Living Dead on the Centralbron
I haven't kept up the free fiction section of this blog for a while so here's a quick one for you all. It's a quick zombie tale (the zombies are slow, the story is quick). See if you can work out where it's set.
Pretending to be one of them didn't work. Mika had learned that the hard way when he and his sister had tried to cross town by foot. In desperation they'd covered themselves in blood, torn their clothes, worked themselves into a rage and copied the feral, inhuman movements of the zombies. That word--zombie. It caught in Mika's throat like a shard of bone.
"We won't make it," Kat had said, holding her brother back.
"If we don't get to Mother's by nightfall then there's no hope. You heard the message. They're coming for her, Kat."
"Its suicide. Those things are unstoppable."
"But we can outrun them. Besides we saw what taking the head of does. Cut anything else off and they keep on going, take out the head--"
"With what Mika?" said Kat through clenched teeth. They had swiftly learned not to raise their voices. "Are you going to take them on armed with your pocket knife?"
Mika snapped. "What's the alternative? Starve to death where we are? I know you're afraid, I am too but sitting here isn't going to help."
Reluctantly Kat had agreed to his plan.
Somehow the creatures knew who was human and who wasn't. Some part of their infected brain instinctively recognised what was prey and what wasn't. Almost immediately the damned creatures spotted them. They moved like one, a single ravenous entity made of the shambling corpses of the recently deceased. A whimsical thought had crossed Mika's mind that their behaviour was like a flock of birds, or a school of fish. Then fear set in as the hungering dead came for them. Some moved on broken limbs amplifying the already grotesque spectacle of the jerky incoherent spasms. Others were faster, the most recent victims who yet to be claimed by the rot that would eventually take them all. It wasn't long before Mika and Kat were surrounded.
And now Mika was alone.
He'd tried to push the image of Kat being clawed at by ferocious hands to the back of his mind, but the more he tried the more he relived her flesh being torn, over and over again. It was the lingering echo of her screams that were driving him mad though. That desperate last plea for help before she was silenced forever. He knew that the only reason he was alive was because those monsters were too busy attacking his sister. Of course he had run away. He kept telling himself that there had been no other choice. Had he stayed and fought he would have been killed too.
Mika looked from the relative safety of the store window he had been hiding in for the last hour to where someone had set up a barricade across the Centralbron. The bridge had been blocked with over turned busses and cars. There was even a boat, Mika noticed. From on top of the blockade someone was sniping the zombies, a few of which had wondered aimlessly far up the road. Heads popped open in clouds of red mist as shot after shot took the zombies down. Here was someone who knew how to survive. If Mika was going to make it back to mother's then he would need help, and what better than someone with a gun.
Being careful to stay out of sight of the creatures Mika ran along the central divide. He kept low and stopped whenever a zombie got close to let it walk by. He was half way to the barricade when his sister's voice reared up in the back of his mind.
"It's suicide," she said. Mika closed his eyes and shook his head to dismiss his sister warning. He had to focus on himself. There would be time for regret and mourning later. All he had to do now was reach the barricade.
There hadn't been a shot for a few minutes which could only mean that the bridge was free of zombies. Mika began to run to the wall of upturned vehicles. Salvation was in sight.
Something caught the edge of his ear. At first he though he'd been bitten. One of those fuckers had sneaked up on him and bit his goddamned year. He spun round and saw nothing. When he touched his ear blood stained his fingers.
"Ah shit I missed him!" Someone cursed from behind the wrecked hull of the boat that straddled the left lane.
"Well shoot him again and stop wasting bullets," said a female from somewhere inside the cabin of a truck. "Look at him covered in blood, all torn up. That's a killer that one. If he gets here that's the end of us."
Mika wanted to shout out, to let them know he was human. All he wanted to do was put the woman right. He wasn't a zombie. He was just like them, a real human. A real living human. All he could manage was to let out a dry croak before his head exploded in a cloud of red.
"Looks like that's the last of them."
"There'll be more. Always is."
