Autumn - Inferno

3

3

Several hours in now, and the stop-start reclamation of The Highway had continued at a decent pace. Cannon Street Road, the street they needed to take between The Highway and Cable Street, was finally in sight. Equally important was the discovery of a half-full fuel tanker in the frozen traffic queue on the approach to a petrol station. This unexpected haul of fuel was a heck of a bonus, and a couple of mechanics had already been summoned from base to try and get the behemoth vehicle started and driven back. Piotr had sent Chapman, another trusted aide, to coordinate efforts, such was the importance of the find.

The clearance operation continued while the logistics of moving the tanker were explored. The backhoe loader and its companion vehicles, along with a pack of some thirty fighters, continued to push back the dead tide. The road-blocking trucks were parked up a way back to provide additional cover.

Running parallel with Cannon Street Road was Crowder Street. It was accessed from Cable Street, and a dead-end meant that, while it didn’t fully reach The Highway, it served a similar purpose. Gary had found himself waiting for orders a short distance back from the frontline, and it occurred to him that they could save time and effort if they stopped sooner and used Crowder Street as the eastern boundary of their reclamation efforts today. He hunted out Paul Duggan and put his proposal to him. ‘Look, Paul, we’re better off just stopping here. It’ll save us a load more effort for very little gain.’

‘What do you mean?’

He gestured for Paul to follow him through to the end of Crowder Street. ‘If we stop and firm up the blockade across The Highway here, we’ll have access to the frontages of all the buildings that Dominic wanted. If we keep going to Cannon Street Road, it’s going to take a shedload more effort and all we’ll gain is access to the backs of the same buildings and a bit of grassland behind them. I really think we should stop here for today.’

Paul took a moment to weigh up their options. ‘I see what you’re saying. It makes sense.’

‘Good. We can get the trucks parked up across the road here, and that’ll be job done for today.’

‘I’ll need to check first.’

And before Gary could object, Paul called Chapman over and explained. Chapman shook his head. ‘No way. Piotr says we keep going.’ He gestured towards a formidable looking block of flats and maisonettes that appeared to stretch along nearly the entire length of Crowder Street, a brutalist concrete wedge. ‘That’s Brockmer House. Piotr told me he wants it secured, front and back. It’s strategically important, he said.’

Gary couldn’t help himself. ‘Strategically important? Are you f*****g serious?’

‘According to Dominic there’s about seventy apartments in there. There will be food and supplies in each one of them. So yes, it’s strategically important. Get it done.’

No negotiation. Conversation over. Chapman walked back towards the tanker, pausing only when a lone corpse slipped through the defensive line and came towards him. He floored it with a single punch to what was left of its face.

Paul slapped the side of the nearest truck and woke Alfonso who, incredibly, had been napping. ‘Move up,’ he shouted. ‘Final push for the day.’

#

David and Holly were fighting near the back of the group again, dealing with the stragglers that had escaped the backhoe loader and other vehicles that were continuing to nudge through the crowds up ahead, inching towards the finishing line at Cannon Street Road. It reminded David of another running analogy Gary had shared earlier. He’d been talking about how, when he’d been racing, no matter how hard he’d run or how knackered he was, when the home straight appeared he always managed to get a second wind. David wasn’t feeling it. Just a few more metres left to claw back from the dead today, but he was struggling to keep going. They’d discovered a branch of McDonald’s adjacent to the petrol station. ‘Come and hide in there with me, Hol! I’ll treat us both to a burger,’ he shouted.

‘Twenty chicken nuggets please,’ she shouted back. ‘Used to love my nuggets after a night on the lash.’

David swung his railing around and almost lopped the head off another dripping, scarecrow-like monster. He looked up at the grime-covered golden arches and felt an aching sadness, bordering on disbelief. Sadness because it reminded him of everything he’d lost, of tea-time treats for the kids back home in Ireland; disbelief because it was becoming increasingly hard to hold onto memories of the world before all of this had happened. It was hard to imagine there’d ever been a time when they’d been able to move around without fear, a time when food and drink and anything else they needed had been available, close at hand, and with the minimum of effort.

The backhoe loader had finally reached Cannon Street Road. Kevin turned right and accelerated up towards Cable Street, heading home. Alfonso and the driver of the other truck moved their vehicles up to block The Highway on the other side of Cannon Street Road. The bastardised lawnmowers continued to churn through the hacked-up remains of the rotting population of this part of London, and David turned away as they drove past him in parallel, spraying him with blood and filling the air with their abrasive twin noise. Once they’d passed and followed the backhoe loader up Cannon Street Road, it became much quieter, but not quiet enough. Not as quiet as it should have been. David could hear something else, and he crossed the road to investigate.

‘Problem?’ Marie Hannish asked, concerned. He hadn’t seen her since first thing, and it took a couple of seconds for him to recognise her through the gore.

‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’

He could hear a dull banging noise, a constant patter of thumps and thuds coming from somewhere around the petrol station forecourt and the McDonald’s drive thru lane. Other people heard it too.

‘Did they send someone over there to clear those buildings out?’ Holly asked.

David shook his head. The noise they could hear had nothing to do with the living. The tall wooden fence to the rear of McDonald’s and the petrol station was being battered by a glut of furious corpses trapped behind. The panels were beginning to sag and separate, and he could see the dead crowding forward. It looked like an unfortunate coincidence; dumb fuckers had been trying to get to the source of all the noise and had got themselves trapped. They’d been whipped into a frenzy by the activity along The Highway and were stuck, those at the front unable to go anywhere because of the mob that had followed. David was only watching for a second, but it was long enough to realise that a substantial part of the fence had been weakened by the combined weight of the dead pressed against it. It wasn’t going to take much more for them to bring it down.

The mechanics got the engine of the fuel tanker started at the worst possible moment. The driver revved the motor hard, keen to keep it running after weeks of inactivity, then blasted the horn to get people out of the way. He swung the nose of the tanker around in a tight arc, crossing the forecourt, abandoned the foot soldiers, and drove back down The Highway towards home.

It was like a slow-motion nightmare, inevitable and unstoppable. The sudden crescendo of noise caused an equally sudden swell of movement, and the weakened section of the fence collapsed with staggering ease. A swarm of newly freed corpses tripped into the open, gravitating towards exhausted fighters who’d thought their day’s work was done.

‘ Seriously? ’ Marie said.

‘Keep fighting,’ Paul Duggan shouted. ‘Let those fuckers through now and we’ll lose everything we’ve fought for today.’

He was right. It had only been a couple of seconds since the fence had gone down, but already there was a wall of angry dead flesh coming at them. David watched his co-fighters wearily pick up their weapons and ready themselves for more conflict. Everything about their demeanour had changed since their first encounters with the enemy this morning. Back then, they’d been raring to go, eager to start battling. Now, though, many people were simply too tired to keep going. They were holding back, waiting for the dead to come to them instead of taking the initiative. In shocking contrast, these corpses were moving with just as much speed and unnatural intent as ever. They never got tired, never gave up. There were scores of them coming, and through a gap in the chaos David could see thousands more filling the streets behind, ready to pour through.

‘Stop them!’ Paul screamed, and he launched himself at the nearest rancid creature. More people forced themselves to move, but many others remained frozen to the spot, unable to keep going.

Holly stood her ground. ‘There are too many. We’ll never clear all of them. We’re trying to fight a war with bits of fence and baseball bats, for crying out loud.’

Someone shoved her forward and David lost sight of her in the unfolding madness. It was like a medieval conflict, and what was left of their relatively small army was now hopelessly outnumbered. Everywhere he looked he could see more of the dead being hacked down, but there were endless others waiting to join the fray. David thought they’d been lucky so far. It was good fortune that only part of the fence had toppled, leaving the bulk of the dumb dead stuck in a bottleneck of their own making. He heard someone yell for runners to get a message to base and get more drivers out here to plug the hole, but they couldn’t afford to wait. Everyone was fighting now. Even those folks who’d just been out here to clean up the mess had been dragged into the hand-to-hand, everyone doing whatever they could to hold back the dead tide.

Except they weren’t, were they?

They weren’t thinking, they were just reacting.

All around him, David saw people attacking individual corpses. Their reactions were understandable and instinctive, adrenalin-fuelled responses, but it wasn’t the solution. They didn’t need to wipe out all the thousands of corpses being drawn here by the noise, they just needed to block the f*****g hole in the fence and stop more of them getting through. And they couldn’t afford to wait for reinforcements, because other fence panels were beginning to tip forward.

There were cars on the forecourt of the garage that were being ignored. They’d not moved for months, but that didn’t matter because they didn’t need to drive them, just shift them. David ran across the street, shoving shambling corpses away as they came at him, ducking and weaving through the individual scraps unfolding all around. He dove for the nearest car – didn’t even pause to check what it was – and smashed through the driver’s window with the tip of his fence spike. He reached in and opened the door, shoved the rags and bones of the long dead driver out of the way, then released the handbrake. He paused for an instant, startled by the sudden fury of two thrashing dead kids strapped in on the backseat, then started to push. The car’s steering was stiff, the wheel locked, but it was pointing in the right general direction, and even if he didn’t fully block the hole in the fence, he’d at least make it harder for some of the dead to get through.

It was a start.

‘Get out of the way!’ he yelled as the car finally began to gain momentum, and, despite the chaos everywhere, people reacted to his voice and jumped clear. Marie Hannish cursed him in surprise then thanked him once she saw what he was doing.

Others began to follow his lead, and by the time David had found another car to move, he could see six more vehicles being steered towards the breach. A knackered old van brushed past him with four people pushing and a woman behind the wheel, steering a path through the confusion. She tried the ignition on a whim, and it caught. She blasted the horn repeatedly, then accelerated and thumped the van’s snub nose into the glut of advancing dead flesh. She scrambled clear just before another car collided with the side of the van, wedging it in place.

Vehicles were coming from all angles now, rolling at various speeds from various directions, all converging on the same general area. They crushed scores of bodies. Others were trapped between the wrecks. Paul Duggan ordered another attack, invigorated by the success of their improvised defence. With renewed energy they dealt with any rogue cadavers that slipped through, but the battle was far from being won. The army of the dead had been slowed but not beaten. If anything, the battle unfolding around the fallen section of fence was whipping them up; the harder the people from the Monument pushed forward, the harder the dead fought back, their appetite for confrontation insatiable.

David was relieved when he heard more engines close behind. More vehicles were approaching from the base, and Kevin Greatrex was back with the backhoe loader.

A mechanic got another car started and raced it across the fuel station forecourt, swerving through the ongoing fighting and other wrecks, then drove through a newly opened gap and carried on out into the crowds of dead. He carved a clear line through the corpses as if he’d driven through a field of unharvested corn then scrambled out through the sunroof and set light to the interior before racing back to safety. By the time he’d reached the fuel station, the car was completely ablaze, dirty black smoke belching into the air. With the hordes temporarily distracted, Kevin began to shift some of the other wrecked vehicles into position, building up a makeshift wall in front of the fallen fence.

Paul relaxed. ‘That should hold it.’

‘For now,’ David said.

‘I saw what you did back there. That was quick thinking. Thanks.’

‘It’s the only quick thing I’ve managed all day,’ David replied, self-deprecating. ‘That’s the advantage of being old and unfit. Things look different when you’re standing on the fringes, trying to get your breath back.’

‘Just take the compliment; it was a smart move. We’re safe, thanks to you.’

‘You reckon? Did you see those bloody things out there? Doesn’t matter what you do to them... there’s never any hesitation, no emotion, never a thought for self-preservation... they just exist to attack, and the sooner we learn to deal with that, the better.’

He started walking back to base but stopped when he saw Sanjay crouching over a body. He gently rolled the corpse onto its back, and David saw that it was Marie. She had a puncture wound in her belly and her neck had been slashed. Her blood was vivid red, contrasting against the gallons of dark, stinking muck that covered the battlefield.

‘We need to find out who did this,’ Sanjay said, furious.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ David sighed.

‘How can you say that? It’s Marie, for f**k’s sake.’

‘I know. It’s the price of war I guess, Sanj, as shitty as that sounds.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Sadly, yes. Whoever did this probably didn’t even realise. This world makes no sense anymore. There’s no rhyme or reason... It’s s**t and it hurts, but that’s just how things are now. We’re not soldiers, you and me, and we never will be. Everyone’s just doing the best they can. Let’s get Marie home. We’ll show her a little respect and say a few words. That’s the best we can do.’