Chapter 24
It was apparent as soon as Miles and Devon drove past the “Welcome to Graves End” sign that something had gone terribly wrong. They felt the thumping SlamCore beat before they heard it, which then grew progressively louder and louder over the noise of the engine as they neared the township. The two of them exchanged worried looks, and hoped that what they feared the most had not actually happened.
A psychotic zombie then charged into the middle of the road from out of nowhere, straight into the path of the bus. Devon slammed his foot on the brakes, but he didn’t have a chance of stopping in time. The bus ploughed straight into the schizoid zombie and squashed it like a bug on a windscreen.
“Holy crap!” Devon yelled. “What the hell’s goin’ on here?”
“Don’t stop!” Miles told him. A few crazed zombies were already eyeing off the bus, and Miles was beginning to feel like a sitting duck. “Just keep driving.”
They tried getting as close as they could to the set-up area, but it soon became clear that this was out of the question. Hundreds of zombies had flooded into the streets, and the area had transformed into one huge zombie rave. It was like a riot and an uprising happening all at once, with deranged undead creatures attacking anything that moved and tearing the town apart.
They had no hope of getting the bus through there. That street was a dead end, in every sense of the world, and if they tried to drive down it they would find themselves swamped within seconds. Devon made a sharp turn and drove down the next side street.
Miles blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes, just to be sure that what he was seeing was actually happening. He had hoped for a moment that this was all just a waking nightmare brought on by a lack of sleep.
“This don’t look good, man,” Devon said, his hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. “What should we do?”
“Just ... pull over up here.” Miles pointed to a quiet spot up ahead, and Devon pulled the bus over to the side of the road.
They sat in stunned silence for a moment, neither one knowing what to do next.
A couple of zombies hobbled by and pounded on the side of the bus, but kept on moving towards the music once they saw they had no way of getting inside.
Miles tried making sense of what was happening, but his brain refused to provide anything that resembled a logical explanation. This was like something out of a time-travel movie; it was as if Miles and Devon had been gone for ninety years rather than ninety minutes. The town they returned to was unrecognisable from the town they had left.
Miles was first to speak.
“We need to find out if anyone else is still alive,” he said.
“No, we need to get outta here, pronto!” Devon replied.
“Devon, we can’t just abandon everyone. If we leave and they’re still out there, we’ve just left them to die.”
“You don’t seriously think anyone could survive all this, do you?”
“I don’t know, but we’re not leaving until we know for sure.”
“Hey, I’m only doin’ this for the money! I’m not about to risk my life for a bunch of people I don’t hardly know.”
“You can do what you like. But I have to go check it out.” Miles stood and moved to the door. He looked in both directions to make sure the coast was clear. “Open the door please.”
Devon’s hand didn’t move. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said.
“If it was you or me out there, we’d want them to do the same.”
“Dude ... we can just leave. We can go back and then call for help.”
“There’s no time. Give me twenty minutes. If I find anyone, I’ll send them back here. If no one comes in that time, or if I don’t come back, you can leave. How does that sound?”
Devon didn’t like it, but he eventually agreed that it was reasonable. He flicked the switch, and the doors opened.
Devon closed the door again the instant Miles stepped out onto the footpath.
Miles crept cautiously in the direction of the set-up area. A few houses ahead he saw a couple of zombies, scurrying across the road like cockroaches.
He was almost tiptoeing as he went from one location to the next, compulsively looking in every direction for anything that might want to kill him. He now understood why you were urged to remain calm and not to panic in moments of crisis. Right now, panicking felt like the most natural thing in the world.
He passed a house with a garbage can knocked over and saw a bent golf club sticking out. He reached down to pick it up. It was a five iron.
For some reason he thought of a joke he remembered Elliott telling him when they were younger.
Two explorers were traipsing through the jungle when they saw a lion charging in their direction. The first explorer throws his supplies to the ground and runs away.
“What are you doing?” his partner shouted after him. “You can’t outrun a lion!”
“I don’t have to outrun a lion,” the explorer replied. “I only have to outrun you!”
It was at that moment that Miles heard the bus’s motor splutter to life, then slowly fade into the distance – seventeen minutes before the agreed-upon time. He may have had trouble holding onto his nerve, but Devon’s was long gone.
Devon may not have been the smartest person Miles had ever met, but at least he was smart enough to know that he couldn’t outrun a lion.
Miles continued on, creeping slowly down one of Graves End’s side streets. He did his best to remain as inconspicuous as possible, darting between bus shelters, phone booths and parked cars and anything else he could find to hide behind. He figured if he kept a low profile and didn’t draw attention to himself, he’d be alright. The occasional zombie shuffled by, and one or two came perilously close, but they took no notice of him. Their only interest was getting to the music.
He reached the intersection closest to the church car park. From here he could see where the laptop was set up, unmanned and broadcasting to all of Graves End. It was only a short distance away, no more than one hundred metres. But separating them was an ocean of reanimated bodies.
Miles knew straight away that he didn’t stand a chance of reaching it.
In the distance, a few blocks up the road, a herd of zombies was coming his way. This group numbered about fifty or sixty in total. Miles quietly slipped down an alley to avoid detection.
He moved carefully along the alley and attempted to formulate a plan in his mind while he waited for the herd to pass. His strategy up until that point was simply to make it up as he went along. That hadn’t got him very far. He now realised he probably should have taken a moment or two to think it all through before leaving the safety of the bus.
A garbage can toppled over behind him, sending a cold bolt of fear shooting down his spine.
He turned and saw that a zombie from the herd had followed him into the alley.
Miles wasted no time in making a run for it. The zombie gave chase, breaking into the equivalent of a light jog.
Despite attracting this undead pursuer, Miles didn’t feel like he was in any danger. Even in their deranged worked-up state, it wasn’t all that difficult for an able-bodied person to outrun a zombie.
And then he rounded a corner and found himself staring at a dead end.
Panic immediately set in.
The zombie pursuer moved in closer, stalking his warm-blooded prey. Miles tried every door, desperately jiggling at the handles, but each one was locked.
The corrugated fence at the end of the alley was almost three metres high. There was no way he could climb over that.
The zombie came within striking distance.
Miles tried to remain calm and analyse the situation rationally. He assessed all his available options, only to find that they were rather limited.
He took a deep breath and gripped the slightly bent golf club he held in his hands.
The various scenarios played out in his mind. Maybe he could dodge and weave his way past. Run left, then spin away at the last moment and go right. Follow this up with a sharp blow to the back of the head with the five iron. That should work. He had a decent size advantage over his opponent, as well as a fully-functioning brain, so it shouldn’t be all that difficult.
But this plan was rendered moot when he saw that a further twelve zombies had joined their friend by following him into the alley.
The zombie sprung forward. Miles forgot all about his escape strategy and crouched down into a ball.
His eyes were clamped shut, so he didn’t see what happened next.
He didn’t see the beer keg fall from the sky and land on the zombie’s head, crushing him like an empty soda can.
Miles opened his eyes when he heard the sickening crunching noise and saw the splattered zombie a few feet in front of him. Its limbs were sticking out from underneath the heavy metallic barrel at unnatural angles.
He looked up to where the missile had fallen from, but saw nothing but clear blue sky. His lifelong agnosticism was now seriously under question.
But he wasn’t in the clear just yet. That was one zombie taken care of. There were still a dozen more, and it might be too much to ask God to make it rain beer kegs.
With all this racing through his mind, a door opened up behind him. A pair of hands reached out and dragged him inside, just as the horde prepared to pounce.
It took every ounce of Steve and Adam’s strength to lift the heavy oak pew and carry it the few metres to the church’s entrance. Steve struggled the most, and paused for a moment to catch his breath.
The skin around his bite wound had already turned black, and his whole right arm was inflamed. The infection was spreading rapidly to the rest of his body. He tried to fight off the fever and delirium, but he knew it was pointless.
His life was slipping away with each passing minute.
Upon entering the church, Steve and Adam discovered that the front entrance for the church couldn’t be locked. They figured that if they pushed one of the pews up against it that should be enough to hold off any zombies trying to get in.
“We’re safe now,” Adam said once the pew was in place.
“We might be safe from the zombies out there,” Steve said, gasping for air. “But you’re still not safe in here. You’ll need to restrain me, before I turn.”
Steve was surprisingly matter-of-fact about the whole situation. He seemed to have a what’s-done-is-done philosophy, and his main priority now was to prepare for his inevitable transformation. Like every UMC worker, he knew in the back of his mind that something like this could happen at any moment. What was important now was that he keep it together for Adam’s sake. He knew that if he fell apart, Adam would too.
He searched through his knapsack and found a roll of electrical tape.
“Here,” he said, tossing the roll to Adam. “By my reckoning, we have less than one hour.”
Steve took a seat, and Adam unravelled a length of tape. He crouched down in front of Steve and began taping his left ankle to the leg of the chair. This was only a short-term solution – if the music was still playing when Steve eventually turned, Steve didn’t want his zombie self to be affected by it. But beyond that, their plans for the days and weeks following today – neither of them had any idea what would happen. Would Adam take him to the processing centre, where he would probably never see him again? Or would he break the law and try to keep him hidden from the authorities? It wasn’t something they had ever discussed.
There was a long silence as Adam wrapped the tape around Steve’s leg.
“I’m sorry, Adam,” Steve eventually said.
“You have nothing to apologise for,” Adam said.
“I do. This is all my fault.”
Adam shook his head. “We don’t know what happened out there.”
“I mean, from before. You were right. We ... ” Steve’s voice faltered, and he cleared his throat. “We should have left when we said we would.”
“You can’t put this all on yourself. We all voted to stay out here.”
“It shouldn’t have been put it to a vote in the first place. That was my decision to make, but I took the easy option because I wanted the money. I knew how everyone else was going to vote, but I didn’t have the courage to make that decision myself.”
Adam tore the tape off the roll. He stood up and looked Steve directly in the eye.
“We can’t change what happened, and we can’t dwell on the past,” he said. “All we can do now is make the best of the situation at hand.”
A hint of a smile appeared on Steve’s face. He’d always worried about Adam, and how he might cope if he was no longer around. His greatest fear was that Adam might do something stupid, like deliberately allow himself to be bitten after he turned.
But at that moment, Steve knew that Adam was going to be alright.
Miles was pulled into darkness, and the door slammed shut behind him. A few seconds passed before his eyes adjusted to the low light, but it felt like hours.
When his vision finally came good he saw that he was inside the local tavern, and it was Erin who had rescued him from a certain death. She was strangely calm considering the circumstances, and her breath was a combustible mixture of vodka, gin and tequila. Miles was quite certain that these two factors were related.
Elliott came down the stairs a minute later. It was him who had saved Miles by lobbing a full keg of beer off the roof and onto the head of an unsuspecting zombie. For once in his life, alcohol had been the solution to one of Miles’ problems rather than the cause.
The two survivors filled Miles in on what they knew so far – which wasn’t much. All they could tell him was that everything had been running smoothly until, for some inexplicable reason, the music continued to play long after it should have stopped. Marcus was dead now, and so was Felix after he tried to shut the music off. The rest of the staff, including Steve and Adam, remained unaccounted for.
“We don’t know how it happened,” Erin told him. “Everything was fine. I was having a cigarette, Elliott was working with Felix, Marcus was in charge of the music, and literally the next thing we know–”
“Wait a second,” Miles interrupted. “They put Marcus in charge of the music?”
Elliott nodded. “Why?”
“Marcus came to work today grinding his jaw and his pupils were the size of pin pricks. You don’t think that has anything to do with what’s happening now?”
Miles knew it was somewhat hypocritical to be heaping all the blame onto Marcus considering the toxins he had swimming in his system when he arrived for work that morning. In the back of his mind, he wondered if all this was just one big alcohol- and Ambien-fuelled hallucination, like a bad dream he couldn’t wake up from. But it felt far too real for that.
“Okay, now that you mention it?” Erin said. “That does sound like a rational explanation?”
Miles paced up and down for a moment, as if this would somehow provide him with the mental clarity required to think his way out of this.
“Right, so that’s the situation we find ourselves in,” he said. “What do we do from here?” He was hoping the others had some idea of what to do, because he was drawing blanks in that department.
“Shouldn’t we try and find some way to switch the music off?” Elliott said.
“Easier said than done,” Miles said, well aware that he was stating the obvious.
“I was thinking something along the lines of locking the doors, getting drunk and waiting until this whole thing plays itself out,” Erin said.
Miles couldn’t deny that he was tempted by that suggestion. Erin was well on her way towards getting hammered, and Miles had an overwhelming desire to join her. But he only had to remind himself of some of his more recent alcoholic episodes to conclude that this might not be a particularly good idea.
“Do I have to be the one to suggest the obvious?” Elliott said with his hands on his hips.
“What do you mean?” Miles said.
“Don’t you think it’s about time we bite the bullet and call this one in?”
“What, you mean contact the authorities?” Erin said.
“Well, yeah.”
“And what do we tell them when they ask what a UMC crew was doing in an isolated town full of zombies without reporting it?” Miles said.
“We tell them we were working here illegally and now we’re very, very sorry!” Elliott said.
“We can’t do that,” Miles said, shaking his head. “We’ll all end up in prison.”
“We won’t be arrested, will we?” Elliott said. “Steve and Adam might, since they’re the ones in charge. But I’m sure they’d understand if it meant saving everyone’s lives.”
“No,” Miles said. “We’re all liable.”
“But Steve and Adam were the ones who–”
“We all knew this was illegal before we went into it. And after what happened at the processing centre last month, I’m sure they won’t hesitate to make an example out of all of us.”
“So those are literally our only two options?” Erin said. “We end up in jail, or we end up as zombies?”
“Either way,” Elliott said, “we’ll probably be spending a long period of time locked inside a small cage.”
The room lapsed into silence. They were all so used to relying on Steve’s leadership for guidance that they felt lost without him.
“Look, we can’t just stand here and do nothing,” Miles said. “The longer we wait, the worse it’s going to get.”
“Let me suggest, once again,” Erin said, reaching over the bar to top up her glass, “that we lock the doors, get drunk, and wait until this whole thing plays itself out.”
Miles decided to ignore everything Erin said from that point on.
“First things first,” he said. “We have to get that music switched off. Any ideas on how we can do that? Is there some way we can, I don’t know, jam the frequency or something?”
“Felix probably could,” Elliott said. “But I think that’s a little beyond our technical capabilities.”
“Maybe you’re over-thinking it?” Erin said, something few had ever accused her of doing. “I mean, what if we could find some way of luring all the zombies away from the set-up area?”
“And how exactly do we do that?” Elliott said.
“I don’t know? This bar has a sound system? What if we opened these doors up, turned the music up full, then lured them inside here? Then someone can sneak across and shut the music off?”
“Wait a minute.” Elliott fell silent, then walked over to the back window. He peered through the Venetian blinds to the zombie-filled streets outside.
His eyes lit up like a switch inside his head had been flicked on.
“What is it?” Miles said.
Elliott turned back to Miles and Erin. A wide grin had appeared on his face. “I think I have an even better idea,” he said.