Дэвид Муди - Red Devils

The next one was a perfect hit. Right between the eyes.

The next one was nowhere near as elegant, but he did enough damage to bring the vile thing down.

The next one wore the drab, blood-stained uniform of a prisoner. Particularly insistent, it managed to hook its gnarled fingers in the folds of his smock. Another caught his trousers. One crawling along the ground had his boot. Despite their slothful speed, he was in real danger of being overwhelmed. He tried to beat them off, but there were too many…

The next one was pointing a gun directly at him.

He froze. Panicked. Went to fire back but hesitated.

‘Lieutenant Wilkins?’

Wilkins realised he must have looked an awful fright, covered in dirt and discharge from the undead as well as his own sweat and blood. He was surprised Steele had even recognised him. He’d have told him as much, but he barely had the energy to breathe, let alone talk. Steele kicked out at another cadaver as it went to attack the lieutenant. Wilkins raised his pistol to fire at one more, but the chamber clicked empty. ‘I should have saved two bullets for us, Sergeant,’ he gasped.

‘Why, sir? I’ve no intention of falling at the last hurdle.’

And Wilkins realised that Steele was holding the hand of Doctor Månsson’s precious little girl.

‘Good Lord.’

‘She’ll help get us out of here, Lieutenant. Stay close to me.’

The numerous creatures which had, just seconds earlier, seemed intent on tearing the lieutenant limb from limb, were now doing everything in their limited power to get away from him or, more specifically, from Månsson’s girl. They scampered away from her like the rats they’d earlier seen spilling out along the castle corridors.

‘I think she’s dead, Lieutenant, but she’s not like the rest of them. She’s different. She’s the cure, I reckon. She seems to repel them like oil and water. It’s like they’re scared of her.’

‘Then let’s get her out of here and fast,’ Wilkins said, his energy and composure beginning to return. ‘She may well be mankind’s last hope.’

The girl gave the soldiers a degree more freedom than they were used to. Wilkins was already heading for the gaping hole in the fence, readying himself to try and run to the airfield, but Steele called him back. ‘Wait, Lieutenant.’

‘Come on, man… the plane will be leaving any minute. We don’t have time to delay.’

‘We don’t have time to get there, either.’

‘Then what do you suggest?’

Carrying the girl over one shoulder like a sack of coal now, Steele pointed back into the camp with his free arm. A vehicle compound. Ignored by the rotting masses. ‘Over there. Let’s help ourselves to one of Jerry’s supply trucks.’

Captain Hunter’s men guided in the Douglas. Before the plane had even stopped moving, troops were surrounding it on all sides, firing into the trees. The dead were being called to the airfield in massive numbers. There had been thousands of them at Polonezköy, and since the fence there had been down, they’d almost exclusively been drawn in this direction. The surrounding countryside was deathly quiet in comparison to this place. Captain Hunter’s men’s on-going battle to secure the site had attracted large numbers, but nothing in comparison to the flood of decay that was heading here now from the camp. Until now Hunter had resisted allowing his men to use firearms, but the choice had been taken out of his hands. ‘Hit them with everything you’ve got,’ he bellowed across the battlefield. ‘Wipe the damn things out.’

Barton was still struggling to catch his breath. His desperate sprint from the camp to here had been terrifying. ‘Lieutentant Wilkins will be here, sir,’ he said to the captain. ‘I know he will.’

‘We can’t afford to wait, soldier.’

‘We can’t afford not to.’

‘Maybe you don’t understand me, boy, and maybe you do things differently round your neck of the woods, but way I see it we need to get this bird back up in the air in the next couple of minutes or none of us are gonna get out of here.’

‘If the lieutenant’s not with us, I don’t think it matters, sir.’

Captain Hunter pretended not to hear. The ever-increasing noise of battle filled the air. Rickman had turned the Douglas around and was ready to open the throttle and get the hell out of Poland as soon as Hunter gave the word.

Barton yelled at the captain to understand, but got no response. He grabbed Hunter’s arm and tried to plead with him, but all that did was incense the American even more. ‘Get your hands off me, boy, and get your sorry ass on-board.’

‘But, Captain…’

‘Now, soldier! Get out of my sight or I’ll leave you here to fight those damn freaks on your own. Your man’s not coming back, and you just have to accept that. He tried, he failed. Now it’s time, and we’re leaving.’

Sergeant Prendergast, a kid who didn’t look old enough to be in long trousers never mind the army, rushed up to the captain. ‘We’re gettin’ swamped out there, Captain.’

Hunter nodded. He cast a look at Barton which told the British soldier in no uncertain terms that he needed to keep his mouth shut. Barton knew what was coming next.

‘We’re out of here,’ Captain Hunter said. ‘Get everyone on-board. Blow the shit out of the next line of corpses to stop any more getting through for a couple a minutes. We’ve waited here long enough.’

Prendergast nodded then sprinted back to the front line. Barton dejectedly boarded the plane. He looked back as a volley of grenades was launched into the forest. The tree-line exploded into flame. If Wilkins and Steele were caught up in the middle of all that, he thought, then between the explosions and the dead they didn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of getting out of there alive.

But right now they were still fighting.

Steele sat next to Wilkins, cradling the grey-skinned, undead girl in his arms. Wilkins had taken an empty truck from the Nazi compound and had driven it out through the hole in the fence around Polonezköy at breakneck speed. At first, he’d tried driving around the swarming dead, but it had quickly become clear that such consideration was frivolous and unnecessary in the extreme. Instead he now drove through them, keeping his foot down hard on the accelerator, trying to focus on what was happening directly ahead and not be distracted by the thud-thud-thud of dead flesh on metal. Heads popped like balloons. Limbs were dragged under grinding wheels. Wilkins left the wipers on, but all they did was smear blood and decay in a greasy arc across the windscreen, obstructing his field of view.

‘Straight, Lieutenant, straight!’ Steele yelled as Wilkins yanked the wheel hard right.

‘I can’t risk driving through the forest,’ Wilkins shouted back, jumping up in his seat as they drove over a particularly obese corpse then through an ice-covered pothole. ‘I’m going to drive up and around the side of Polonezköy, then try and pick up a track near the entrance. There has to be a road from the camp to Leginów, don’t you think?’

‘You’re probably right, but I don’t reckon we’ve got time. We have to take the most direct route.’

‘And if we do that, Sergeant, I don’t think we’ll ever get through.’

Another volley of grenades. The next wave of corpses, crawling frantically over the remains of the last, were blown to pieces. In places the gore was inches deep.