Dead Ahead Read online

  That’s when the screaming started, sounding distant in his numbed ears. He looked down at his trembling blood soaked hands. Bemused and wondering where it had all come from. He looked to his side to see an elderly man cowering from him in horror, droplets of blood smattered on his pale skin. He saw his lips move silently, not quite making out the words they were forming. Then he heard it.

  “Infected,” it came almost as a whisper at first, but soon the whole carriage was screaming it while scurrying away from him, “INFECTED!” Who? Not me? But all eyes were on him, eyes holding fear within them. Everyone backed away from him, no one knowing quite what to do.

  The ticket inspector was a big man and an ugly man too. He seemed too big to be doing such a job. He looked like a gorilla in a cheap suit, completely out of place on the express London to Glasgow. But the inspector had to be. The rail company had drafted in security teams to cover the lack of muscle on the trains. He approached Alan with caution. He knew his instructions, they were simple. Anyone showing signs of infection had to exit the train, immediately! This was an easy one, just a spurter, and he was still in a state of shock. The inspector pulled on his stout gloves and grabbed Alan by the collar, turning his head away so as not to get sprayed, then dragged him over to the door. He presses the door button twice, slowly, and they opened just enough to squeeze a body through. The pushback mechanism had been widened lately for just this occurrence. He moved Alan forward and gave him a push.

  It was then that Alan had a serene sense of calm, like he was floating in mid air, and for all intents and purposes he was, all for about three seconds. He was lucky, well, as lucky as he was going to get today. He crashed into a thick bush breaking his fall, about three ribs and his collar bone. He lay there, staring up at the sky, trying to cough. Every time he tried it felt like his chest was on fire. So he laid there, blood still bubbling from his pale blue lips.

  It was getting late. He had to be somewhere, but where? The meeting! He was going to be late, Alan was never late! He threw himself from the floor, sitting bolt upright. Pain shot through his body, but that only spurred him on. He stumbled to his feet, straightened his coat and started down the tracks. He hoped to god he was headed in the right direction.

  He staggered on for what felt like hours, every excruciating step taking him slowly toward the meeting. He had to clinch this deal, everything depended on this deal! Then he saw her. Lying beside the tracks, she was covered in blood, her head sitting at a crooked angle. She looked familiar to Alan, but why? He moved round to get a better look at her face. Then it hit him. It was her, the woman he had sprayed, that wasn’t her blood; it was his. He had killed her with a simple cough.

  He stood for awhile, staring at her blank twisted face. He remembered them smiling at each other as they had boarded the train. She was pretty, not as pretty as his wife, but still. He took a deep in sigh, god his chest hurt. Suddenly her eyes flicked to meet his. Alan shot backwards “Holy Jesus Mary” he scrambled away from her. Forgetting any pain he was in, he turned and stumbled away as best he could. He could barely hear her calling for help in an inhuman throaty gurgle as he fled. “I don’t have time for this guff, I have a meeting to get to,” he mumbled to himself as he left her there, trying desperately to drown her out.

  It was dark now, when the hell had that happened? There was still a sliver of moonlight to see by so Alan kept on walking, stumbling over the tracks. Then his foot hit something soft and he tripped landing gently to his knees, “What the hell?” he murmured.

  “Aaaaggghhh, get off of me! You idiot!” a withered voice came from the tracks.

  Alan lifted himself from the man and knelt down beside him to look at him in the moonlight. He shouldn’t have. He knew who this was.

  The old man caught his eyes, “You bastard! You did this to me you fat shit!”

  Alan tried to get away, but the old man already had a tight grip of his suit jacket. He managed to pull himself out of the jacket, spinning himself 360 degrees and dizzily tried to leap over the old man, he nearly made it too. Then he felt something snag his ankle, the old man had him in his implausibly strong grip again. Alan fell hard; smacking his head on a concrete railway sleeper. Just before it all went black Alan spared one last thought for the meeting, he going to be really quite late.

  But Alan didn’t know any of this. All he knew now was the hunger, the unquenchable hunger. Its all there had ever been, all there ever will be. And that’s all there was, right up to the point where it flared up inside of him. It was right there, his food, curled round his neck, holding him still. His mouth dripped with saliva, running down the side of his chin as if directed at his meal. Then the cold, it started as a pin prick at the back of his neck where his scull met his spine. It slid in slowly; everything happened slowly to him lately, he could hear the blade grinding across the base of his scull as it slid upward into his brain. Then there was nothing, sweet nothing. The hunger was gone. Alan died, again!

  ______________________

  “See son! That’s how you do it. You gotta sneak up on these infected bastards!” Brandon’s lips moved in synchronicity with his fathers, not in a mocking way, just having heard his dad come out with the same speech every time he killed one of the infected. He let go of its neck, dropping the body to the ground and cleaned the blade of his commando knife on its coat, he then slid the knife back into its sheath in his boot.

  His dad wore the bike gear as usual; there was no time for washing clothes, besides, he hadn’t changed out of them since what happened at the shop. His light brown hair was lank and greasy now and he had to keep flicking it away from his dark sunken eyes. Brandon wasn’t sure if his dad actually slept any more. He had gradually been getting thinner; not for lack of eating, there was always plenty of food to be found, but still his dad didn’t look healthy. The good length of stubble growing on his slim face was doing a good job of hiding it though. On his back he wore his rucksack, just a small one; they had to travel light, with his machete handle poking out of the top and his bike helmet strapped to the side. He took the Naginata (bladed staff) from Brandons’ hand without taking his eyes from the infected for a few seconds then turned back; about to speak.

  “It’s the infected ones you have to watch out for! Yeah! I know dad, you told me!” Brandon said in a slightly tired and sarcastic tone.

  “I’m just trying to press a point son! It’s the infected ones that are quick! They are the ones that are mostly human; they still have all their muscle mass to keep them going. But yeah! I suppose you are right, I don’t have to tell you every time. After….Y’know....?”

  ‘He’s right’, Brandon thought to himself. ‘They are faster.’ They would ramble around like the ‘husks’ (that’s what his dad called the turned ones, he didn’t like it when Brandon said ‘zombies’) but when they catch the scent of flesh they are fast, too fast. That’s why he has them walk, to keep them strong. They tried using cars in the beginning. But the noise just attracted the infected, and when you ran out of fuel, which you always did, they were there waiting for you. That had been a harsh lesson to learn for both of them.

  So they stuck to the back roads and train tracks for now. There seemed to be less of them there.

  “We head for the border and then for the coast, then we head out to a nice small island somewhere, a place we can be safe from these bastardin’ things.”

  That’s all his dad seemed to do lately, repeat himself, though he had been adding in more and more swearing in the past few days.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes son?”

  “Do you think mums ok?”

  “Aww! Jesus fucking Christ Brandon! Not this again!”

  “I’m sorry dad. I just worry about her!

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry too. But I’ve said it before. John’s a good guy, I’m sure he can take care of your mother, and she’s not exactly helpless herself. Remember when she attacked me with that wooden spoon?”

  Brandon smiled thinly, but he c
ouldn’t laugh, he had too many things going on in his head. His dad needed him; he could already see him losing it a little. He wasn’t as afraid of the husks as he should be. He wasn’t even afraid of the infected any more. He had fought five of them to clear out a shop in the last town they were in, just to get some food.

  The shop had seemed empty when they had first entered. They thought they had hit a gold mine. There were rows and rows of food, more than they could ever eat. They had actually whooped with joy, but that’s when they came at them. Brandon had stood with his back to the door, fumbling with the key that had been left in it, desperately trying to get it open again, while his dad sunk the machete into the head of the first to attack, it didn’t stop it though, it kept coming. He kept hold of the handle, ducking under his own arm and twisting the machete, snapping its neck to the side and splitting its head open with a crack, releasing the machete and spilling its brains out over a counter.

  He planted his left boot into the chest of the next infected and sunk the machete diagonally halfway into its neck lodging it into its collar bone. He let go of the machete and kicked up with his right foot connecting with the machete handle overbalancing the infected and sending it to the floor, grabbing the naginata from the Velcro strapping on his backpack, he swung it neatly round and up in front of him; slicing off an other creatures hand, spinning it round to slice from its armpit to the opposite side of its throat, then planting the butt of the weapon under its chin separating the two halves. The infected with the machete in its neck was now up and coming at him, he quickly chopped in at the opposite side its neck from the machete, connecting the two blades and removing its head and neck leaving a tidy V cut deep into its chest. The body hadn’t hit the floor by the time the other one was upon him, knocking the naginata away and them both to the floor.

  It was on him in seconds, but he managed to get his right foot between them holding it away. As it squirmed and scratched at the coarse material of the motorbike trousers the commando knife in his boot started to slip free, kicking at the creature sending it up in the air and releasing the knife from its sheath, he grabbed the handle of the knife in the air while sliding himself to the side, planting the butt of the knife on the floor directly below the Infected’s head, it slammed to the floor impaling its face onto the blade and stopped.

  He got up from the floor and looked towards Brandon with a smile “that was a close….” Another infected slammed into the side of him; they tumbled across the floor and into a kiosk. This one was big, and it was on top of him. Pinning him down, it had its hands on his shoulders pulling its rancid teeth towards his face, his forearm was under its chin but it wasn’t enough. It was slowly inching closer. He could feel its vile breath on his face, a thick glob of drool hanging from its mouth. Then it shuddered, its pale white eyes rolled into the back of its head while it sucked up the globule of spit. Brandon had pushed his own blade into back of its neck, scrambling its brain. Just the way his dad had shown him countless times as they made their way around the town running from house to house. They pulled the corpse from on top of him, and he got up.

  Once he was up he started laughing, almost manically. He plonked himself down on top of the fat corpse, which let out a disgusting belching wheezing sound, still chuckling to himself he looked Brandon in the eyes and said “Well I’m glad you actually decided to join in this time” slapping a hand on his shoulder he added “Lets pop these heads, get cleaned up and have something to eat. I’m hungry!”

  That had been the first and infected Brandon had ‘disposed of’ outright, his dad didn’t class it as killing, they were already dead. Popping the heads, as his dad put it, was destroying the brains of all the removed heads, they still bit frantically on the floor. They still had the hunger. He had been given the air pistol, and his dad insisted that Brandon popped the heads, to get him used to it, to teach him the exact angle to shoot through the eyeball at point blank range in order to kill the brain. The problem was, his dad was starting to enjoy it, he could see it in his eyes, and that’s what scared Brandon, that and the thought of losing him!

  They kept on walking down the tracks till his dad put a hand to Brandon’s chest. “Hang on there son” he spoke in a hushed voice. They had been walking in the dip of the train tracks for a while, but it had started to open up, exposing them to unwanted eyes. Brandon had been day dreaming again, he really had to stop that. His dad moved forward slowly, keeping low. Then he gave the signal for Brandon to follow. “The tracks cross over the motorway ahead, we are going to have to do this low and fast!” Brandon just nodded. It wasn’t the first time they had had to do this. So they scuttled away, trying to make as little noise as possible on the stone chips.

  His dad held up a hand, literally stopping them in their tracks nearly half way across. That’s when Brandon heard the moaning from below, it was growing louder with every second. His dad pointed at him and then to the left side of the flyover, then to himself and the right. Brandon silently made his way to the side and peeked over. The flyover crossed the motorway at an angle, so he was forced to look slightly behind himself to see down the line of cars. All six lanes were full, all headed in the same direction. This was a bad sign. They were all headed away from the same direction he and his dad were heading, and this many cars meant they were headed to a heavily populated area. He looked at his dad with panic in his eyes, scuffing the stones slightly with his feet. His father slowly lifted a finger to his lips then turned it down to point to the road.

  It took a minute or so before he built up the courage to tentatively look over the side. Still there was nothing there. He looked back to his dad, confused. His father held up three fingers, then two, then one and pointed it at him. He looked back over the side and they were there, just emerging from under the flyover, weaving in and out of the cars. There seemed to be eight or nine infected. But then the husks followed, around thirty of them. Brandon had never seen this before, it was either infected or husks, they didn’t move together. He looked back to his dad. Who gave him a shrug, put his finger to his lips again and beckoned him over. He made sure not to make any sound as he crossed the width of the flyover.

  “Did you see that?” he asked his dad in a whisper.

  “Shhh! Wait till we are safe.

  ‘We are never safe,’ he thought to himself.

  Once they were across and getting back into the shelter of the banking around the tracks he turned to his dad and asked “Have you ever seen that before?”

  “Ha! I have only seen what you have seen, son: and that I have never seen.”

  “Its like they were following them.”

  “It sorta’ makes sense though. The infected are quick. They have a better chance of catching food. The husks only really catch someone with vast numbers. They will probably join a larger group of husks if they find them.”

  “But dad,” he said, confused, “they’re dead!”

  “So?”

  “How can they think?”

  “I’m not sure they do think. They react. It makes sense that the brain still has some thought process, even at a very basic level, as it’s the only way to dispose of them, to kill the brain.”

  “But why were they following the infected?”

  “They weren’t. They were following the food.”

  They didn’t get far before they came across another problem. Brandon was still thinking about the dead when his dad gave him a nudge. Another road, only this time it crossed over the rail tracks

  “Into the trees,” his father said, pushing him to the side “I know it makes a racket, but I would rather they heard us than saw us. Their eyes are definitely sharper than their ears”

  They quietly rustled their way through the copse and under the road, then back into the brush at the other side. They stayed hidden by the trees till they ran out of cover, and then went back on the tracks. They soon discovered why they had run out of trees.

  There was a house right beside the tracks, a tall hedge between the t
wo. Brandon looked at his dad expectantly. But in return his dad looked at the sun

  “It’s still too early, we can find somewhere else to stop for the night” they carried on down the railway for some time, both of them leaving each other to their thoughts “I think we will have to leave the tracks soon.” His dad murmured

  “I think you’re right,” Brandon replied with raised eyebrows and a slight smile.

  “You saw the cars?”

  “Yeah! They were all going the same way, and there were too many of them”

  “Good lad” he looked at Brandon with pride “Carlisle is up ahead by my reckoning, and we don’t want to go through there!” he gave a little chuckle “Hell, we wouldn’t have wanted to go through there before there were zom….. Before all of this”

  His slip with the ‘Z’ word almost made it funny, but Brandon didn’t usually get his dads humour anyway.

  “Here we are” his dad exclaimed “We are losing cover and I think if we go any further we will walk right into the hornets nest. We’ll head down the road on the left there and find somewhere to hold up for the night.”

  They could see a house from the tracks, and his dad got quite exited when he saw the sign out front ‘Woodstyle Joinery’ “There must be some handy stuff in there.” Brandon just sighed.

  “Thank god for idiots,” his dad said as he pulled the key from under a small stone beside the front door. The house was empty. The owners must have fled before everything kicked off as it was still clean and tidy, no signs of a struggle. Brandon hated sweeping a house for the dead. The only good surprise was that there were none there. He had had to sleep on floors before, just because the beds still contained the remnants of the owners. But this one was clean, and that’s all that mattered.