Shaun Harbinger - Rain

How long were they intending to keep people locked up like this? Even up here I could smell the camp’s stink of human waste and fear. Lucy, Mike and Elena looked down at the scene with just as much horror as I felt.

“Maybe they have food down there,” Elena said. Our supplies were low. We had only brought enough granola bars and packs of instant noodles to last us for two days of hiking and camping. The meal at the farmhouse had been a bonus but we had left so quickly that we didn’t have time to grab food from the cupboards. Besides, Brand and Cartwright would have known we were planning to escape if we stuffed our rucksacks with cans of beans.

“Maybe,” I said, “but do we really want to go down there and find out?”

Mike pointed out a tent that had been erected outside the fence, near the trees. “I bet it’s in there.”

This was a bad idea. If we even tried to get down there we would get caught. I couldn’t think of a worse way to spend the apocalypse than locked in a cage like cows in an abattoir.

Mike pulled us back from the rocks and looked at us solemnly. I knew that look. It meant Mike was trying to convey that what he was about to say was serious. “We can go down there, steal some food, and be gone before they even know it.”

“This is crazy,” I said. “There are going to be much easier places to get food than from a Survivors Camp. The place is crawling with soldiers.”

“Why are they keeping people locked up like that?” Elena glanced back at the camp.

“They’re trying to separate the infected from the uninfected. All they need to do is cage everyone up and see who turns. The ones who don’t are clean.” It sounded simple but even as I said it I realized that explanation didn’t make sense. We had seen Cartwright turn in a matter of minutes. If the virus’ incubation period was so short, all the people in the camp must be uninfected, otherwise they would have turned by now.

Unless the soldiers knew something we didn’t.

“What about the food?” Mike looked eager to go down there.

“I’m not going,” I said. “When we get to the coast, we can find an abandoned house and raid the pantry. We don’t need to risk our lives like this.”

“Alex is right,” Lucy said.

“For fuck’s sake, Alex is right,” Mike mocked. “That’s all I hear from you two… how right you are and how wrong I am. The Alex and Lucy mutual appreciation club.”

“We were right about something going wrong with the world,” she said calmly.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’m coming up with a plan to get us some food…”

“It’s a bad plan,” I said.

He glared at me. “What do you know about plans, Alex? Unless it’s a plan to storm an enemy castle in Warcraft, you don’t know shit.”

“Thanks for that, Mike. Well, unless you haven’t noticed, there’s a fucking zombie apocalypse going on and I’m still alive.”

“Only because you came away with me for the weekend.”

“Really? I seem to remember it was me who got the keys to the Land Rover.”

“Boys, please,” Elena said, holding her arms up in a halting motion. “We’ll all be dead if we keep arguing like this. We need to be quiet, remember?”

She was right. Not only were there soldiers around, there could be nasties in these woods.

Mike dropped his voice to a whisper. “I’m just saying that we should consider going down there and getting some supplies.”

“It’s a bad idea, man,” I said, using the term of address he used all the time.

A growling erupted from the camp. That growl was neither human nor animal. I had heard that sound before, on the porch of the farmhouse. We clambered up to the rocks again to get a better view.

The sound drifted from one of the tents. A painful growl. The people in the vicinity of the tent panicked, tried to run.

But there was nowhere to run.

A nasty burst from the tent, grabbing the nearest victim it could find, a man in a neat black suit who looked almost surreally out of place in the camp, and bit his neck. Discarding his bleeding body, the zombie staggered towards a girl who looked like she could be maybe ten years old.

A woman in her thirties jumped forward between the girl and the zombie, telling the girl to run. Before the woman had a chance to take her own advice, the zombie had its teeth clamped around her shoulder.

A shot from outside the fence cracked the air.

The zombie’s head burst open, black blood spewing from its pierced skull.

The woman screamed.

The monster fell heavily to the ground.

The man in the suit sat dazed, dabbing at the wound in his neck with a handkerchief.

Outside the fence, two soldiers unlocked the gate and stepped inside.

The little girl who had been saved rushed forward to the woman, crying. She flung her arms around her and buried her head against the woman’s neck.

The soldiers reached the scene of the attack and one of them kicked the zombie’s body, making sure it was dead.

The woman and girl sat hugging on the ground.

The suited man looked up as one of the soldiers approached him.

The second soldier walked over to the woman and girl. Pulled the girl away.

Dragged the woman to her feet.

She sobbed, looking at the girl. “My daughter!”

The little girl went to run forward to her mother. An older woman in the crowd held her back, her own eyes filling with tears.

The first soldier pulled the man in the suit up and led him into the tent the zombie had come from.

The second soldier followed, bringing the crying woman.

A moment of silence, then two shots rang out from the tent.

The old woman clutched the little girl, letting her cry, rubbing her back to comfort her.

I turned away from the scene.

I didn’t want to ever think again of what I had just seen but I knew it would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life.

The sound of boots on the rocks to my left made me whirl around in that direction. A soldier stood over us, handgun pointed at me. He grinned humourlessly. “Don’t even think about running.”

He seemed to be alone, probably part of the checkpoint detail sent out to patrol the woods. He looked fresh and strong. The army were obviously looking after their own while the general population lived like caged animals. With his gun still trained on us, he unclipped a radio from his belt and brought it up to his mouth. “I’ve got four civvies up here. Over.”

A static-filled reply, probably from the soldiers at the checkpoint, said, “OK, we’ll be there in a minute. Over and out.”

Mike cracked. I don’t know if it was because of the scene we had just witnessed or because of the entire situation we found ourselves in, but he leapt at the soldier.

Surprised, the soldier went down, Mike on top of him. They rolled down the slope, struggling against each other.

The gun went off.

A black cloud of starlings flocked from the trees at the sharp sound.

Mike and the soldier lay still.

I went down to see if my friend was still alive.

Slipped on the pine needles.

Slid to the two bodies.

Mike pushed himself away from the dead soldier. He picked up the pistol.

A dark blood stain covered the soldier’s combat jacket.

I didn’t care that a man was dead, I had seen what they were doing to the people in that camp. I only cared that my friend was alive.

Mike looked down at the dead body. He held the handgun loosely in his right hand.

The soldier’s radio crackled from where it had been jammed beneath a tree root during the struggle. “Peterson, we heard a shot fired. Confirm. Over.”

I grabbed it and switched it off. Stuffing it into my coat pocket, I put a hand on Mike’s arm. “We need to go, Mike.”