along? We can try to get away on three wheels but it might turn messy.”
“Messier than going it on foot?”
I shook my head stubbornly, not wanting to listen to advice that anyone else might have to offer. “We’re walking and that’s final. Once we get near the marina the headlights and the noise of the car will attract attention, and we don’t want that from rioters or from zombies, do we? On foot we can sneak it, if we do it carefully.”
Rick was on my side again, already fumbling around in the boot. I thanked the absent gods and stubborn luck that Carla didn’t have any friends in the vicinity that had been at her house and that we hadn’t been outnumbered in gender. If we had, we might all be sat in a circle on the living room floor at her house, holding hands and screaming.
“You’re fucking insane Warren. I’m staying in the car.”
“And then what, Carla? You’re going to drive the car with three wheels, to where? You can barely drive when cars are fully intact. You won’t have a gun. You won’t have protection. We need to stay in a group and help each other. So stop being all Penelope Pitstop about life, get your backpack and let’s go, we can’t carry you.”
I stalked off, hoping they’d both follow. Their crunching footsteps told me that they did and inwardly I sighed with relief. Clearly shows of force were the only thing propelling us through this. Maybe a bloodied career in journalism was actually going to be of benefit to me though as a lawyer, I would have expected Carla to be storming ahead in the survival stakes. Rick came up alongside me and whispered out the side of his mouth.
“You still sure this is a good idea bro?”
“Don’t call me bro. We’re not in a fucking action movie.”
“Well?”
“Of course it is. I’m not waiting in a car to be tinned meat for whenever a pack of those hungry buggers come down the hill. Listen. We don’t have much light, and those things don’t make much noise. I’m not sure what’s creepier, the howling ones they put on TV or these silent fuckers that just appear and make you shit yourself. But we’re not seasoned travellers, and we’re not Bear Grylls. I couldn’t concentrate enough to tell you when there are things sneaking up on us, and I sure as hell can’t follow tracks to help us forage to survive. We have to stay near civilisation. And we definitely have to get to the boat. We’ve got enough supplies to bed it out for a short while just offshore. The coast will burn itself out and then we can start coming in on low tides to get more supplies from stores and isolated places that look safe. We… whoa what the fuck !”
Those ‘silent fuckers’ – well apparently you need to pay attention to where you’re walking now. Rick found this out as he fell face-first to the pavement. There was a corpse writhing around on the floor. I say corpse. Torso was perhaps more accurate. The arms were flailing and, lucky for Rick, for some reason the thing wasn’t able to grip or hold him. He scuttled backwards on his arse, legs flailing to keep the body’s limbs away. I was curious how he didn’t already have a bite out of his ankle so, seeing as it was already distracted with Rick, I leant a bit closer to check it out. The fact that it had been left as a torso suggested someone had already had a good go at killing this poor… on closer inspection… man. The lower half of the body was gone just below the belly button, and a sad smear of innards and entrails lay in a shuffled circle. Like every single zombie we had seen so far, this one was utterly silent aside from the occasional wheeze as a rancid wisp of air was expelled from the lungs by one force or another. The mouth was opening and closing but the shape was sunken, the visage not so unlike a fish. As the smell of the clotting blood and organs began to make me heave I shot up myself, realising a terrible truth.
This zombie had been attacked and left to suffer.
Not only was
“Messier than going it on foot?”
I shook my head stubbornly, not wanting to listen to advice that anyone else might have to offer. “We’re walking and that’s final. Once we get near the marina the headlights and the noise of the car will attract attention, and we don’t want that from rioters or from zombies, do we? On foot we can sneak it, if we do it carefully.”
Rick was on my side again, already fumbling around in the boot. I thanked the absent gods and stubborn luck that Carla didn’t have any friends in the vicinity that had been at her house and that we hadn’t been outnumbered in gender. If we had, we might all be sat in a circle on the living room floor at her house, holding hands and screaming.
“You’re fucking insane Warren. I’m staying in the car.”
“And then what, Carla? You’re going to drive the car with three wheels, to where? You can barely drive when cars are fully intact. You won’t have a gun. You won’t have protection. We need to stay in a group and help each other. So stop being all Penelope Pitstop about life, get your backpack and let’s go, we can’t carry you.”
I stalked off, hoping they’d both follow. Their crunching footsteps told me that they did and inwardly I sighed with relief. Clearly shows of force were the only thing propelling us through this. Maybe a bloodied career in journalism was actually going to be of benefit to me though as a lawyer, I would have expected Carla to be storming ahead in the survival stakes. Rick came up alongside me and whispered out the side of his mouth.
“You still sure this is a good idea bro?”
“Don’t call me bro. We’re not in a fucking action movie.”
“Well?”
“Of course it is. I’m not waiting in a car to be tinned meat for whenever a pack of those hungry buggers come down the hill. Listen. We don’t have much light, and those things don’t make much noise. I’m not sure what’s creepier, the howling ones they put on TV or these silent fuckers that just appear and make you shit yourself. But we’re not seasoned travellers, and we’re not Bear Grylls. I couldn’t concentrate enough to tell you when there are things sneaking up on us, and I sure as hell can’t follow tracks to help us forage to survive. We have to stay near civilisation. And we definitely have to get to the boat. We’ve got enough supplies to bed it out for a short while just offshore. The coast will burn itself out and then we can start coming in on low tides to get more supplies from stores and isolated places that look safe. We… whoa what the fuck !”
Those ‘silent fuckers’ – well apparently you need to pay attention to where you’re walking now. Rick found this out as he fell face-first to the pavement. There was a corpse writhing around on the floor. I say corpse. Torso was perhaps more accurate. The arms were flailing and, lucky for Rick, for some reason the thing wasn’t able to grip or hold him. He scuttled backwards on his arse, legs flailing to keep the body’s limbs away. I was curious how he didn’t already have a bite out of his ankle so, seeing as it was already distracted with Rick, I leant a bit closer to check it out. The fact that it had been left as a torso suggested someone had already had a good go at killing this poor… on closer inspection… man. The lower half of the body was gone just below the belly button, and a sad smear of innards and entrails lay in a shuffled circle. Like every single zombie we had seen so far, this one was utterly silent aside from the occasional wheeze as a rancid wisp of air was expelled from the lungs by one force or another. The mouth was opening and closing but the shape was sunken, the visage not so unlike a fish. As the smell of the clotting blood and organs began to make me heave I shot up myself, realising a terrible truth.
This zombie had been attacked and left to suffer.
Not only was
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