‘You do that,’ Ashtat snorts. ‘But what you are going to be observing is me kicking arse and hammering their hood-covered heads into the dirt.’ I stare at Ashtat, surprised to hear her use such language. She smiles grimly. ‘I was already angry about the racists inside the compound. Now I am royally pissed.’
Rage hoots. ‘That’s the kind of fighting talk I like! Count me in. I could never resist a good scrap.’
Carl sighs. ‘I think it’s a mistake, but OK, if the rest of you are game, so am I.’
‘Then we’re going in,’ Pearse sniffs. ‘Any plan other than that?’
‘We don’t need one,’ I tell him, trying to sound more confident than I feel. ‘Hit them fast. Hit them hard. And if you kill any of them, mash their brains while you’re at it. We don’t want those bigoted buggers coming back to life and causing even more trouble.’
I look round. ‘Everybody up for this?’
They nod, Carl reluctantly.
‘Then let’s go show those bastards what we’re made of.’
To a roar of approval, we head down the hill and make a beeline for the besieged compound.
TWENTY-TWO
The zombies are in a frenzy, howling and hammering on the wall. I know why they’re so excited. They can smell fresh-spilled blood. It wafts across to us like a heavenly scent that would set my mouth watering if those glands worked. In the world of the living dead, where there’s fresh blood, there’s fresh brains. They know they’re missing out on a feast and they want in.
The walls and gate stand as firmly as they did before. I thought the KKK might have had to batter their way in, but they were evidently admitted without a struggle. Maybe they had spies working on the inside, or else the locals let them in because they were alive and apparently seeking refuge—perhaps they hid the hoods when they pulled up outside.
‘You said earlier that you could jump this baby,’ I remind Carl.
‘If I had a clear run at it,’ he growls, nodding at the zombies packed tight around us.
‘There’s space further along,’ Pearse says, pointing to our left. ‘The wall is extra-thick there. The reviveds don’t normally mass around that section, as they can tell it’s their least likely point of entry.’
‘Lead on, Macduff,’ Carl grunts.
We push through the ranks of the screeching undead and come to the relatively deserted spot that Pearse told us about. It’s not a complete zombie-free zone, but there are less here than in most areas.
‘How are we going to work this?’ Carl asks, eyeing the wall and measuring his angles. ‘I can get up there but what then? Do I search for a rope?’
‘No,’ Rage says. ‘The reviveds would swamp us if they saw us climbing a rope. They’d want up too.’ He thinks for a moment, then cracks his knuckles and grins. ‘Let’s do it like they do in the circus. You do your leaping trick and clear the barbed wire out of the way. I’ll give this lot a leg-up, one by one—I reckon I can throw each of them several metres into the air. You catch them as they come within range. Shane waits till last. He can climb the wall and give me a piggyback ride.’
‘Sounds good,’ Carl nods. ‘Shane? Still think your bones are up to the task?’
Shane cocks an eyebrow at Carl, then drives the fingerbones of his right hand through the steel plate covering the wall, deep into the concrete beneath. ‘Child’s play,’ he boasts.
Carl starts to back up. ‘Form a guard of honour,’ he tells us. ‘Keep any stray zombies out of my way.’
He stops, studies the wall, backs up another couple of metres, then propels himself forward without a word. He runs fast, head down. A few zombies crowd around us, but we push them away.
Carl races past me in a blur. For a second I think he’s going to forget to jump, that he’ll run smack into the wall and knock himself out. But then he hurls himself into the air like an arrow, tucking his arms in tight by his side, legs together, head angled back. He soars high above the rest of us, then slows and hangs in the air like a bird. I expect him to grab for the spikes above him, but instead he drops and lands gracefully in the middle of us.
‘Too high for you?’ I ask.
Carl withers me with a look. ‘That was a trial jump. Now watch me do it for real.’
He backs up, waits for a zombie to get out of his way, then races towards the wall again. This time he jumps a step earlier than before and thrusts into the air more like a bullet than an arrow. He sails way overhead, past the top of the wall. I thought he was going to have to land on the wire or spikes and endure the stabs, but Carl has a different idea. He arcs over both obstacles and lands on the platform on the inside.
‘Bloody hell!’ Shane gasps.
‘He should have been a gymnast,’ Ashtat smiles.
Nobody challenges Carl, so I guess the guards who are usually on duty have been drawn away by events in the heart of New Kirkham. He has the wall to himself.
Carl quickly unhooks a length of barbed wire and slips between two of the spikes. He lies down and slithers forward. I think he’s going to fall off, but he wraps his legs round the spikes at the last second, catching them with the backs of his knees, so he can hang with both arms free, lower than any of us anticipated.
‘Never mind being a gymnast,’ Rage chuckles. ‘He should have been in a freak show. Right. Who’s first?’
Pearse steps forward. Rage crouches and locks his hands together. Pearse puts a foot on them and the pair count to three. Pearse pushes off with his other foot and Rage jerks himself to full attention, hurling Pearse high into the air.
It works like a dream. Carl catches Pearse and lets him swing for a moment. Then Pearse pulls himself up the length of Carl’s body and clambers on to the platform.
Conall is next, then Ashtat, then Jakob. As I step forward, I squint at Rage. ‘Make sure you don’t misaim and throw me at the barbed wire,’ I growl.
‘It must be a terrible thing to spend your whole life expecting the worst of people,’ Rage smiles. ‘Don’t worry. There’s no time for fun and games. I’ll throw you true.’
He’s good to his word and seconds later I’m on the platform with the others. As I’m steadying myself, I spot a group of zombies below. They’re trying to copy us. A large guy in overalls puts his hands together and gives a leg-up to a woman in a nurse’s uniform. She falls short of the top of the wall – the guy isn’t as strong as Rage, and the woman lacks our sense of coordination – but seeing them try makes me pause.
‘Look,’ I tell Rage and Shane.
They glance round. Rage laughs when he sees the zombies try again and fail. ‘Monkey see, monkey don’t. Now let’s leave them to their failures and –’
‘No!’ I bark as Shane steps forward to drive his fingerbones into the wall.
‘What’s up with you?’ Rage snaps.
‘They’re following our example.’
‘So what? That guy throws like a girl. They won’t make it.’
‘Not that way,’ I agree. ‘But when they see you two climbing the wall, they’ll try that too.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Shane says. ‘They won’t be able to drive their fingers in like I can.’
‘Sure,’ I sneer. ‘But they will be able to dig them into the holes that you’ve left behind.’
Shane’s face falls. So does Rage’s. ‘I never thought of that,’ he mutters.
‘Well, think of it now,’ I tell him. ‘You guys can’t come up that way.’
‘So what’s the alternative?’ he asks.
I look to the others for suggestions.
‘We could make a daisy chain,’ Ashtat says. ‘Pearse could hang from Carl’s hands, Conall could hang from Pearse’s . . .’
‘I’m not that strong,’ Carl protests.
‘And getting back up would be tricky,’ Pearse agrees.
I wait for more ideas. When nobody proposes any, I tell Rage to throw Shane up to us. ‘You’ll have to sit this one out.’
‘Trying to get rid of me?’ Rage scowls.
‘For once, no,’ I say truthfully. ‘We could do with a bruiser like you in here. But our hands are tied.’
‘Damn it!’ Rage kicks the wall in anger. Then he sighs, locks his fingers together and gives Shane a boost up. ‘B,’ he calls before I disappear from sight. ‘Kill a few of those bastards for me.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I promise, then we swarm forward into the belly of New Kirkham to lock horns with the white-hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan.
TWENTY-THREE
We creep past the empty houses and along the silent streets. Most people have gathered in the large open square just inside the main gate, where the Klan crew have parked their jeeps and trucks. Some of the residents – mainly those with dark skin or foreign accents – are running from them, trying to hide. We hear their sobs and screams as they’re chased by cackling Klansmen.
A black boy no more than nine or ten years old races by us. He doesn’t see us since we’re keeping to shadows at the side of the street.
One of the white-clad ghouls comes jogging after the boy. He’s carrying a rifle. He fires off a shot which only just misses. He curses and mutters something about the gun being faulty. ‘I’ll just have to use my hands,’ he giggles, then starts clicking his tongue and calling to the boy as if he was a dog.
I slip out of the shadows and up behind the vile hunter. My eyes are burning. My hands are bunched into fists. I’ve slaughtered more than a few reviveds since I revitalised, and turned a couple of people into zombies. But I’ve never deliberately killed a living, breathing person. I’m not sure that I can.
The boy trips and curls up into a ball. He’s too scared to get up and push on. The man laughs and flexes his fingers. ‘I’m gonna make this slow,’ he drawls as he closes in. ‘It’s gonna be painful. By the end you’ll wish you’d never been –’
‘Hey,’ I call softly.
The man turns, surprised. Before he can react, I drive my right hand through the cloth of his hood, through the flesh of his forehead, through the skull behind that, and into the soft, squishy brain beneath.
‘Guess that answers that question,’ I grunt as I pull my hand free and he drops into the dirt to die where he belongs.
‘On your feet,’ I tell the boy, who’s staring at me with wide eyes. ‘Go hide, and don’t come out until this is over.’
‘I saw you earlier,’ he whispers. ‘You’re one of the good zombies.’
I cock an eyebrow at him. ‘I don’t know if I’d go that far. But yeah, I’m not here to eat your brain. Now go –’
‘They caught my mum,’ he interrupts. ‘They put her in a cage.’
‘I’ll free her,’ I promise. ‘She’ll come find you. Now go hide like I said.’
The boy nods, gets up and scampers away. I return to the shadows at the side of the street. Ashtat studies me gravely as I wipe my hand clean on my trousers.
‘Something to say?’ I snap, expecting a lecture.
She shakes her head, then nods. ‘I hope I can find your kind of strength when it is my time to kill,’ she murmurs. ‘If not, will you help me?’
I stare at her uncertainly. I wasn’t expecting a compliment. I look at the others and they’re gawping at me too, like I’m some kind of hero.
‘Look, it’s simple,’ I tell them. ‘These guys are the enemy. He was going to kill that boy. They’re monsters, even worse than the reviveds. If there was a court we could take them to, I’d suggest we round them up and drag them there alive. But we’re all the law there is out here. If they surrender, fine, we’ll let the people of New Kirkham bind them nice and tightly and do what they like with the creeps. Otherwise we put them down like the savage dogs they are. Don’t think of them as human. They’re not.’
The Angels nod hesitantly. I can tell they feel uneasy about this. But there’s no time to debate it. We have to act before it’s too late.
We edge forward again. I lead the way this time, the others ceding authority to me since I seem to be the most cold-blooded of us, best suited to the dirty business at hand. And I’ve got to admit that the execution didn’t bother me. I know that it should, but he deserved death and I’m glad I was able to carry out the sentence.
We come to the corner of a building and are afforded a clear view of the main square. Several Klanners are stationed in the centre, on top of an open-backed jeep. Owl Man stands among them, stroking his dog and whispering to it as he surveys the scene with no outward display of emotion.
Others, armed to the teeth with automatic rifles, are forcing blacks, Arabs and Asians into the backs of trucks. Some of the screaming victims have been thrown into cages as if they’re livestock being loaded and taken to market.
Not all of the tyrants are in robes and hoods. At least forty or fifty of those involved in the round-up are dressed in normal clothes. I recognise a few of the faces from earlier. They’re people who lived in New Kirkham, who built the walls and tilled the fields and shared food and drink with those they’re now herding into mobile prisons to be taken away to God knows where. They fought together against the zombies, but now they’ve turned on their own. This explains how the Klanners got in and why they were able to suppress any uprising so easily—they had inside help.
And the rest of the inhabitants? Most stand by neutrally, looking ashamed and uneasy. They let this happen and say nothing, maybe figuring that if they keep silent and don’t pitch in, then they’re not really guilty.
That’s humanity for you.
Only a hundred or so look like they put up real resistance. They’re standing in a pack against the wall beside the gate, under heavily armed guard. Some are wounded and bleeding. All look enraged and defiant.
And that’s humanity as well. The worst and the best, in the same place at the same time, as they nearly always are.
‘You won’t get away with this,’ a woman roars, and I find the face of Biddy Barry in the crowd by the wall. ‘We’ll track you down and make you pay. This is outrageous. Those people are our flesh and blood. This is a sanctuary, not a hunting range for cowardly, bullying white boys.’
‘Shut up!’ one of the Klansmen roars.
‘Make me,’ Biddy retorts.
He draws a pistol and takes aim.
‘Now, now,’ Owl Man purrs. ‘I don’t think we need take matters that far.’
The man curses. ‘Do you want some of this, freak?’
Owl Man pulls a pained expression. ‘It’s such a pity when people reduce an argument to a personal, vindictive level.’ His lips twitch mischievously. ‘Attack, Sakarias,’ he says to his dog.
In a flash the sheepdog leaps from its master’s side and lands on the ground. It barrels forward at a furious speed. The guy in the hood has time to scream, but only once. Then the dog is on him. It opens its jaws wide to reveal fangs far sharper than any I’ve seen before, and bones slide out of its claws as it jumps, like bloody Wolverine from X-Men.
With a jerk of its head Sakarias sinks its fangs into the man’s throat and rips it open. As he collapses, the dog leans into the spray of blood and starts gulping. Then it rips into his ribcage with its extended claws and roots among his guts. Its tail wags happily as it works on him, while Owl Man claps and croons, ‘Good doggy. Good.’
‘Now that’s interesting,’ I murmur.
‘What the hell kind of a dog is it?’ Shane asks. He looks ill with shock.
‘We’ll ask questions later,’ I tell him. ‘If there’s anyone left to ask. You guys ready?’ They nod shakily. ‘Then my only bit of last-minute advice is—don’t piss off the puppy.’
With a wicked, reckless laugh I toss my hat and glasses aside, whirl round the corner, clash my fingerbones together, scream a challenge at the world, and lead my troop of hellish Angels into battle.
To be continued . . .
Darren Shan, Zom-B Mission
(Series: Zom-B # 7)
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