Road to London: City of the Dead

VII
July 31st

Nathan sat up, finally escaping from nightmares of fire and death that had plagued him for what seemed like an eternity. He tried to open his eyes but couldn’t. Groping at his face he found what felt like a blindfold and ripped it off violently. Still nothing. On further investigation he found a woollen padding taped across his eyelids. He tore this away too and was not at all prepared for the agony that shot through his whole body.

He didn’t scream, but rolled into a ball and tensed every muscle he had. The light was blinding and it was a while before his hands came into focus, even though they were just in front of his face. He was alarmed to see how badly they were shaking. Another wave of pain rippled through him, forcing him to arc his back like a thrashing worm.

After a few minutes the pain subsided and he relaxed. Opening his eye again he looked around the room he was in. It was strange and unfamiliar, with framed paintings and dodgy wallpaper lining the walls. It was a little while before he realised that while his right eye was fine, his left was still black. There must be another covering, he thought as he reached up to remove it.

There was no covering. His eye was indeed open. Nathan noticed a crusting around the socket and then froze. The whole left side of his face was cracked and scabbed. It was painful to touch but at the same time seemed numb. He frantically scoured the room with his working eye until he spotted a bedside mirror that Svet had obviously not thought to take away.

He turned his face slightly to the right, so that he could see as much of his face as possible without his nose blocking the view. What he saw made the pain return and the nightmares seize control of mind again. The left side of his head was almost utterly covered with burns of varied colouring and consistency. There were also deep gouges across the raw skin, mostly horizontal but one (very large) ran vertically across his eye.

The eye itself was greyed over, with no pupil to speak of. It was an incredibly strange experience waving his hand in front of the left side of his face yet seeing nothing at all. Never being a particularly vain person, Nathan was far more concerned with this than his facial disfigurement. With no depth perception, how was he supposed to be able to fight? The thought worried him, but for now he put it out of his mind. Feeling the bedsores on the bottom of his legs and on his back, he winced as he slid out of bed and walked to the door.
He was fucking hungry.

***

Nathan could feel the group watching him as he demolished the bowl of dry Weetabix in front of him. In total it had probably taken him under thirty seconds to finish it.
“More,” he said with a mouthful of food that he was still chewing. Katrina looked at Svet, who shrugged, unsure of what to do.

“More!” demanded Nathan, aggressively this time. Jumping slightly, Katrina hurried over to the fridge-freezer in the corner of the living room. The fridge stank because most of the produce was well passed its sell by date. After a rummage around she took out the only two things that looked edible; a jar of pesto and a pot of jam.

Nathan used his fingers to scoop out the jam and consumed the whole pot impressively quickly and somewhat sickeningly. Next he moved onto the pesto, which he poured down his throat. He really did not care at all about the looks of disgust on the other’s faces. Even Israel was giving him a stare of disbelief. Again he requested more courses.

Next up was a sealed can of cooking tomatoes, suspended in saltwater. After bashing open the container on the edge of the table, he drank the contents (drank being the most appropriate word), solid and liquid. After burping loudly and slamming the empty can on the work surface, he started on the large bowl of dried chicken feed that Katrina had already set before him in anticipation.

This seemed to satisfy the hunger which been three days in its accumulation. He leaned back in the chair and ran his hands through his semi-scorched hair. “so, did everyone sleep well?” he asked, to which everyone nodded nervously except Conrad, who made a weak joke about how Latiwa and Israel had kept him up all night through the wall. Nathan didn’t laugh, but instead thanked Conrad for rescuing him back in Bunerton, which Svetlana had explained to him a few minutes earlier.

After feeling at his belt Nathan froze, then asked the question everyone was dreading even though they were ready for it; “Where are my knives?” The queery was to everyone and anyone. No one answered. He looked around at his friends, who avoided his eyes. Eventually Svet spoke up; “You dropped them after the explosion,” Nathan sighed with frustration, then nodded glumly to show that he understood. He had been through a lot with those knives.

“But,” Latiwa added happily. She reached into a rucksack at her feet and drew out two huge weapons. The blades were inwardly curved and much wider towards the head than at the base, thinning again at the tip. “We found these hanging on the wall upstairs and thought you might fancy them.”

Nathan let out a gasp of awe as they were handed to him. He took one in each hand and studied them from every angle with fascination.
“Khukuri, they’re Nepalese” said James, once again showing off his vast knowledge of everything. “They were above a World War Two era officer’s uniform so assumedly whoever lived in this house was part of the Royal Ghurkha Regiment and these were probably awarded to him by his men on retirement from the unit, or upon death...”

Nathan had heard of the Ghurkhas, they were renowned for their ferocity and these weapons reflected that. They felt more like axes than knives and were weighted perfectly for hacking motions. Standing up, Nathan rudely ignored present company and began to ascend the stairs in order to play with his new toys.

***

It had been hours since Nathan had began training with his new weapons of choice. He had already annihilated most of the chopable furniture in the bedroom and was now hacking away at a particularly thick and sturdy hat stand, which made quite a formidable opponent. He knew that if he was to stand any chance against the Dead with his missing eye, he would need to get used to fighting with no depth perception.

Although his arms chest ached massively from repeating the four part Slice, Hack, Hack, Stab combinations, the pain in his head was worse. He could barely even hear his own breathing patterns. James had warned him that he might notice damage to his hearing but he was now almost entirely deaf. He hoped that this sense would return quickly because communication through speech was one of the group’s most effective survival tools.

Because of this he didn’t hear Hiya-kō coming up behind him. Though he doubted whether he’d have been able to detect her anyway. The rounded edge of the sword slid gently across his throat, causing him to flinch and then freeze. “Zan-shin,” she whispered quietly in his ear. He waited for her to translate while trying to stay as still as possible. “Awareness.” She finished. The lesson would be well learned as Nathan never wanted to be in this position again with anyone other than her.

She released him then, walking over to the hat stand, gave it the lightest of kicks. More a flick really. Nathan wasn’t even sure if she’d connected but slowly and surely, the stand fell to the ground with a crash. She took a few paces back from Nathan, then lowered her sword to an on-guard position, she also rocked back into a very low stance with her back leg at a right angle to the floor and her front leg stretched out far in front of her.

“You know, most of the Dead don’t carry a katana around with them...” he challenged as he struck up a pose that he’d seen on Resident Evil Extinction, with one knife down by his knee and one across his chest.
“Then they should make for far less difficult opponents then I” she retorted. Nathan wasn’t sure if it was intentional or just down to her bad English, but this classical way of speaking suited her very well.

Making sure he didn’t actually hit her, Nathan swung slowly at her head with the blade in his right hand. She blocked it with her bare palm, then smashed the flat of her sword into his thigh. With a yelp he buckled and then gasped as she rammed the hilt of the weapon into his stomach, winding him.

Again she took a step back, allowing him to rise. She had a look of disappointment in her eyes, which said to Nathan that she would do that every time he held back. He got to his feet, panting heavily. Before he had fully recovered, Hiya-kō threw a vertical chop towards his head. He tried to block it with his left knife but before he could, the sword had moved. It whipped cleanly into the gap left by his defending arm and the point pressed ever so slightly into his chest, right above his heart. He groaned. There was much work to be done.

***

Nathan awoke in a daze. He was knackered from training almost all day with Hiya-kō and could barely move without feeling the souvenirs that she had left all over his body. He checked his watch which lay on the bedside table next to the mirror. Twenty minutes passed eleven.

The crashing noise that had woke him up repeated, followed by a sound that resembled breaking glass. He rolled out of bed for the second time today, pulled on his jeans, his shirt then snatched up his new knives and ran downstairs. When he reached the kitchen, he found James, Israel, Conrad and Latiwa standing in a line, ready to face the dozen or so Dead that were cautiously creeping closer towards them.

Most were dressed in night clothes, but some were wearing jeans and one even looked partially dressed for work. He had seen this before. While most of the Dead had risen on July the eleventh in their pyjamas or naked and had gone out hunting dressed as such, some they suspected had begun to pull on clothes purely out of reflex. These reflexes were common, the only proof that these things had once been human. Nathan had even once witnessed a Dead blow its nose with a handkerchief after sneezing.

The most presentable Dead pushed his way through the others and sprinted towards
James, mouth open and arms outstretched. James raised his bat in preparation to take a swing but before his could, Latiwa jumped in front of him and jabbed the Dead in the chest with her left fist, halting it. Stunned but still fully functional, it came at her this time. She threw a left jab again, this time at its throat and then followed it up with a right hook that caught it in the temple. It was so powerful that it haemorrhaged the Dead’s skull, killing it instantly. The body fell to one side hard, feet leaving the floor slightly as it did.

Normally a blow that hard would have shattered Latiwa’s fist bones, but the custom fitted, stainless steel knuckle dusters that she wore most of time anyway took all the force and amplified her punching power many times fold. She rejoined the line and raised her fists again in her signature boxing stance, knuckles red with blood.
As if they were angered by their comrade’s defeat, the rest of the dead snarled and advanced. The boys threw themselves into the fray. Nathan ran to join them.

He saw Conrad’s axe severe a head cleanly, then sink into a skull with a terrible thud. Two dead attempted to flank him as he struggled to free the weapon, which was lodged deep in its target’s brains. Just as one got so close that Conrad had to keep it at bay with his free hand, Nathan burst through the line. He ran the closest Dead through with one of his knives, then slit its throat with the other.

Wrenching his khukuri free, he took a huge swing and decapitated the Dead who was harassing Conrad. Deep red blood erupted from its neck in shoots that followed the thing’s heart beats before the body died. It fell forwards limply, spilling crimson all across the ground. Nathan looked up just in time to see Latiwa floor the last standing Dead with a powerful kick to the chest. It gulped, winded in the second before Israel finished it off with a terrible strike to the face from his sledgehammer, which was accompanied by a victory cry.

The limbs lifted off the ground from the force and there was a loud crack as the wooden laminate floorboards beneath the Dead’s head were splintered. For a few moments the thing spasmed before falling still. All except Nathan, who had joined the action late, gasped for breath. They were all caked in already drying blood.

Nobody said a thing for a good minute while they all caught their breath. Conrad stumbled over to a plant pot in the corner of the room and vomited, having seen Israel’s overkill up close and been showered in the contents of the Dead’s noggin. When he was done he looked up. There was genuine fear in his eyes. He had heard a strangled scream in the near distance that could only mean one thing.

“We have to leave, now.”