Coldbrook

11

The third zombie that their vehicle struck was thrown over the bonnet and smashed through the windscreen. Sean cried out and leaned back as its head struck him on the right shoulder, and the station wagon swerved but kept moving. Olivia shrieked, and as the zombie turned to face her Vic recognised Walt McCready, the friend whose house they had once partied in. Now he had no eyes.

They struck something else, and Vic was flung against the rear of Marc’s seat. He dropped the phone and it disappeared down by his feet. The vehicle skidded to a halt.

Jayne grabbed his shoulder and hauled him back, moaning with the pain it caused her. Lucy and Olivia were huddled back against the door — both of them had recognised the dead man. Lucy punched at his hand as he reached for Olivia.

Vic heard the snick of a door opening.

‘Don’t get out of the car!’ he shouted. He raised the M1911, pressed it against old Walt’s face, and pulled the trigger. His hearing was obliterated briefly but that didn’t stop him from seeing. Walt was blasted against the ceiling and bits of him were scattered throughout the car. Something sharp slashed across Vic’s cheek, and he wondered whether being cut by a fragment of a zombie’s skull could change him.

Soon find out.

‘Keep the fucking doors shut!’ he shouted. ‘Let’s go!’ His ears were still ringing from the gunshot as he looked around to make sure that everyone was okay. Lucy’s nose was bleeding from where she’d bounced off Sean’s seat. She dabbed at it, staring at Vic without expression. Rather she was screaming, he thought.

Someone grabbed his sleeve. Sean.

‘We hit one of the bikers!’ he shouted. The view through the windscreen had been obscured by the starring of the safety glass on impact, which had been held in place by its frame. Marc punched it out, and he and Sean heaved Walt’s dead-at-last corpse out onto the bonnet.

Ahead of them loomed Danton Rock’s first building, the small school and medical centre. Half of the school had burned down. Between them and Danton Rock was a confusion of cars and bikes, and the running dead.

Someone stood in front of the car and grabbed Walt, and for a second Vic thought it was a biker pulling the corpse away so that they could drive on. But then he saw the stained and torn summery dress, and Sean rested his rifle against the dashboard and shot the woman in the throat. She shook, her head flopping to one side where her spine had been shattered. But she did not fall.

Sean fired again. As the woman slumped back, a biker tried to stand, tugging to free his leg from beneath his crashed bike. He was bleeding from a terrible wound in his throat, the blood spurting across his chest and stomach with each heave on his trapped limb. He did not appear to be in pain.

‘Close your eyes,’ Sean said, but he didn’t wait for the others to heed his advice. It was far worse seeing a fresh one shot.

‘Give me the rifle,’ Vic said. ‘You’ve got to drive.’ Sean handed it back without a word and Vic leaned between the front seats, resting the rifle’s barrel on the dashboard.

‘We’re not even in the town yet,’ Marc said, his voice higher than usual.

‘Laptop okay?’ Vic asked.

‘Yes, but we’re not even-’

‘Hush it down, Marc,’ Vic said softly. Marc glanced back at him, then nodded. Vic wasn’t sure whether to feel comforted or terrified at the older man’s brief display of panic.

Sean steered around the crashed bike and the bodies. Three Unblessed bikes roared on ahead, and Vic saw the unmistakable form of Chaney riding one of the choppers, his Remington 870 still slung across his back.

‘Daddy,’ Olivia said, tugging at the back of Vic’s sweat-soaked shirt, ‘are we going home?’

Vic pressed his lips together but did not look back at his wife and child.

‘School bus still behind us,’ Sean said, looking in his side mirror. The bikers had given up some of their weapons to the four adults on the bus, but Vic couldn’t bear to think what might happen if even one zombie made it on board.

As the first biker passed the burned school, a crowd surged from behind its boundary wall. Chaney grabbed the shotgun from his back and swerved wide to avoid the running people. He fired, pumped the gun one-handed, fired again. The two other bikers shot their way into the town. Chaney glanced back at the approaching vehicles, and then powered away.

‘Heads down, close your eyes,’ Vic said over his shoulder. He smashed out the remaining shards of windscreen with the rifle barrel, then aimed ahead.

‘Can’t afford to run into them,’ Marc said.

‘I know,’ Sean said, pressing hard on the gas pedal.

‘I mean it. Fuck the radiator, burst a tyre, and we’re-’

‘I know!’

‘Easier if they’re lying down,’ Vic said, and he fired. A man went down. Didn’t know him. He fired again at another man wearing fatigues, only winging him. Didn’t know him. Sean veered past the rushing crowd and Vic shot once more, knocking a woman onto her back. Knew her. It was Kate Morris, the wife of one of the mechanics down in Coldbrook. He wondered where her husband was now.

Vic shot another woman directly ahead of the car. She fell and Sean drove over her, and as she rolled between the chassis and the road it sounded as if she was hammering to get in, clawing at the metal.

Vic glanced back at Lucy where she hugged Olivia’s face against her chest.

He fired again. A man went down and Vic knew his face from one of Danton Rock’s bars. As Sean powered along the street, Vic bestowed the favour of true death on several other people who got in their way, two of them soldiers.

‘Army,’ Vic said.

‘Not usually here?’ Marc asked.

‘No. Guess they were sent to Coldbrook when Jonah sounded the alarm.’

‘Let’s hope they didn’t hang around,’ Marc said. Vic didn’t reply, but he wondered just what they would find down in Coldbrook’s shallow valley.

In the town square, one of the bikes had crashed and a scrum of zombies was tearing at the biker. Chaney had parked his bike and remained astride it, firing his shotgun into the mess of bodies. Sean slammed on the brakes and Chaney looked their way.

‘He needs to get a fucking move on!’ Marc said. He waved through the shattered windscreen, urging Chaney to mount up and move out.

‘Trying to save his buddy,’ Vic said. He sighted on the struggling pile and pulled the rifle’s trigger. The zombies paused in their attack, stood back, revealed the dead biker with his holed helmet leaking blood. Then they turned their attention to the car.

Chaney nodded his thanks, then roared across the square.

Vic fired again, but the trigger clicked on empty. ‘I’m out.’

‘Here.’ Sean handed him his pistol and Marc took the rifle, digging in his rucksack for spare ammunition. They were shouting, the gunfire ringing heavy in their ears.

They crossed the square, and Vic looked back to check on the convoy. The school bus ploughed into three zombies, its wheels bouncing across several prone corpses. Should’ve let them go first, he thought. Then the driver slumped down across the steering wheel and the bus veered to the left and smashed into the police station steps.

‘Stop!’ Vic shouted.

‘What?’ Sean said.

‘Bus crashed.’

‘Vic, what do you think you can do about it?’ Lucy asked desperately. Olivia looked up at him, scared, her eyes wet. He looked around, trying to assess the situation. Other vehicles had followed them into the square, following the bikers onto the road that led out of town and down towards Coldbrook. Almost there! Vic thought. But there were zombies running at the bus, and the gunfire sparking from its windows was inaccurate and panicked.

Chaney had paused on the other side of the square and was looking back. Vic raised his hand.

‘Don’t you dare leave us,’ Lucy said.

Vic pointed at the bus. Chaney revved his bike and his rear wheel screeched as he powered back across the square, kicking up clods of turf from the green, heading for the police station.

‘Keep the rifle,’ he said.

‘Vic-’

‘Daddy-’

‘Don’t you dare leave us!’

‘Lucy, there are kids in there,’ Vic said, and in his soft voice they all heard the truth. With everything he had done wrong, leaving them behind would be one step too far.

‘You said you’d never leave me again,’ Lucy said.

‘He won’t,’ Jayne said. ‘He’ll be back. You’ve seen his shooting.’

Vic kissed Lucy and Olivia. ‘You need to go on,’ he said. ‘Get Jayne down to Coldbrook and inside. Straight down the air vent, and Holly will be waiting.’

‘I could come,’ Marc said, and he meant it. But he also nodded when Vic refused, acknowledging how important he had become.

Vic climbed over Jayne and slipped from the car, his M1911 in one hand, Sean’s pistol in the other. For a second as the car powered away he locked glances with Lucy through the back window. Then he ran for the bus.

The sound of the other vehicles’ engines faded, and the hooting of the zombies was appalling now.

‘Well, come on!’ Chaney shouted. He and two of his gang had reached the bus, and while Chaney fired a pistol at the advancing zombies — shotgun swinging empty from his other hand, ready to club anything that came too close — the other two men were struggling with the bus’s door. The kids inside were screaming. The three remaining adults were shooting from smashed windows.

As Vic sidestepped a running dead child, wondering what he had done, praying that he would see his family again, a woman on the bus turned her gun towards him.

‘No!’ he shouted, but she fired anyway. He ducked down, waiting for the pain. It didn’t come. Someone hit the ground behind him.

‘Squatting for a shit?’ Chaney shouted, and he actually laughed as he came to help Vic up. His hand was huge and sweaty.

‘Not sure what I’m doing.’

The other two bikers had prised the bus door open, and Vic and Chaney followed them on board. One of them grabbed the dead driver and pulled him aside, a wet mess. Kids screamed and the adults shouted louder to try and calm them. The bikers seemed not to notice.

‘Stray bullet,’ one of them said.

‘Fuck that,’ the other drawled. ‘Stray bullets, plural. Steering column’s wasted.’

‘This bus is fucked?’ the first biker asked.

‘This bus is fucked.’

‘And here come the cops,’ Chaney commented, kicking the doors closed.

Vic saw who Chaney had been referring to. Sheriff Blanks and two other cops — ex-cops now, he supposed — had emerged from the station’s smashed front door and were coming down the steps. The pretty officer who’d once let Vic off a parking ticket had what looked like a fence post embedded in her abdomen.

As the adults quietened the kids, that dreadful, gentle hooting came in to fill the silence. From the several streets that met on the square, and many of the buildings around them, the dead of Danton Rock converged.

‘Dinner is served,’ Chaney said. And he started reloading the Remington.