted. They wouldn’t know what hit them.

As she waited and listened, she touched the pendant beneath her jersey. She had cleaned it up as best as she could and gotten most of the blood off. Given even just half a chance then there was no way she would leave it behind. She hadn’t been certain that the opportunity to retrieve it would even present itself, and she’d really just been lucky. The swarm of zombies that Schafer had told them about previously had dispersed, and the dead were spread out evenly throughout Peterborough. Getting home was just a vague fuzzy memory now. She had walked through the quiet dark streets on auto-pilot and couldn’t recall how she had actually got home. When it had been time to come back to Attwood’s, she had navigated her way through town with relative ease, keeping to the shadows and walking slowly through the corpses. Her clothes kept her well-hidden and had let her look for the one particular corpse she had wanted to find. The red dress had been helpful in that respect, and Charlie had finally found her mother outside the florists on Main. She was just staring at the window display as if it was a cinema screen. It wasn’t just about retrieving the pendant but also about bringing some closure to her mother’s death for both of them. Charlie had swiftly stabbed the Air Ranger blade through Jemma’s skull, entering through the ear canal, and killing the brain. Her mother had dropped to the floor and died without even seeing her daughter approach. Charlie felt no remorse for what she did. Her mother was already dead. But as she took the silver heart pendant from her mother’s body, she felt guilty. It was like robbing her mother’s grave. As Charlie traced its outline now beneath her jersey, she was glad she had taken it. She needed to know that her mother was still with her in some way. If all went well, then she wanted to find something of her father’s too. That would not be as easy as getting the pendant, though, and so Charlie sat in the weeds watching and waiting.

After only a couple of minutes she heard voices from inside the annex quickly followed by receding footsteps. A moment later there was the familiar sound of dogs barking. She suspected that Butcher wouldn’t risk getting his hands dirty over a few zombies that had inadvertently gotten into the building. He would use the dogs, as usual, to tidy things up. That was her cue, and Charlie shuffled forward slowly across the bridge to ensure that not only did the camera not spot her, but that neither did the zombies in the neighboring fields and roads. She didn’t want a crowd of them coming after her. Not yet.

The annex had been left in darkness. Evidently it wasn’t worth wasting any power to light it just for a few zombies which made it a little trickier for Charlie. Still, she had been here before and knew the layout of the room. As she slipped into the room, she saw that three of the zombies had already been taken down by the dogs. She removed the doorstop and let the door click shut. The light above it turned red, and she heard the locking mechanism click into place. There was no way back, no way out, no retreat now. Charlie felt pleased. She had no intention of backing out anyway. She let the two dogs finish off the dead men, and they didn’t even notice her as she crept to the open panels that led to their kennels. They didn’t notice when she crawled down the tunnel and made her way to the drain where she had escaped earlier. The dogs didn’t notice when she removed the wire-cutters from the small knapsack beneath her dressing gown and began to snip the wire mesh at the back of the kennel. Though the sun was setting, there was still a faint light which showed Charlie where she was. The last time she was here she had been in pitch black, unable to see anything. Beyond the wire mesh, though, she could now see open ground and further to the house.

As she snipped open the cage that kept the dogs prisoners, she became aware that she wasn’t alone. She could hear breathing coming from the tunnel behind her. Hoping it wasn’t a zombie, she turned and found a huge Doberman staring at her. Its tongue was hanging from its jaws and saliva dripped to the floor. Its face was covered in blood from the dead, and it snarled as she drew the fish knife out and readied herself.

“Bring it on. I’m ready for you this time, you fucking bitch.”

As the dog leapt at her, she quickly pushed herself away and avoided its snapping teeth. Charlie rammed the knife into the top of the dog’s skull, and it died instantly, collapsing at her feet.

“One down.” Charlie waited for the next dog to appear, but the panel stayed closed, and nothing came. Charlie sighed. “Don’t make me come get you,” she said, frustrated. The longer she stayed here the longer she risked being discovered, but she had come with set goals and wasn’t about to deviate from the plan now. The dogs had to die. It was riskier to leave them alive than to spend a bit of extra time killing them.

Charlie crawled on her knees back to the panel and nudged it open. The four dead men were scattered around the annex in pieces, limbs and hunks of meat discarded like chew toys. In the darkness Charlie didn’t even see it coming. The last dog lunged at her as she appeared. It clamped its jaws around her left arm before she had a chance to react and searing pain erupted throughout her body as it sank its teeth into her already savaged arm.

“Not this time,” said Charlie through gritted teeth as she pulled the dog closer to her. With her free hand Charlie plunged the knife into the dog’s throat. Steaming hot blood poured out from the dog over her, and it let go of her arm instantly. The dog staggered back and then sank to its knees. Charlie looked at her arm. It was pretty much fucked.

“You know, I was going to make this quick,” said Charlie to the dog. She crawled over to the whining creature and held the knife above its head. The dog’s glassy eyes looked at her and it feebly snapped its jaws at her. “Fuck you. You can just bleed out.”

Charlie put her father’s old fishing knife between her teeth and crawled back down the tunnel to the cage, leaving the dog to die slowly. After the way her father had died she had no remorse for the dogs. Maybe they were acting the only way they knew, the only way they had been raised to, but that didn’t mean they could change or even deserved a chance to. They were dangerous killers, and she had to put them down. In the back of the kennel Charlie finished snipping away at the metal cage and then peeled the wire mesh back. She crawled through onto the dirt, and pulled herself up, free of the kennel. Looking at the house she felt exhilarated. This was what she had come for. This was what they had all come for, yet there was a different reason now. There was more to this than finding sanctuary. Those animals that had killed her father and kidnapped her friends were going to realize that they had chosen the wrong option. They could’ve opened the door and let them in, but they had decided to keep this place for themselves. Looking at the massive house, she knew they could’ve all comfortably lived there. It was just greed. Butcher’s greed was undoubtedly borne of fear that it would be taken away from him one day. He was nothing more than a kid who refused to share his toys. Well, now he was going to learn the hard way that this new world was all about sharing. The living couldn’t afford to be divided anymore. If they didn’t, they would die.

A soft rain fell as Charlie quietly walked toward the house. There were two open windows on the second floor and a couple more on the ground floor where light shone out. The trees were thick around the edge of the property, and she could see vehicles on the driveway. There was a bad smell as she approached the vehicles, and she crouched down behind a black sedan as a figure came out of the front door. It was a woman, and Charlie watched as she lit up a cigarette. The old woman sucked at it furiously as if it were the last one on Earth, and within a minute she had thrown the discarded butt to the ground. The woman disappeared back inside the house, closing the front door behind her. Charlie knew she had to get closer to the house and find out exactly who she was dealing with. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around, and she slowly made her way around the sedan to get closer to the house. As she passed a pickup truck, she discovered the source of the smell. A body lay at the rear, still tied up. In the dusky gloom Charlie could see the person was dead and had suffered an ignominious fate. The body was too small to be Rilla. Charlie hoped it wasn’t Victoria, but something in her heart knew that it was. Had they really killed the girl already? What had an innocent child done to deserve dying like that? Butcher was a sadistic fuck, and Charlie hoped that Rilla was still alive. If Victoria was dead, then Rilla probably didn’t have much time left. Charlie felt bad for the little girl although she couldn’t have got back to Attwood’s any quicker than she had. She began to hurry to the house. There would be no more delays. It was time to end this.