One
“Get those cars in place,” Josh barked, wondering, not for the first time, at which point it had been decided he should be the de facto leader of the group. He was nothing more than a kid, after all, barely out of sixth form when the shit hit the proverbial fan. That day was almost nine months prior, and as every other member of his group Josh had been forced to grow up much more quickly than he otherwise would have.
“I want them end to end, from the hedgerow to that shitty fence running beyond the treeline. We’ll just have to hope to fuck that shit holds up.”
At a shout from above Josh glanced up to the roof of the building, a cottage in the depths of England’s Ashdown Forest not too far from where Milne had been inspired to write Winnie the Pooh.
“What’ve we got, Esther?” he shouted in response to the young woman, only a couple of years older than he was, who had jammed herself between the chimney stacks that she might have a relatively clear view of the road for some distance in both directions.
“Movement,” she yelled back. “Coming in from the south, probably about half a mile out.”
“Numbers?”
“I can’t tell, but if I can see them despite the tree cover then I’d guess at it being a shitload of them.”
“Nice and precise,” Josh muttered, before he jogged quickly to the cottage and headed inside. The wood-burning stove was ablaze and it heated the kitchen rather nicely, ensuring those too young or too ill to fight were considerably warmer than those members of the group outside in the late-November chill.
“Everyone doing alright?” he asked, cheerfully, though his jovial tone was forced. He crouched down beside Mike, a young man of about nine years. “Listen Mike, I’m leaving you in charge here OK? There’s going to be a lot of noise going on outside very soon but I want you to ignore that and keep everyone safe. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, Josh,” Mike said, nodding in reply.
“Good lad now remember, don’t open the door whatever happens. Esther is up on the roof, and she’ll come in through the bathroom window when everything’s safe.”
“I got it, Josh. Don’t worry.”
“Good lad,” Josh repeated, as he got to his feet and ruffled Mike’s hair in such a manner he knew the boy would find irritating. With a quick glance around the room and a nod to Angie, the eldest of the group by some margin, he left the kitchen and the cottage and was soon back out in the cool air of the early evening.
“Esther!” he yelled once he was back outside. “How’re we looking?”
“Barricades are in place, Josh,” she shouted back. “They’ll be on us in less than a minute.”
“Gotcha’,” he replied. “Do what you can from up there and we’ll take care of the rest.”
***
A light, cold rain began to fall as Josh clambered easily onto the roof of one of the cars that comprised the hastily erected south barricade. The clouded sky made it feel both later in the day and darker than it really was, though he had no issues at all seeing those zombies at the forefront of the horde.
It was the sound the creatures made, rather than the sight of them, that was the most unsettling. The harsh and rasping breaths of a single zombie forcing air into its rotten lungs was one thing but en masse, when plural referred to double or perhaps triple figures, it was unnerving.
“And so we fight!” Josh was not talking to any one person in particular, though the dozen or so fighters among the group of survivors gathered behind him knew full well his words were directed at each and every one of them.
Brandishing various melee weapons between them, his fellows joined Josh and clambered onto the vehicles or took station on the ground where members of the undead community might attempt to squeeze between the cars, as futile for them as that might be.
The undead within reach Josh swung his cricket bat; grateful, and not for the first time since the first days of the outbreak, that he had been selected for his school cricket team, as clean strike after clean strike sent zombie heads flying through the air, relieved of their bodies.
The creatures’ hands and fingers clawed at his boots though that did not phase him for he knew it would take more than a few wandering digits to breach the tough leather.
For hours they fought to keep themselves and their fellows alive. Arrows shot down from the rooftop, when Esther had a clean shot. But soon the fight was over, and as dawn broke the sheer magnitude of what they had accomplished became clear. Hundreds of zombie corpses, headless or otherwise, were piled high, and Josh had not lost a single one of his people.
“And that’s how that shit’s done!” he wearily exclaimed as he leapt from the roof of the vehicle, an old Volvo estate, to which his feet had been firmly planted for more hours than he cared to count.
There were fistbumps and high-fives all around, and Josh glanced up to the chimney stacks to see that Esther had already disappeared, no doubt to slip her slight frame through the bathroom window to let those inside know that it was safe to set foot outside.
Angie was the first to emerge, poking her head out of the front door with a cigarette, no doubt a Marlboro Red as was her preference, between her aged lips.
“Kettle’s on!” she cried out. “Let’s all have a nice cuppa, and then set about burning that pile of undead shit.”
