Surviving The Evacuation (Book 2): Wasteland by Frank Tayell Page B
Authors: Frank Tayell
Tags: Zombies
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maybe more, to reach the shed, long enough for another track to finish and the next one to start. After I'd climbed up onto the roof, I could see at least a hundred gathered around the meteorological gear. It wasn't nearly enough.
I set the speakers to full and turned the music on. I didn't bother to select a playlist, just continued playing from wherever its previous owner had left off. It was an upbeat piece about love in the summertime. Thoroughly depressing under the circumstances and totally unsuited to my darkening mood, but it was loud enough to carry to the weather station. Heads turned. Then about a quarter of Them started heading towards me. This time They moved more slowly, I watched as a zombie stopped and turned back. It walked for a few paces towards the monitoring station, before turning once more and began, with a more purposeful stride, heading to the shed.
I counted to twenty, watching as some of the slower undead only reached half way up the hill before changing direction. Then I climbed down and headed back towards the road.
I don't know how far that music was carrying. Miles at least. The discordant battle between the two playlists would have, in the old world, been drowned out by traffic and tractors, people and planes and all the other symphonies of life. Now, it reverberated off the landscape in a discordant jumble of sound. It was beginning to give me a headache.
Worse, it was calling in the undead from every direction. None that I could see were close. I think all the zombies nearby had drifted into the village over the last few months. The ones heading my way were from much further afield. They were still too far away to see me, or so I hoped, but if I stayed out in the open, one would spot and then pursue me. And where there's one...
I picked up my pace, and made for a tumbledown cottage that had been on the verge of collapse long before the outbreak. I didn't have time to check whether the house was occupied, I just dived into a gap between a woodpile and a broken-down shed. Then I waited.
Sometimes, during the occasional quiet sections of music I heard the shuffling sound of the undead walking along the road mere feet away. Occasionally I would hear rotten cloth tear or dead branches crack as They tried to walk through the impenetrable thickets of brambles and briers bordering the fields. Sometimes, during the brief gaps between songs I thought I heard something else, a knocking sound close by. I sat. I listened. I waited.
It took a bit under two hours, for the batteries at the weather station to run out. Then there was a brief, glorious and wonderful time, when it was just the music from the old shed. Crouched there, hidden, my leg aching from cramp, my whole body tensed to spring up if I heard any sound closer than a few yards, I got to listen to seven songs.
I couldn't tell you their names. I couldn't even tell you if they were objectively any good. To me it was sublime. It was beautiful. It was transcendent. Music's always done strange things to me, and after so long with nothing but my thoughts playing inside my head, the effect seemed amplified tenfold. It was a watershed moment for me. The moment when I started to think that we could do this, we could do more than survive, we could actually live. It was as if these songs were shining a light onto the world that was and the parts of it that one day we could have again. Like I said, music does strange things to me.
And then, as the batteries died, the music stopped. I waited. Without any other sounds, except that of the undead, I could hear the knocking more clearly. It was coming from the cottage. Now it was the loudest sound I could hear.
I was about two miles from where we'd stashed the bikes. The plan was that if I arrived first I'd backtrack into the village to find out what was delaying Kim. If she arrived first she'd wait as long as she thought prudent, depending on who it was she'd rescued and, if necessary, we'd
I set the speakers to full and turned the music on. I didn't bother to select a playlist, just continued playing from wherever its previous owner had left off. It was an upbeat piece about love in the summertime. Thoroughly depressing under the circumstances and totally unsuited to my darkening mood, but it was loud enough to carry to the weather station. Heads turned. Then about a quarter of Them started heading towards me. This time They moved more slowly, I watched as a zombie stopped and turned back. It walked for a few paces towards the monitoring station, before turning once more and began, with a more purposeful stride, heading to the shed.
I counted to twenty, watching as some of the slower undead only reached half way up the hill before changing direction. Then I climbed down and headed back towards the road.
I don't know how far that music was carrying. Miles at least. The discordant battle between the two playlists would have, in the old world, been drowned out by traffic and tractors, people and planes and all the other symphonies of life. Now, it reverberated off the landscape in a discordant jumble of sound. It was beginning to give me a headache.
Worse, it was calling in the undead from every direction. None that I could see were close. I think all the zombies nearby had drifted into the village over the last few months. The ones heading my way were from much further afield. They were still too far away to see me, or so I hoped, but if I stayed out in the open, one would spot and then pursue me. And where there's one...
I picked up my pace, and made for a tumbledown cottage that had been on the verge of collapse long before the outbreak. I didn't have time to check whether the house was occupied, I just dived into a gap between a woodpile and a broken-down shed. Then I waited.
Sometimes, during the occasional quiet sections of music I heard the shuffling sound of the undead walking along the road mere feet away. Occasionally I would hear rotten cloth tear or dead branches crack as They tried to walk through the impenetrable thickets of brambles and briers bordering the fields. Sometimes, during the brief gaps between songs I thought I heard something else, a knocking sound close by. I sat. I listened. I waited.
It took a bit under two hours, for the batteries at the weather station to run out. Then there was a brief, glorious and wonderful time, when it was just the music from the old shed. Crouched there, hidden, my leg aching from cramp, my whole body tensed to spring up if I heard any sound closer than a few yards, I got to listen to seven songs.
I couldn't tell you their names. I couldn't even tell you if they were objectively any good. To me it was sublime. It was beautiful. It was transcendent. Music's always done strange things to me, and after so long with nothing but my thoughts playing inside my head, the effect seemed amplified tenfold. It was a watershed moment for me. The moment when I started to think that we could do this, we could do more than survive, we could actually live. It was as if these songs were shining a light onto the world that was and the parts of it that one day we could have again. Like I said, music does strange things to me.
And then, as the batteries died, the music stopped. I waited. Without any other sounds, except that of the undead, I could hear the knocking more clearly. It was coming from the cottage. Now it was the loudest sound I could hear.
I was about two miles from where we'd stashed the bikes. The plan was that if I arrived first I'd backtrack into the village to find out what was delaying Kim. If she arrived first she'd wait as long as she thought prudent, depending on who it was she'd rescued and, if necessary, we'd
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