Issue 3: This New World

A Chapter by Nathan Davis

He's off the streets, but is safety in numbers really the right game plan for Blake?

Redding Road 4/9/2014 17:24

SMASH!

BANG!

STAB!

For the first time in a long time, Clark Tucker wished he was back in America. Although being left living with his parents and surrounded by an empty, friendless world for the rest of his life far from appealed to him, he had his reasons: Most prominently, America had guns. There were some over here, but not a store in every town like there was back home. With even a pistol he could save himself a lot of energy; his makeshift weapon, a walking stick with a sharpened end, was clearly not effective or sturdy enough to last him a long time.

It looked like a long time was exactly what the group back inside the camp were in for. After four days, and no sign of improvement to what Blackjack had cheerfully dubbed ‘The Zombie Apocalypse’, people were beginning to get pessimistic. Pessimistic and, of course, hungry.

Much debate later, Blackjack and Skyla had volunteered to go out on a run for supplies. The plan that had been formulated by Noah, who had become the unquestioned group leader, was simple: the pair get out, dodge the hordes of… undead, as much as they all hated to say it, grab food, quick as a pair of stealth operatives, and get back before it got dark. But the plan wouldn’t work if the operatives got killed on the way back. That was where Clark came in- his job was to wait by the perimeter, keep the area around the front gate to the campsite clear, and await their eventual return. So wait he did.

Little did he know that back in the camp, at the far edge, was a hole in the chain-link fence. And, at a squeeze, it was a hole that a small child (or something the size of one) could fit through, and ruin forever the peace that had arisen over the last forty-eight hours.

Redding Road 4/9/2014 17:25

“Quiet. I can see someone.” In these words, the atmosphere in the group- Blake, Blackjack and Skyla- turned suddenly from relief to a cold, silent fear. Blake peered out from behind the car they were crouched next to, hoping for his own sake that the figure Blackjack saw was nothing more than another walking dead guy (which was not a sentence something he ever thought he would say). He knew that it was selfish after Blackjack and Skyla had rescued him earlier, but the last thing he needed right now was somebody else to save; a person could be more dangerous on the other hand, as the three of them- Blackjack mostly- seemed to be taking care of the undead just fine.

Truthfully, Blake still wasn’t sure how he felt about his two new companions. Sure, they were necessary, and they had risked their lives to save Blake, but that didn’t mean they were good people. He had seen countless stories on the news about people who had seemed friendly and outgoing at first, but had turned out to be killers. Thinking about it, he could even recall a particular headline that, although it had seemed trivial at the time, chilled him to the bone now.

MY DREAM RESCUER KILLED MY HUSBAND

Looking once again at Skyla Lawrence and Benny Thompson, the skateboarder and the rapper, who had come at the time Blake had needed them the most, Blake wondered if they were really his saviours or his killers.

Sure enough, a man stood, constantly on the move, not twenty meters from them. He was merely a shadow against the setting sun, but Blake could hear him grunting as he twisted from side to side, turning whilst jutting what looked like a walking stick squarely into the heads of the advancing intruders. Skyla raised her hammer, looking more determined than scared.

“No. Stop!” protested Blackjack, gently pushing her hammer down with his left hand. “It’s Clark.”

“Clark? You mean you know this guy?” asked Blake, relieved.

“He’s in our group. An American. We don’t know a lot about him, but he seems OK.”

From Blake’s angle, Clark looked like he could use some help.

“He looks like he could use some help.” Blake expressed his concerns.

“Yeah. Looks like he could.” Blackjack stepped out from behind the car, ran to the nearest creature and swung his baseball bat hard. It hit perfectly, a dart landing a bullseye, and the victim collapsed in a tired heap on the floor. Skyla followed suite, throwing her hammer about violently until no creatures remained standing.

“Blackjack?” Clark asked, breaking the sudden silence as he peered into the sun at his rescuers.

“And Skyla” Said Skyla, looking almost disappointed at being left out.

“Phew. I was almost worried then.” He frowned at Blake “Who’s this?”

“I’m Blake. Got stuck in my attic when the riots started, but I came down a couple of days ago. These two saved my life.” Blake stepped forward, not wanting to seem too dependent.

“He seems fine. I guess he can come back with us, but Noah will have the last say. I got sent out here to make sure you two got back without being torn apart by creepers” Clark had a distant American accent, like someone who had lived there years before.

“Creepers?” asked Blake, bemused.

“Yeah. We had to call them something, didn’t we? Since nobody much fancied the term ‘Zombie’ we figured Creeper was as good a name as any.” Blackjack clarified.

Without speaking about it, the four of them began the trek down the street towards wherever the hell they were heading.

“You got one thing right,” Blake said, walking in between Blackjack and Skyla, with Clark walking up ahead, “These things sure are creepy.”

With that, Blake and the group fell into silence, bound to meet the mysterious Noah, and find out what this new crowd meant for Blake.

Brook Campsite 4/9/2014 17:44

“Piper. Judy. Come and have a look at this”

“Are they back?” Asked Judy Blackwell, rushing up the stepladder to the roof of the administration office.

“Oh, they’re back,” replied Ross Jacobson, handing her the binoculars. She spent several seconds studying the area around the entrance before she found what Ross had spotted.

“There’s someone with them” she gasped.

“Huh? Someone new?” Piper Jackson pulled herself up from the wobbly ladder, flicked her long, red hair out of the way and snatched the pair of murky brown binoculars from Judy. “This I have to see.”

Judy ignored the ladder and, dropping down onto the dew-damp grass, ran to a blue tent attached to a black van.

“Noah!” She called, unzipping the front flap of the tent to get to the man inside whilst trying to keep her glasses on with one hand.

“What? What is it?” Noah Ferguson, despite being at the worst end of his seventies, shot out of his collapsible blue camping chair and rapidly finished unzipping the tent door.

“They’re back. With someone else!”

The look on Noah’s face at that exact point in time was not one of happiness, relief, excitement or pleasant surprise. Instead, he was genuinely shocked.

“I’m coming out! This needs to be sorted.” He jogged straight past Judy and out to greet Clark, as a bundle of the campsite group met up around him.

To Blake, the members of the group he had been taken to didn’t exactly look like a group of survivors. A man with a closely shaved dark beard and a smart haircut stood with his arm around a chestnut-haired woman wearing glasses. Behind them stood a redhead who looked more than happy about the arrival of Blake, Clark, Blackjack and Skyla. She eyed Blake with particular interest.

“This is Noah.” Said Blackjack, waving an arm towards the man still jogging towards them.

When Blake had heard about Noah, the group’s leader, from Skyla and Blackjack, he had imagined a young, muscular man with tattoos and an evil, determined look. The reality was quite the opposite. Noah was tall, but looked around sixty with rat-like thin arms and a mess of grey stubble. He wore a light brown jacket and black school-style trousers, with some dark hair hidden under a beige sunhat. In fact, Noah looked like a grandfather you would repeat a sentence to twice just so he could hear it properly. The one threatening thing about the leader of the group was a pitchfork clasped in both hands at a diagonal angle, viciously sharp prongs stabbing the air like they wanted to hit the clouds.

“Blackjack!” Noah cried, in what Blake thought was a rather unwelcoming voice. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Noah. This is Blake, he’s cool, we checked. It’s OK.”

“No Skyla. It’s not. He could be dangerous.” Noah looked more nervous than angry from Blake’s point of view.

“Maybe he can help us. It’s not like he’s insane.” This was Clark. Up until that point Blake wasn’t sure how he felt about the American, but at that moment, he was glad someone who saw sense was here. However, Noah just shook his head.

“I lived through the war. You can never tell until you know the person.”

Blake, who now felt like a kid whose parents were arguing over, Took a frustrated pace frontward. Noah didn’t budge, but his expression did soften a little. Apparently Blake’s annoyance was easy to read.

“Look… Blake?... Don’t take it personally. I need to look after my group, that’s all… And this trouble we’re in is not to be taken lightly. It’s a matter of survival. That fact, the knowing that you could die at any moment…” He took a deep breath, and with that breath he suddenly looked nothing like a leader. Instead his expression just appeared particularly sad. “It changes people.”

Shocked by this sudden change in atmosphere, Blake stepped backwards, expecting to be ordered to leave any minute.

“He can stay” Noah said after a long, agonizing pause. “Piper, would you mind going by the caravans to get this man some bedding?”

The red-headed woman nodded and headed behind Noah from the left to a huddle of apparently abandoned caravans in the far corner of the rectangular campsite.

“I’ll go too. Just in case.” Added the middle-aged woman who was standing by the Black-haired guy as she followed after Piper.

Noah stared at Blake for a good long while, then said, almost exhausted:

“Don’t make me wrong on this.”

Without another word, Noah Ferguson, who had proved to be a complete contradiction of Blake’s expectations, walked off to his tent, swinging his frighteningly sharp pitchfork along with him.

Brook campsite 4/9/2014 17:50

“C’mon, Blake, we’ll show you around.”

The sun was setting rapidly, it being September, and all around the campsite the air was getting colder and the streets more dangerous. As Blackjack began the tour around the campsite, Blake was glad as hell he wasn’t out there in the wilderness with the creepers.

“You met Noah, of course. He sleeps in the van with the tent, his son owned it before…” Blackjack shuddered. “Yeah, that’s where Noah sleeps. Piper is the girl Noah asked to go out for bedding. She tends to live in her car.” He gestured to a small, navy blue Toyota parked outside the administration building by the entrance. “Judy went with Piper. She’s a paramedic, along with Ross, the guy who was with her, and they sleep in their ambulance over on the other side of the admin building.” Blake could see it now, the top of a roof and the inactive siren sticking out. “Judy and Piper went over to the caravan area. They’re probably much nicer to live in, but… well… the owners are probably all dead. The old lady we told you about was one of them. We mostly keep away out of respect.” By this time the walking tour had taken them to a large, swamp green tent with two sections jutting out from the sides. “Home, sweet home.” Blackjack explained. “This is where me and Skyla sleep. You’re welcome to bunk in the other pod for the time being, since we only take up one anyway. If we find another tent on our supply runs, you can have first dibs on it.

We have four vehicles right now: Noah’s van, the ambulance, Piper’s car and a taxi Clark found on day two. Not that we’re planning on moving anytime soon. This place is probably the safest in the area.”

In the distance, a woman’s scream rang out like a fire bell.

“Oh, give me a break.” Moaned Blake, and set off running at top speed towards the source of the noise, which appeared to be coming from inside the maze of caravans. As he ran, he noticed Blackjack and Noah only a few meters behind him, and Skyla whipping a plain, black-decked skateboard out of her rucksack, all the while clenching her mallet.

Such was the mess of caravans and awnings in the area that it took Blake almost a minute to discover the source of the disaster. The first thing the noticed, like a stabbing hole in his stomach, was a hole big enough for a human to fit through in the chain link fence. Through his adrenaline, Blake could hear sobs and more screaming, so he decided to ignore the fence and, to stand the best chance he could of tracking down the panic, climbed up the metal ladder on the back of a caravan to assume a lookout position. He looked around, terrified, and suddenly spotted, not thirty meters away, the two girls, one of whom appeared to be clutching her left shoulder, and a third figure, a stumbling, dirty-skinned monster tripping towards them, trapping them between two caravans.

It was then that Blake made the craziest move of his life. Leaping to the nearest caravan roof, and then the next, he eventually flew to the caravan which Piper and Judy were backed up against. Hopping over their heads like some estranged superhero, he collapsed on the ground in a heap after a failed landing. A few painful seconds later, he pulled himself to his feet, glancing around in desperate search of a weapon.

On a post bearing a ‘Fire alarm point’ sign was a glass box with the words ‘Smash to retrieve’ printed in white on it. Inside, a dusty, red bladed mini-axe was propped, and when Blake picked up a rock to smash the glass with and retrieve the weapon, its wooden handle was ice cold. Taking three long steps towards the creeper from behind, he remembered something Skyla had said to him earlier in the day.

“A strong blow to the head, nothing else seems to faze them.”

With more strength than he had ever used in his life, Blake swung the axe blade and landed the blow directly in the middle of the head. Emitting a loud, drawn out groan, the creeper fell to its knees and then flat on its stomach.

In front of Blake, Piper and Judy shivered, petrified.

“It’s dead… I think. It’s alright.”

Judy began to cry, heaving, and fell back against the caravan.

“No… there’s nothing alright about it.”

She moved the hand, still clasped against her shoulder, away, revealing a large, gaping wound on the joint from her arm to her neck. It bled furiously, like a gunshot. As Blake looked closely, to his horror, he realised it wasn’t just a wound at all.

It was a bite.

prev chapter