Sleep, Think, Die, page 4
“Right, well anyway, like I said, I kept them as a means of an emergency escape, or near enough. When I filled in the spaces in the walls up here, to make the place more sheltered, I also tied the ropes on, in case I ever needed to get down fast without using the stairs,”
“You mean the bell ropes are hanging on the outsides of these walls?” Bumper asked.
“Yes, I mean they don’t reach all the way down obviously and I can’t be hundred per cent sure they’ll hold a man’s weight, or that they’re totally secure, but…”
“Which sides did you tie them on to?” Bumper demanded.
“Well all four. Four bells, four ropes you see?”
“Fucking hell!” Gasher cursed, already swinging at the makeshift wall panels with his club. Rumble followed suit with the butt of the rifle.
Bumper put away the Glock and began to kick at the panels. Between them, the space was suddenly full of light and air. Bumper leaned over the parapet; the cemetery was a long way down.
“Lavender, you go first. You’re much lighter than the rest of us; these ropes will be bound to hold you,”
“I’m not going to argue with you,” Lavender said. She put the razor away but kept the knuckle duster on, throwing first one leg, then the other, over the edge and grasping the rope tightly with two hands. The others looked on until she had lowered herself almost to the full extent of the rope and hung there, dangling helplessly.
The pew door on the floor below hit the deck with a hard slap. There was nothing more than a few steps between them and the zombie now.
Bumper took charge, “Gasher, you and Carson take a rope each. Rumble and I have got the weapons; we should hold it off while you two get out of here!”
“No chance!” Gasher said, spinning the handle of his spiked club restlessly, “I’m heavier than both of you put together. I don’t believe for one minute these poxy bell ropes will hold me. You two get over there, I’m staying to meet and greet this fucker head on,”
It was there again; the light of near insanity in Gasher’s eye. Bumper knew it was pointless to argue. He cocked his leg over the side, reached for the rope, and lowered himself down. Carson followed suit on a rope the other side of the belfry, silently congratulating himself on his forethought.
Rumble stood firm alongside Gasher, “If those ropes won’t hold your weight they won’t hold mine either. I get first shot, because if we can take it out clean with a gun you can save your energy for whatever follows. I am telling you now mate, I am not ending my days like this. We are going back down those stairs and we are getting out of here, no matter what.”
Then there was no time for further discussion, because the zombie was upon them and the time for talking had passed.
*
It charged. As soon as it broached the top step it dipped what was left of its right shoulder and charged, barrelling into Rumble, sending the rifle spinning uselessly over the edge to tumble noisily to the ground. Despite its rotting state, it was evident the zombie had once been a large man. There was still some muscle to its frame, though the stench of corruption made Gasher gag. He heard the breath being driven out of his friend’s lungs at the unexpected force of the impact. He raised his club, ready to drive it into the exposed area of the creature’s neck, bellowing in frustration when instead it caught on something behind him and would not come free.
Gasher turned, enraged. The club had become stuck in a remnant of Carson’s makeshift shutters; a misshapen piece of wood that still clung stubbornly to a wooden joist. He pulled angrily at it, driven on by the heart-wrenching scream Rumble vented at whatever the zombie had done while his back was turned. At last it came free. Gasher turned just in time to meet the eyes of the creature that now had blood dripping from its rancid jaws. It had bitten Rumble.
Gasher swung the club a second time, its force restricted due to the cramped space. It met with the zombie’s skull, sending fragments of bone and skin spattering but having no real effect in stopping it. He swung again and this time, to his amazement, the creature dodged the blow.
Gasher released the club, understanding that it was useless here. He let it fall to his feet. So be it; he would resort to his bare hands if he had to. After what the undead had done to Rumble, he would welcome it.
It all happened so fast, there was nothing he could do to stop it. He flashed out his hand at speed, intending the momentum to add strength to the killing blow. Only instead of digging into the zombie, it was Rumble’s thick neck he found himself buried in up to his wrist. Rumble’s throat he tore out and held dangling between them.
The zombie stuck out its mottled tongue, tasting Rumble’s blood as it dripped from Gasher’s hand. Then it pushed Rumble’s stricken form over the edge, its greedy eyes on Gasher.
Gasher had thought he had known rage, but now he was seized with something much greater, he had no words for it. His hands acting independently of thought, he grasped the zombie by its and spun hard, sending it crashing into one of the pillars. Slamming his foot into the sunken chest, he grasped an arm and heaved. It slid out of its socket with a gristly squelch. The zombie looked down at Gasher’s foot stupidly, its shoulder twitching as it tried to grab it with an arm that was no longer there. Gasher let out a maniac laugh, changing foot, grabbing the other arm, and wrenching that one free of its anchor too. Then he dropped his foot, found his balance and slammed the base of his palm hard and fast into the zombie’s nose, shoving inwards and upwards with expert, lethal skill. The bone loosened, sliding easily under the blackening skin to lodge in the front of the creature’s soft brain.
He hadn’t meant to hit it so hard. He had wanted to exact a more satisfying revenge for what it had done to Rumble. Too late; Gasher looked on as its strange eyes dimmed suddenly, it took a teetering step sidewards, then plummeted over the edge.
Gasher watched the armless form bounce and clatter heavily, staining the ancient walls red wherever it hit. He wiped his slick hands on his stained clothes and retrieved his club.
*
When Lavender got over her terror of the drop enough to look down, she saw there was a ledge about six or seven foot beneath her. Made of stone, it looked wide and solid enough to take her weight. The first time she contemplated letting go of the rope and dropping down to it she had been thrown off balance, in more ways than one, by the sight of Rumble’s corpse brushing past her and hitting the ground below. The second time, the gory torso of what was still unmistakably a zombie bounced past. When she was as sure as she could be that there were no more bodies about to come raining down upon her, she gathered her courage and dropped.
She landed on the ledge with inches to spare. It was a lot wider than she had realised whilst dangling above it. She was still a long way from the ground, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that at least no zombie could get to her where she was. Later on, getting down would be a problem she would have to overcome. For now, she was content just to be alive. She would mourn Rumble when the dust settled. She was out of reach up here, the air was fresh and the ledge was solid. True peace was near impossible to come by just lately; you had to grab it where you found it.
*
Gasher’s blood was up. Spiked club in hand, he intended to step back down into the little room below. He jumped at the sight of another undead shuffling its way in silence towards the steps. It must have caught his scent because it lifted its vacant eyes upward, emitted a chilling, low groan, and went for him. Gasher stepped back, mindful this time that there was not room enough to swing his club high. He held it to his side instead, two-handed, like a cricket player waiting to be bowled. He allowed the zombie to reach the top step; even to turn the corner and begin its advance towards him. He saw immediately that it was not of the same ilk as the one he had just despatched. This zombie was more of your garden variety; nothing in its demeanour other than a one-track mind hell bent on devouring flesh. His flesh.
It was almost upon him; too late to swing the club into action now. At the last minute Gasher crouched low, the zombie’s arms closing around thin air rather than his neck. Gasher grunted, wrapping his meaty arms around its bony hips and heaved simultaneously upwards and outwards.
For the third time that morning, Gasher watched a body thump and bounce its way down the side of the old church building. It stopped about halfway down, apparently landing on some sort of ledge.
Gasher shrugged; at least it was out of the way.
*
Lavender shrieked, jumping to her feet. A wave of nausea washed over her when she saw that the mangled mess of skin and bone that had damn near landed in her lap was not dead. It tried to blink, difficult since much of its eyelids had rotted away. She heard the snapping and fracturing of countless small bones as the creature pushed itself up onto its forearms, having landed face down, and turned to look at her.
She couldn’t allow it to get up. Even lying prone as it was, it was obvious the zombie would tower over her if allowed to get to what was left of its feet. Looking round desperately in the hope that there might be someone nearby to come to her rescue, her racing thoughts sped through her options. Jumping was out of the question; the drop would cripple if not kill her. Pushing the creature over the ledge was dubious. It looked deceptively heavy; besides, it was likely to flash out a rancid hand and grab her the minute she attempted to touch it.
Only one option left then; kill it.
Lavender looked down at the sharply spiked knuckle-duster still adorning her fingers. The thought of having to deploy it both terrified and repelled her, but she knew she had very little choice. Better get on with it before the thing was upright.
Temporarily shutting off that part of her mind that allowed her to understand just how awful this was, Lavender strode over to the stupidly prone zombie and kicked at its hand, intending to make it fall flat on its face again and thus easier to tackle.
The hand flashed out, just as she had feared. It grasped her ankle in a surprisingly strong grip, making her cry out loud. Afraid of falling, she sank down on one knee. Ignoring the pain, she raised the hand that bore the knuckle duster and smashed down, as hard as she could, into the back of the zombie’s neck. She shut her eyes, scared to stop. Blindly she began a fervent sawing motion, feeling the crude implement snag on tangles of sinew and vein. She did not dare to stop, forcing her hand deeper and deeper into the mire of gore, chanting over and over to herself the mantra Gasher had instilled in her; ‘You have to get the medulla oblongata; you have to get the medulla oblongata…’
She only stopped when she became exhausted. sweating so hard her clothes stuck to her frail frame, her breath coming in hard, stunted gasps. She was amazed the creature had not yet relaxed its grip on her ankle. Dreading what she might see, wondering how she could not have finished the thing off, she opened one wary eye.
The hand was still there, firmly gripping her ankle. It had become detached at the wrist, whether because of the frenzied manner of her attack or the zombie’s urgent writhing she would never know. Opening her other eye, slightly more confident, she took in the result of her handiwork, gagged and promptly shut them again, wishing she had never seen.
She had near enough decapitated the zombie. Its neck rested on the rim of the ledge, the head hanging down at roughly a forty-five-degree angle, the way someone might flip a lid on a bottle of water. The ledge had become slippery with oily, congealing blood.
Lavender sank back against the solid wall of the church, swallowing deep breaths and trying hard not to vomit. She remembered the hand and kicked her foot wildly, not wanting to touch the thing. She felt its grip release and heard a wet thump as it hit a tile on the roof below and presumably stayed there.
Footsteps approached. Lavender snapped her eyes wide open, only to see Carson standing there, pale-faced and trembling, hands in his pockets.
“Jesus!” He murmured, looking at her with renewed respect, a gleam of wariness in his eyes.
“You better believe it,” Lavender muttered. Then she leaned over the ledge on all fours, and threw up.
Up or Down
“You didn’t think of helping me?” Lavender’s tone was accusing. She wiped spittle from her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Hell yes, of course I did. There was no time! That thing landed practically on top of you and then you were up and hacking into it like crazy! Believe me, from where I was standing you didn’t need any help,”
“Would’ve been nice though,” Lavender muttered, “Scared me half to death,”
“Me too!” Carson empathised, “It’s not every day it rains zombies,”
Lavender paused, recalling the way Rumble’s unresisting body had dropped silently passed her. Carson saw the look in her eye.
“Look, I’m sorry about your friend. I didn’t mean anything by it,”
Lavender shrugged it off, “It’s ok, “she said, “I’m not used to having dead bodies land in my lap either,”
She came shakily to her feet, waving away the hand Carson extended to her.
“Wonder how they are doing up there?” Lavender mused, looking up, “Oh shit!”
“What?” Carson asked, following her gaze.
Suspended in mid-air, dangling precariously above their heads a good fifteen or twenty feet up, was Bumper.
“When you said these ropes wouldn’t reach all the way down you weren’t kidding, were you?” Lavender said sarcastically.
“Look I did my best at the time, okay? I wasn’t expecting company any time soon! I have to admit I didn’t realise I had cut that rope quite as short as that,”
“Well what’s done is done,” Lavender shrugged again, suddenly philosophical, “Question is, what now?”
“Looks like there’s some kind of problem,” Carson said, still staring up at Bumper, “Otherwise he’d be down here on this ledge with us by now,”
“Maybe he’s scared he’ll miss the ledge from that height and just plummet all the way down?” Lavender suggested.
Carson nodded in agreement, “Maybe. Nothing to lose shouting up to him anyway. All the local zombies seem to know we’re here already,”
Of one accord they looked down, steadying themselves with a hand to the bricks. On the ground below, Rumble’s broken body was clearly visible. There was a lurching figure or two making its slow way to the church door – potential problems for Gasher to deal with in his own unique way should they make it to the belfry. Other than that, the churchyard was far from overrun with the undead.
“I’ll risk it,” Carson said. He turned his face upward again, cupping his mouth with his hands and shouted, “Bumper! It’s Carson. You okay?”
“No!” Bumper shouted back. His voice came as if through gritted teeth, “For God’s sake help me!”
“What’s wrong?” Lavender called up. Carson caught her eye, rolling his own eyes heavenward but refraining from pointing out that the problem was obvious.
Bumper had no such qualms, “Well apart from being stuck, dangling on a rope halfway down a building which is a hell of a lot taller than it looks from the ground, nothing!” He retorted, adding, “Oh, that, and the small detail that I think I might have broken my left arm!”
“Oh shit!” Lavender repeated.
“Fuck!” Carson hissed, hands on hips, thinking hard, “Shout up to Gasher! He can haul you up if you just keep a hold of the rope!”
“I’ve been doing that for the past five minutes!” Bumper’s voice was becoming hoarse, “You didn’t hear me?”
“We’ve been a bit busy down here!” Carson shouted back, ignoring the look Lavender flashed at him at his use of the word ‘we.’
“Whatever. I think he’s gone. Gasher I mean. I don’t think he’s in the belfry anymore,”
“Then where the hell is he?”
“I don’t know and to be honest mate, right now I don’t care. What I do know is that you two need to get off that ledge and get up here before I lose my grip. I don’t think I can hold on much longer.”
“Shit!” Lavender hissed again.
“Shit!” Carson agreed. He began casting about, looking for a fast way down that wouldn’t result in two snapped necks. There was nothing obvious; certainly nothing that was not inherently dangerous.
“There’s no way down,” Lavender said, apparently reading his mind.
“No,” Carson reluctantly agreed, “So the only option is to go back up,”
“But how? The ropes are too high to reach,”
Carson nodded thoughtfully, eyeing Lavender. He held out his hand expectantly, “Don’t suppose you’d be willing to hand over your weapons?”
*
Bumper clung on for dear life, holding his broken arm as close in to his body as he was able. He twisted his good arm into the rope in the hopes of securing a better hold, but he was weakening fast now. The pain was coming in waves, seeming to radiate from his elbow. Sweat trickled down his forehead and into his eyes, forcing them closed. He tried not to look down; every time he did a wave of giddiness threatened to loosen his grip. His fate was entirely at the mercy of others. Rumble was undoubtedly dead. Gasher seemed to have abandoned him. That left Carson, a stranger and an as yet unknown quantity despite having taken them in the night before; and Lavender, who was, well, Lavender…
*
Carson was grateful that Lavender hadn’t put up any kind of argument, as he had expected. On the contrary, she seemed eager to slip the flesh-mounted spikes off her hands. Carson didn’t look too closely, just wiped them quickly and carefully on his jeans. She dipped into her pockets and took out the razor.
“Wish me luck!” Carson said taking it from her, sounding more confident than he felt. He shuffled sideways around the platform until he found one of the ancient wooden beams in a corner of the church building. Hoping the weapons would make adequate climbing tools, he jumped up, smacking the knuckle duster into the wood. He gave a cry of pain as his knuckles jarred against the hard surface, but the implement seemed to hold. He hauled himself up fractionally on one arm, slamming the razor into the wood this time. Lavender rushed to support his flailing feet, giving him some grounding from which to push off again. For a second time the knuckle duster took hold, though it worried Carson at how easily he extracted it from the wood. Hoping the wooden beam would remain exposed until he had reached the part where a longer rope dangled tantalisingly, He continued his ascent, his shoulders burning with pain and exertion.
