Silence is a terrible thing; it can get so intense that it takes on physical properties that bear down upon you crushing your spirit. When silence gets like that it’s louder than any scream, it’s nearly deafening but there’s no way to shut it out. It just is. But then when it breaks you miss it, you wish for its return for its embrace like a long absent lover, that moment of noise, amplified a thousand times crashing in on you and reminding you of the horrors of the world. It never fails to amaze me how something as small as a moan could be so terrifying.
I was led half asleep on the flat roof of a garage in some small rural town in the West Country, I don’t suppose it matters what its name was seeing no one really bothers with that sort of thing anymore. The sun was just clearing the row of houses to my left so it wasn’t that late. I turned and looked down into the courtyard in front of the garages at the three zombies. Two men and a woman, they didn’t look in too bad a condition, the woman had some visible bite marks on her face and neck; probably what killed her, but apart from that she was intact. Both the men were elderly so I guess they’d died of natural causes.
That was a strange phrase to say these days, natural causes. Most people died from zombie attack, either eaten or infected, nothing natural about that. I knelt up and took a better look around, I could see there was anyone else down there but something must have attracted them. The town was pretty isolated and I’d not seen any zombies for over a week, most had circulated in the direction of bigger towns and cities; the places people had foolishly gone under the impression a greater population meant greater safety. Wrong!
The woman moaned, not sure if had been her who woke me as neither of the men had uttered a sound yet. They turned toward her as she shuffled towards the farthest garage, she was dragging her left leg slightly and I noticed her foot was sticking out at the wrong angle. As she reached the door she began to beat on it, the men caught up to her and began hammering away, someone was inside. How stupid, cornering yourself like that, it’s been about two years since the initial outbreak and to have survived this long you have to be pretty savvy. Locking yourself in a garage aint savvy. The three zombies were getting frantic, there was definitely someone in there and they wanted at them but the door was metal and there was no way they were going to beat their way through.
It just goes to show how mindless zombies are, I was nearly fifty feet away and I could see the door was locked, it was pulled down closed but all you needed to do was lean down grab the handle and pull it up. But then zombies didn’t have the reasoning power to think their way round a problem, brute strength and ignorance was the only way they knew. They’d be there beating on that door until their hands were broken stumps and still they wouldn’t give up. If there was someone in there they’d carry on till the sun exploded to get at them. I turned over and led on my back looking up at the sky, I reached down to my left and my hand curled round the stock of the rifle I’d been carrying with me since I’d ran from my barracks in Newcastle the day after the zombies overran the city.
I’m no coward but I’m no fool either. I’d done two tours of Afghanistan, I’d seen death, seen horror but nothing I’d seen prepared me for the sight of dead soldiers walking out of the morgue trying to eat me. I wasn’t the only one to run either, hell our Sergeant led the charge and was first out the gate, serving your country is all well and good when there’s a country to serve. Our prime concern was our homes, our families. As it was when I did get home there was nothing there, no one to protect. All I found was smashed windows and blood on the hallway carpet. I’d searched for weeks but all I found was more devastation, more zombies, civilization was falling apart around me, people were too busy running for their lives; or in some cases looting what they could under the impression hording wealth would somehow give them a better start when everything got back to normal.
After six months I’d given up and concentrated on surviving. I’d headed south, kept away from large towns and cities they were death traps, infested with the dead and desperate. The further south I went the less zombies I saw, I was happy with that I’d seen enough of them to last me ten lifetimes. I reached Salisbury a year after bailing on Newcastle, it was no better here, the city was half destroyed by fire and the other half zombie central. I was lucky in a way; I found my way to the barracks on the outskirts of the city and managed to stock up on ammo and rations. As I wintered halfway up the Cathedral spire I watched to movements of the zombies, followed their wanderings, round and round in circles not going anywhere. There was no purpose to them; they just wanted food, nothing else. There was no community, no industry, just death.
A loud clang brought me spinning round looking down on the trio below, their hammering had loosened the door and it was slightly tilted up at the bottom and pivoting on its hinges, the bottom was banging against the ground as they hit it. It wouldn’t take them long, soon they’d have it open or beat off its hinges. I heard a scream, a woman’s scream, the zombies froze their heads cocked to one side. They looked like dogs listening for a silent whistle only they can hear, the two men let out a moan and the woman joined in, I heard the scream again as they started beating on the door. I reached down and pulled the rifle round.
I flipped the mag out and checked, it was a full clip, I can’t remember the last time I’d fired it; over a month ago maybe more. I rammed the mag back in and brought it up to my shoulder and looked through the scope. They were hitting the door harder they knew their prey was in there and were determined to get in. I lined up on the left hand male, the back of his head magnified, I could see his lank greasy hair; he was starting to go bald, well he would have had he lived. My finger curled around the trigger and I exhaled as I squeezed. There was the barest hint of recoil, the shot was loud making my ears ring, below me his head exploded against the door. I shifted to the right, the other two had stopped pounding on the door and were looking at the one I’d just pegged as he slumped to the floor; there was no flailing of arms, no cry, it was like he was a puppet and someone had cut the strings. His legs just crumpled and he hit the floor.
I got the second male in the left just above his ear, the other side of his head spattered the door as it exploded and he folded to the floor. As I swung round to the woman she’d turned and was looking in my direction, I saw her mouth open to moan and put a bullet between her eyes. I lowered the rifle looking down at the doorway, it was silent again, no moaning, no pounding, no nothing. I waited sitting there on the roof as the sun rose higher into the sky, I’d judged a good three hours had passed before I was happy no others were about coming to join their friends at the party and made my way down off the roof.
As I neared the garage I could hear a soft whimpering coming from within, she must have been terrified, god alone knows how long she’d been running and then to get trapped and nearly caught only to be rescued and left for hours in the baking heat. I had to make sure they were alone, no point going down and us both getting cornered on the ground. The smell coming off the corpses near made me retch, flies were already buzzing around feasting off the putrid flesh and laying their eggs. There was a long plank led in front of one of the other garages and I lifted it and rammed it under the zombies levering them out the way, the woman split open as I heaved and green slim oozed out of her belly. I dropped the plank and lent against the door as I brought up what little food there was in my stomach. Trying to ignore the stench I grabbed the bottom of the door and heaved it up.
Inside huddled in a corner was a young girl, maybe late teens, she looked fragile, her skin pulled taught over her bones, her hair was long and unwashed as was the rest of her. Her eyes were wide and staring, she looked half mad. But then I suppose I didn’t look a lot better, none of us who’d survived this long were the picture of health, we could all do with bathing more, eating more, sleeping in a decent bed. The sunlight flooded into the garage and she squinted and raised her hands up to her face like she was warding off an attack.
“It’s OK, I’m not here to hurt you.”
She lowered her hands and looked at me with those wide terrified eyes. I tried my best smile and she attempted one back.
“It’s OK you can come out they can’t hurt you anymore.”
She glanced sideways past me at the corpses and began to whimper again, she slowly got to her feet and as she did I saw the bandage around her leg, it was stained with blood and dirty, the skin above and below was black, rotten. I looked up at her as she walked toward me and noticed the red flecks under her skin, the cloudiness in her eyes.
“Shit.” I stepped back and raised the gun, she stopped and looked at it fear in her eyes holding her hands out to me. “I’m so sorry.”
Copyright © 2011 Philip J Norris, All Rights Reserved
