Young Writers Society

Cautiously, they picked their way between rows of abandoned cars, flitting between the shadows of crumbling buildings. Moving stealthily like cats, two men, each cradling a shotgun, and three women crept along the desolate urban ruins. Cupped in one of the women’s hands was a tiny radio, its desperate crackling providing the only sound other than the crunch of footsteps on broken earth. Their bodies were tensed, the hairs on the back of their necks standing on end, their eyes roaming wildly, searching for invisible terrors.

They reached a small plaza, clear of cars, and stopped. The wind whistled through the empty streets, eerily kicking up leaves in the alleyways. The radio went dead.

For an instant, there was nothing. Suddenly the street was thronged with zombies, fetid corpses swarming out of rotting buildings, from under manholes, driven by a determined hunger. One of the men was instantly swept up in a sea of flesh and maggots; the other raised his shotgun and loosed it into the crowd, once, twice. A zombie’s head exploded; he raised the weapon again but before he could fire they fell upon him, ripping, tearing, scratching, biting. And all the time, even from my vantage point on top of a multi-storey car park, even amid the tide of the undead, I could see a cold finality enter their eyes.

I shuddered and turned away. Years of this had hardened my heart to such horrors- I had seen people ripped limb from limb without so much as blinking- but this time it was different. Something about one of the women had attracted my attention, moments before she was torn apart by the horde. A large bulge in her belly.

I sat down on the cold tarmac and stared across the city. The sky was a dark grey, giving an extra dimension to the shadows that rose up behind abandoned buildings. The whole place was dead.

I removed the slouch hat and dark green shades I always wore to keep what little sun there was off my face, and threw them onto the floor. I sat for a long time, feeling only a dull numbness; eventually I heard the soft crunch of footsteps behind me.

“Never gets easier, does it, Jack?” Crow growled. I looked up at him; his flesh was rotten and decaying, and maggots crawled through an empty eye socket. It made me glad I still had a heart beating in my chest.

“She was pregnant, Crow,” I said wearily, wiping my eyes with my hand. He shrugged. I heard the bones creak.

“Don’t feel guilty. It’s about your survival as much as theirs. If you didn’t lure them to us, you’d be no use to us. You need our protection as much as we need their flesh.” I glanced up at him again.

“I still don’t understand why you don’t just eat animals,” I said, knowing before I'd even said it that it was pointless. Crow laughed hollowly.

“We would. But, then again, animals don’t answer fake radio broadcasts, or brave cities full of the undead when they think one of their own is in danger. If we can, we eat humans to survive. If they can, they blast our heads off to survive. They feast on us as much as we feast on them.

“You’re awfully philosophical for a corpse,” I muttered dryly, picking at my boots. He shrugged again.

“Remember, you have a quota, Jack. We need another four this month.” He turned and stalked away. “Don’t disappoint us!” he shouted over his shoulder.

I was very much alone.

Days came and days went. It didn’t make much difference to me. From my shelter on top of the car park, I watched whatever was left of the world go by.

I didn’t have much. A crude hut consisting of a sheet of corrugated iron propped up by planks was my shield from wind and rain. A few feet away from the shelter were the smouldering remains of a cooking fire. A rifle, a sleeping bag, a telescope, a radio and whatever food the zombies brought me from run-down supermarkets formed all my worldly goods.

At my request, the zombies didn’t venture up to my floor. I didn’t need it looking and smelling like an abattoir. Only Crow was permitted to come see me.

There were only two things in the world I wanted. The first was some human company. The second was to ensure my own survival. I couldn’t have both. I’d made my choice.

“Here you are, Jack,” Crow rumbled, breaking me out of my thoughts. I hadn’t heard him come. He dropped an armful of cans at my side, idly chewing a strip of meat. I wondered what it might be. I shuddered when I wondered who it might be.

“Do you have to eat that here?” I asked coldly, turning away and peering distractedly through my telescope.

“Why’s that?” he asked in mock confusion. “Does it remind you of who you are? What you do?”

“No, it reminds me I live amongst a bunch of monsters.”

He turned his good eye to me, folding his arms across his greyed, rotten chest. “Monsters?” he asked, leaning in closer to me. I was suddenly hit by an overpowering stench. “Need I remind you, Jack, that I may have human blood on my teeth, but you have it on your hands. You still have a beating heart, but you harden it to your own kind‘s screams.” He stood up straight again. “Now I ask you,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, “which of us is the real monster?”

I couldn’t really answer that. Crow smiled thinly, pulling back decaying lips to reveal rows of teeth, which were either yellow, black or missing, before limping casually away.

I turned angrily back to my telescope, studying the surrounding area with a vengeance. There was no wind now. Everything was eerily silent; even more so than normal.

There! Something was moving, sneaking along the shadows like a cat. I dropped the telescope and snatched up my rifle, peering through the sights; they magnified the scene almost as much as the telescope.

The source of the movement was a man. He must have been in his early fifties; his shirt was torn and ragged, his hair greying and unkempt. He sat crouching behind a car; alert, watching and fearful.

I barely even felt the trigger click. A moment later the bullet exploded into his neck, splattering the ground behind him with blood. His eyes jolted wide open for a second, and then his head lolled forward and he was gone.

Already the zombies were emerging from their hiding places, sensing the new kill. Now they would feast. I threw the gun down and crawled deep into my sleeping bag. The night was darkening already; I had lit my fire an hour or so beforehand, but the flickering glow offered no warmth as it danced across my face. All I felt was cold and emptiness. There had been no pangs of regret, no sudden remorse as the gun went off. There never had been. Perhaps there should be.

Wearily, I closed my eyes and willed myself into an uneasy sleep.

I woke with a jolt; a hand was clamped tightly over my mouth, my eyes dazzled by a blinding light. I tried to cry out but the shout died in my throat when I realised what was happening; silhouetted in a beam of torchlight, finger to her lips, eyes wide and desperate, was a woman. A living, breathing person.

“Sssshh…” she whispered, then turned and said something to someone behind her. There was a click and the torch went out.

My eyes, having only just accustomed to the flood of light, now had to grow used to the twilight again. The fire was still going, but had died down considerably, offering neither warmth or comfort. Behind her, dawn was breaking slowly; a stream of lustrous purples, oranges and golds broke into shining ribbons and wove gracefully above our heads. The morning aurora was one of the few things I knew and loved.

I saw now that the person was not so much a woman but a girl, barely eighteen, nineteen perhaps. I also saw why I had mistaken her age. In the firelight, her eyes sparkled with a fierce defiance, a determination that far outshone her slender years.

And she was very much alive. It was all I could do to stop myself caressing her skin, just to make sure that she wouldn't suddenly fade away like a dream, that there was warm blood pulsing through her veins.

She wasn’t alone. Behind her stood a young man, in his mid-twenties, dark, stocky and well-built. Clutching his hand tightly, her ghostly white skin standing out against the half-light, was a girl, only about five or six.

“Get up,” the older girl muttered, and I quickly obliged. Unconciously, I found myself drawing back slightly; so many years without true human contact made me awkward and almost fearful around them.

“How… how did you get up here?” I murmured sleepily, my words half-slurred. I was thinking of four storeys completely filled with the undead.

“We scaled the building,” she shrugged, as if recanting the weather. “You do realise that there’s a car park full of zombies below you, right?”

“I was aware of it.”

“We saw your firelight; we reckoned zombies don’t have much skill with matches. Tanya, by the way. And this is Reuben and Emily.” She held out her hand.

“Jack,” I took it distractedly.

“Got quite a set-up here,” Reuben said slowly, his lips twitching into a thin smile. “Been hiding up here long?”

“You could say that.” The realisation dawned on me; they thought I was just another survivor. I felt a shudder pass through me. It was fine to watch my fellow humans be torn apart from up here, but they had always been far away, down on the ground below me. And they had never introduced themselves.

“We need to move quickly,” Reuben said, derailing my train of thought. Tanya nodded and turned back to me.

“We climbed up to the floor below- it seems to be clear of zombies- and left our ropes there. So what- are you in or not?”

I nodded my head slowly. My mind, almost by default, was already desperately turning through plots to get Crow's attention without raising suspicion.

And then I glanced into the little girl's eyes, and I felt the last of my conviction melt away. I had nearly gone crazy, sitting up here with nothing but corpses for company. I was suddenly horrified at what I had become; that deceit and treachery had become second nature to me. Leading my own people into traps. Betraying them, to be butchered by hordes of zombies. The time had come to put things right.

I was tired of being alone.

Tanya glanced at Reuben, and then they both nodded. We crept down the slope leading to the next floor. Every shadow seemed to be moving, reaching out with grasping hands towards us.

My heart almost stopped when I realised one actually was. The figure it belonged to walked with a slow, shambling shuffle.

“Jack?” Crow growled. Tanya and Reuben turned to me with horrified looks in their eyes. The zombie knew my name. The slow throb of realisation was coming to them. “I hear footsteps. I smell blood. Is that you, Jack?” Behind me Emily started to sob quietly.

“Who’s up there, Jack?” Crow roared, and his shadow suddenly broke into a run. “Who are you hiding from me, Jack? Jack? JAAAAACK!”

Crow flew round the corner and lunged wildly at the nearest figure, Reuben. At the same moment he twisted round, slinging a shotgun from his back and aiming in one fluid motion. The blast went off, the echo resonating from the walls, and Crow crumpled in midair. Without pausing to breathe, Reuben aimed and fired again at the writhing zombie on the floor, and he fell still.

“Come on!” he yelled, leaping over the body. There would be no time to scale down. Already we could hear them stirring on the storey below us.

Reuben raced down the slope to the third floor and piled into the nearest abandoned vehicle, a large black van, before the undead had time to react. Tanya followed, lifting Emily into the passenger seat. Then she sprinted around to the front, flicking up the bonnet and grabbing at wires. Within moments the engine roared into life; she‘d obviously had practice.

She jumped into the side seat. I ran up and tried to climb up next to Reuben; he turned and lashed out with his foot, catching me square in the chest. I stumbled back, winded, and the door slammed shut. Without looking back, he slammed his foot on the pedals, ploughing through swarms of zombies that had descended within moments upon us.

I heard it roar out of sight, and was left with nothing but a cold, sickening fear. The undead were shambling slowly towards me. They didn’t have to worry. Their prey was going nowhere.

Their grasping claws reached out towards me, their rotting flesh sending waves of stench over me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I could hear the gentle break of dawn over the city before the outbreak, the people thronging in the streets, the hum of cars.

I felt my heart stop for the second time as I realised I wasn’t imagining it; a moment later the van roared back into view, mowing down broken and rotting corpses. The door swung open.

“Get in!” Tanya shouted, and I didn’t argue. I ran and jumped in, collapsing on the floor as the door shut. I was completely numb.

I don’t remember much else until the van stopped, perched on a hill outside the city limits. We all climbed out stiffly; dawn had fully broken now.

We stood silently for a minute. Then Tanya turned to me.

“You lured humans to the zombies?” she demanded. I nodded dumbly. There was no point denying it. They had known as soon as Crow had said my name.

Suddenly her eyes were swollen and glistening. “My father…” she murmured, wiping her eyes, “He… he went out scavenging for food yesterday evening. He was shot on the corner by the car park.” She didn’t have to say any more. With a shudder I remembered the man with greying, matted hair. Somehow I knew that she hadn’t allowed herself to shed a tear over it until now.

“Why did you come back?” I asked, glancing over at Reuben. He was standing slightly apart from us, his arms folded across his chest. It was clear it hadn’t been his idea to return to get me.

“You left people just like yourself to die,” Tanya whispered defiantly. I could see now her eyes didn’t just sparkle in the firelight; they seemed to burn with their own fire. “I guess I didn’t want to be like you.”

She turned back to the van. The conversation seemed to be over.

“Wait!” I cried, gripping her arm. “Don’t leave me here. Let me come with you.” I tried to read her face; it was wrought with indecision. “I’m not a monster,” I continued desperately. “I thought my own safety mattered to me above anything. I was wrong.” I looked deep into her eyes, begging, imploring. “Give me a chance. I’m tired of being alone.”

There was silence for a moment. Then slowly, cautiously, she nodded.

“Get in.” She motioned towards the passenger door before getting in herself. As I climbed in, the van’s engine spluttered into life.

It was time to put things right.