Chapter 27
Grainger sliced and diced his way through the main street of Graves End, leaving a bloody trail of body parts and zombie entrails in his wake. The chainsaw was massive, and almost as big as he was. It was completely excessive and impractical, something that would ordinarily be used to fell huge hundred-year-old trees. You didn’t need a degree in psychoanalysis to see that the portly five-foot three-inch Richard Grainger was overcompensating for his shortcomings.
His raincoat was dripping in gore, and he had to stop periodically to wipe the blood and viscera from his goggles.
Grainger couldn’t deny the sheer thrill he derived from this unrestrained brutality. He never liked to just kill the zombie straight away. He wanted to watch it suffer. Cutting the head off was fun, but starting with an arm or a hand, watching it flail around for a while, then slicing it in half from the groin up was a much more gratifying experience. Grainger’s unstable childhood, violent adolescence and repressed bisexuality all manifested itself in the form of this sadistic rampage.
He stopped for a breather. He looked back to where he’d been and admired the results of his handiwork. He had eviscerated an army of zombies, and there were still hundreds, maybe even thousands more to go. He felt like a kid on Christmas morning.
He looked to his left and found that he was standing outside the town church. Inside, he saw movement. A silhouette.
A smirk appeared on Grainger’s crumpled face. The thought of carving up a zombie in a place of worship held an undeniable thrill. It actually seemed quite appropriate.
After all, he was doing God’s work.
Keenan stumbled around the room like a drunken sailor caught in a violent storm. If this was a cartoon he’d have animated birds circling his head right about now.
Seconds earlier, Miles was waiting by the side of the door for Keenan to enter. As soon as Keenan set foot inside, he swung the sledgehammer with all his might. Keenan didn’t see it coming until the last possible moment, when he jerked his head to one side. The sledgehammer still made contact with the back of his head, but it was more of a glancing blow than a direct hit.
Keenan staggered around with his equilibrium thrown off-balance. He dropped the shotgun and clutched at his head.
Miles moved in for another swing, this time aiming for his leg. He knew that another blow to the head might kill him, but a busted kneecap would allow himself and Elliott ample time to escape.
But Keenan anticipated this, and this time he got in first. He lunged at Miles during the backswing and twisted the sledgehammer out of his hands. It fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
Miles was now seriously terrified. He had hoped that the hit to the head would have knocked Keenan out, or at least slowed him down. But it did the opposite – it woke him up. He could almost see the smoke pouring from his ears.
If he wasn’t sure what Keenan’s intentions were before, all doubt had now been removed.
Keenan grabbed Miles by the shirt. He lifted him up off the ground and slammed his forehead into his face. The sharp stabbing pain this caused was like nothing he’d ever felt. His eyes filled with water, and a river of blood gushed from his nose. His knees went weak, and he fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. It occurred to Miles that he’d never really been punched in the face before. He decided this was something he would have been happy to have gone his whole life without experiencing.
He tried standing, but his legs refused to take orders from his brain. The floor rose up on one side of the room, until he realised it was actually him falling back down. His face stung and his vision blurred, and he felt the urge to vomit. He forced down the bile pushing at the back of his throat.
He crawled across the floor, desperately searching for a way out.
The next thing he heard was the ominous sound of shells being loaded into a shotgun.
He saw a work bench up ahead and edged towards it on his hands and knees, somehow convinced that this wooden table might offer him protection from a psychotic hillbilly. He made it halfway under when he felt Keenan’s meaty hand wrap around his ankle and drag him back out.
Keenan held onto Miles’ foot with one hand and aimed the shotgun at his head with the other. This wasn’t easy; concussion was setting in, and Miles refused to keep still. Keenan was seeing two different versions of Miles, and he didn’t know which one he should be aiming at. It was a constant struggle just to remain conscious.
Keenan tried steadying himself. He rested one hand on a sawhorse, then pressed the barrel of the gun against Miles’ forehead.
Despite the dire situation he found himself in, Miles could appreciate the irony of having survived multiple zombie encounters today only to be killed by a much more violent and dangerous species.
“Ready to die?” Keenan growled.
Miles made one final, desperate lunge. He reached back and grabbed hold of the power tool lying next to the work bench. It was a nail gun. He pressed it up against the underside of the sawhorse.
“Not just yet,” Miles replied.
Miles squeezed the trigger. A six-inch nail shot through the wooden saw horse and pierced Keenan’s hand.
Keenan howled like a wounded animal caught in a trap. He fired the shotgun, more of a reflex action than anything else, blowing a hole in the wall and creating a shower of plaster dust.
Miles leapt to his feet and drove three more nails into the top of Keenan’s hand.
The shotgun fell away. Keenan clutched at his hand, desperately trying to prise it free.
Miles kicked the weapon into the middle of the room, where it was well out of Keenan’s reach. He ignored the barrage of violent abuse and threats that Keenan hurled in his direction and made a dash for the front door.
He was free.
He took a few wobbly steps outside, holding on to the railing to stop from tumbling down the front steps. He staggered out onto the street, and then froze.
It was at that moment that Miles was confronted with the enormity of the destruction that Keenan and Grainger had wreaked upon the town. It was nothing short of a genocide. The town was littered with carved up bodies, the streets literally running red with blood. It was a scene of absolute devastation. He’d witnessed a lot over the last three years and thought maybe he’d become desensitised to it all. But this was like nothing else he’d ever seen. He hadn’t encountered anything this horrific since ...
He then recalled the last time he’d come upon an atrocity like this. It was almost three years ago. It was the day he came home to discover his parents and neighbours beaten to death and burnt to a crisp in his backyard. He remembered the overwhelming feelings of anger and disgust at whoever had done this, along with the impotent rage at being utterly powerless to do anything about it. He would probably never find out who was responsible. He would never truly have closure.
He looked at all the corpses, or what remained of them, and was struck by a minor epiphany. They may have been zombies, but they were all people once. They had lives. They had families. And then, through no fault of their own, they were human no longer. He’d always known this, of course, but he had to push those thoughts out of his mind so he could get on with doing his job. He wasn’t the only one; everyone had been conditioned to think of the undead as monsters and killers – it was easier and more convenient that way – but they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He could have left Keenan where he was – but then what? He would free himself sooner or later, his hand would heal, and he’d carry on with his rampage.
Miles decided he couldn’t live with himself if he let that happen. The families of these unfortunate zombies deserved better than that. Even if he would never get closure with regards to his own family, it was the least he could do for them.
Keenan continued to yank violently at his bloodied hand. But no matter how hard he pulled, it barely moved a millimetre. That saw horse was attached to him like an extra appendage.
Miles calmly strolled back into the house. He picked up Keenan’s shotgun from the centre of the room. Keenan’s eyes darkened.
“Go on,” he slurred. “Do it. Shoot me. Let’s see if you’ve got the guts.”
Miles ignored Keenan and placed the shotgun up against the wall on the opposite side of the room. He then found a small portable radio that the builders had left behind.
Keenan tried shouting further abuse at him, but his rapidly deteriorating condition meant that an unintelligible string of garbled vowels was all that spewed out.
Miles scanned the dial on the radio until he found what he was looking for: Fusion FM, the undead’s favourite radio station. The song currently playing was the epic “Xenotransplantation” by Chemikal Ali.
He cranked the volume to eleven. The abrasive music filled the house and spilled out onto the streets.
“I just thought I’d give you something to listen to while you wait,” he smiled at Keenan, before making a quick getaway.