Adam flicked his lights off. The entrance gate was perfectly intact. It stood just how it had done years ago. Every other fence was crushed and lay on its side. Or had huge holes torn in it.
"Are we here?"
"Yes, stay quiet though, not safe yet."
Adam nudged at the gate with the front of the truck, it resisted for a second, and then pinged backwards. He coasted into the field of bodies. It would be so much fun to tear into them, see what this thing can do. He thought this, but knew it would be seconds before it was all clogged up and they were stuck in a field of living dead. so he barely nudged the accelerator. Most of them were pushed gently out the way, the odd one was squashed like a bug, that was enough to satisfy Adam. The truck neared the front door of the domed building. The last time he had pulled up here it was in an air conditioned limo. Now he was in a security truck smeared with the guts of the dead, a family of three in the back. He tried the computer he had been messaging Sahil on. He imagined the old fashioned phone noise echoing around the empty dark halls of the Terra-project.
It moved like a shark, less than a fin to notice in the sea of the dead.
"Hey HEY." Sahil woke shaking his head confused.
"what?"
Their voices both had the crackle of thirst and fatigue.
"Look"
He held Sahil with an arm around him and pointed. It took his tired eyes a minute or two to adjust. There was movement in the crowd. Not the random movements of zombies, flailing side to side. Something big. The growl of an engine, peaking every so often as it was revved went from imagination to reality. It was a car, or a truck, a pretty big truck. The crowd was parting around it. Adams beaming face looked up out of the drivers seat. He stopped metres from the roof, turned away, and then reversed back up until the roof shook with the impact. Charlie immediately read this, it meant 'Get on'. He hopped across valiantly. And held out his hand helping Sahil across the inches of gap between building and truck. Charlie banged twice on the roof. The engine peaked again and the crowds parted . The car chugged along towards the front doors of the building. Charlie lay on his back, relaxing on the cool steel roof the truck, after a day being baked of his moisture by the sun. Sahil was somewhat more cautious about their new ride, and stole glances over the sides. down into the crowds. He had only just found the gumption to reach his face all the way over when the sight of a decapitated hand stitched to the side of it recoiled him instantly. He lay on his back with charlie and felt the vibrations of the engine. the van stopped, turned and reversed as it had done before.
" Get your dad"
Adam whispered to the girl in the back.
" Now i can't get right up close, there will be a few hanging about behind the truck. "
"I've dealt with them before. "
" Okay Okay, password for the padlock is 666, choose something, you have two men on the roof that we just collected, get them something too."
" I'm going to reverse and knock them down, drive forward a bit, hopefully your open doors will block them, stay together and run to the doors."
" The men on the roof are charlie and Sahil."
The doors flung open. The right one was stopped in its track by the face of a zombie part trapped under Adam's wheel.
" Charlie! here."
A hand emerged from the rooftop and accepted the clubs willingly. The family rushed for the doors, protecting solveig in the middle. Erik went first stabbing the ones that lay. The doors woosheed open and they got in together. They sucked closed just as charlie and Sahil hopped down, Sahil slammed his hand against the door. "Charlie it's Alis's medical exams."
" One at a time please."
" You have to come back out, go through one at a time. We'll keep them back, quick"
The reality dawned quick.
"Solveig you first, stay here then get through those doors as quick as you can, it's safe in there."
Her eyes were brave and said 'I can do this' but her fists clenched her mother's clothing tight.
"Okay, we're going to step out, I'll come through next."
The doors sucked the atmosphere closed inside the room once her parents were out. She watched them fighting, stabbing in a group in the doorway.
"Welcome, Would you prefer verbal or physical analysis"
Tearing her focus away from her parents battle outside.
" Verbal"
The rest of what Alis said was hazy. She only heard the doors open behind her, her father looked back and shouted go. The shout was soundless in the chamber. She turned and ran through the door. Solveigs mother went into the chamber and looked helplessly on from beyond the glass. She turned to see Solveig on the other side looking on in horror at her distraught mother, and the glimpses of her father fighting. Erik and Sahil made it through the chamber, they stood huddled tight as a family, Sahil adopted in the time of terror. Charlie did not step through the doors. Time dragged on. Sahil stepped forward and looked out through two panes of glass he could see the violent movements of the zombies, but they were indiscernible. He covered his mouth. Charlie was dead, overcome, for him, he saved Sahil. Charlie was a warrior, he couldn't be dead.
"My friend"
Erik put his hand on Sahil's shoulder. Shaking him from his thoughts he ran for Ailbe's room.
Standing on the flattened fence, the mud was churned up beneath it, Vern looked on. The dying light briefly outlined the buildings and all those that wandered nearby. A few zombies injured, or lying crushed by the crowds, were silenced. The knives of his bodyguard were swift and they cleared the immediate area.
" I told you"
Roberte spat a clot of blood on the floor.
" We could have gone!"
Vern swivelled and crouched into an uppercut that sent him flying. Roberte's body lay in the mud.
" Piece of shit was right."
" It doesn't matter now, THEY'RE GONE!"
Vern shouted so loud that a few of the zombies from the crowd in front turned around. He clenched his fist tight.
"Deal with those."
His body guards ran to intercept the few that broke off at the noise. Their leader stood and thought. The squelching sound of cartilage and blood meeting a knife was too common to him now. Those in front had dealt with the zombies, and pressed forward to the remainder of the pack.
Charlie screamed as he hacked at the arm, jammed between the back doors of the truck. Blood was splatting onto his chest. His machete hit the metal and bone until it fell with a thud to the floor. He slammed the doors closed. Only when he was sure they were locked did he lie back resting his cold, wet blade on his stomach.
" Are you Okay, you're not bitten are you? Scratched?"
Charlie tried to wonder what would happen if he was.
" No, I'm fine."he answered after some time inspecting.
"We're going to cause a distraction, draw them away then come back."
The truck began its revving and coasting movements again. Charlie listened to the bodies thud off the sides of the truck but he was safe, and his eyes were closed. The light woke Charlie from his accidental sleep. Adam had opened the doors and held a hand out to him. He accepted it, weary from his sleep. he sat up, in the blood and an the dismembered arm he had hacked off, he dislodged it from under him and tossed it to the floor.
" Charlie it's good to see you."
Adam had a bowie knife in the hand that he hadn't offered Charlie.
" And you, we spent all day up on that roof you know."
"Who were the people."
" I ran into them on my way, Roberte told them about this place, he trusted them, as do i. "
"Roberte?"
"Dead"
Charlie sighed. His right hand's fingers had curled up like a claw, he had gripped the machete with such force that the fingers clasped around it without it there.
"Come, were going to start a fire, draw them away from the building, kill most of them as well hopefully, and launch ourselves into space!"
Adam had walked off. Charlie started to take heed of his surroundings, he couldn't hear Aliens any more. the room was bright and clean. Indoors. Charlie was in a garage. the electric shutters in front of him confirmed this. He looked around. There were dead littering the floor. Adam had obviously killed the few that made it in, tailgating the truck. He counted twelve, now lying in blood. Adam was making noise in another room, clanging objects and muttering. It was after the situations Charlie found himself in, in this case covered in blood staring at a truck smeared with guts and limbs. That Charlie thought about how unsafe the world was now, how it tried to kill you. There was nothing you could do to preclude this. It seemed that entropy had escalated on earth to a degree that was unbearable for organised life.
The family of three stood in the well lit, clean building. Erik felt safe, he knew this was essentially a bunker. It was the silence, the vague memories of being bumped into if you stood still for any amount of time on this floor. There were more offices now, more cubicles. The colours were the same though. The warmth of his child's hand and her clear worry brought him down on a knee to her level.
"Don't worry sweetie, we're safe now."
"where is Adam?"
"He's finding a way to get to us, Sahil, our new friend has gone to prepare, remember when i said we were going to space? to the moon?"
Sahil ran checking behind him, Ailbe was keeping up, for a man perennially in his dressing gown and slippers.
"Splendid greetings!"
He shouted at the new arrivals, turned onto the security console and began typing immediately.
" The truck has left, there's nothing out the front except, good lord there's hundreds of them."
"Can you rewind?"
The video jumped along in reverse. The van backed in, the doors open, Charlie leaps out backwards, begins beating them with a hammer. Ailbe paused the rewinding video just as it got to Sahil, leaving his face scrunched up as he ran towards the camera.
" I can only imagine Adam is concocting some great scheme, he knows the compound he will be fine, let's finalise our preparations for when they arrive."
Ailbe walked by and nodded at the family who still stood near the doorway.
When a slow rumble began at their feet. Fire lit up the sky from the gray block at the back of the dome. The tip of a rocket slowly appeared but picked up speed. everyone looked to the sky. their last chance of life away from the diseased planet, shooting towards the stars. Vern's back tightened. An arm came around his throat. Roberte drove the knife into his spine and twisted again, and again. only when his body began to sag did Roberte stop stabbing him. By the time the rocket had relinquished its hold on the ears and disappeared into a speck, Roberte was wearing Vern's gun belt, he held no weapon.
" We are STILL going to space, i know how to get us there."
Roberte's left eye was bruised so badly it was shut. He stood over the body of his oppressor. His coup successful. He looked on to the headquarters, that he could conquer now with an army.