a can he’d liberated and trying to figure out what had just happened.
Now he knew the chopper was coming back and there were other people in the same predicament as he. And he knew he could camp out on a rooftop in comfort. But had Ryan’s signalling indicated the chopper would return to some other location, or that the three of them were leaving in that direction?
There was no point worrying as there was nothing Ali could do about it. At least if Ryan got rescued he could tell the pilot to come pick him up.
The only worry for now was the fire.
He decided no, it couldn’t. He didn’t think it would jump such a wide firebreak as the main road. It might light a few zombies, but he doubted the stone, steel and glass of the apartments would be combustible against such a weak ignition source.
Ali had a newfound sense of safety. He now had food, in the form of the camping supplies, and the likelihood was that the chopper would return.
“I must find something to read,” Ali told himself in preparation for his rooftop vigil.
He cast an eye around the living room. It was neat and tidy with even the TV guide appointed its own space next to the remote control. There was a storage tower stacked high with martial arts and action movies. There was the odd loose case next to the DVD player where he’d found the romantic comedy but with no electricity they had all been reduced to a stack of ornate signal mirrors.
Ali’s mouth opened wide as an expansive yawn escaped. He used the balls of his palms to wipe away the moisture from his eyes. Like the aftershock to an earthquake a second smaller yawn followed. The sunlight was streaming in from outside, but in spite of that Ali’s eyelids were heavy. He set the empty can of beans down on the kitchen counter and returned to his easy chair.
“It could be a long night,” Ali justified to himself as he snuggled down.
Chapter Fifteen
Bolt
Cannon let the blade of the knife slip down to the bottom of the link. The interwoven wire formed a harlequin pattern of squares that made up the car park fence. Each strand of wire was enveloped in a weather bleached casing of green plastic. The plastic had mostly rubbed off at the joints where the cable interlaced, and where it hadn’t it was so perished that it dropped off in lumps rather than yield a neat cut under the blade.
Cannon focused on the minutia of his task, the bite of wire against the blade of his knife, the grating of the metal edge as he sawed through the wire. This was not the way he should be treating his knife and he knew it. A sharp knife was an invaluable survival tool and with each swipe he was dulling the blade further.
Still, this was survival, Cannon told himself.
He concentrated on these niggling details rather than let the reality intrude. But every so often he couldn’t avoid it. Time and time again clusters of necrotic fingers would poke through the chain. A dead face with skin saggy and blue-tinged would be pressed against the fence, gnawing at the wire. At these moments Cannon’s gut reaction was to stop weakening the fence that was holding back the mass of animated dead just a finger’s length away.
A dead hand pushed against the wire where Cannon was cutting. The zombie, utterly focused on the human, didn’t notice that it had impaled its palm on Cannon’s knife. It poked its nose between the wire and gnashed its crooked yellow teeth. Its vacant, sunken, unblinking eyes transfixed on its potential meal as it pushed against the fence, struggling to get at him. Even though Cannon had wrapped his shemagh around his face, the smell of the creature’s rotting innards skulked through the fabric. The monster was so close that Cannon could see the whiskers poking through its dead flesh. The zombie pushed against the fence so hard its skin had started to split at the points of contact.
Cannon pulled his knife back. It slurped as it withdrew from the zombie’s soft, bloated flesh. This cadaver was soggy like a sponge. There was a trace of green in the crevices of the creature’s skin. Cannon wondered if maybe it had spent some time at the bottom of a lake.
Cannon knew nothing ate the dead-no dog or crow or cockroach or maggot. Nothing found these toxic corpses a savoury meal to devour. One whiff of their necrotic stench was enough to deter even the hungriest scavenger. The only thing that chewed at them was the weather or machinegun fire. But occasionally you would see a zombie, like this one, that had its own flora or fauna. There would always be the odd walking dead that had dragged half a bush with it but this one had a green algae matted to its cracked fingernails like the scum that clung to the walls of a neglected fish tank.
There was one time when Cannon had seen a bobbleheaded mushroom growing from a zombie’s suit collar. He’d even helped dredge up a zombie from the ocean, drenched in seaweed, and with a barnacle stuck firmly to its temple.
The wire popped as his knife severed the cable. With the extra space the dead man pushed his whole hand through and grabbed at Cannon’s body armour.
Cannon stepped back, but the dead fingers held tight. The zombie snarled behind the fence, ripping chunks out of its own lips as it tried to bite its way through.
Cannon swapped the knife over to his left hand, ripped open the Velcro securing his holster, and pulled out his pistol. He pushed the muzzle against the dead man’s forehead and pulled the trigger. As the shot rang out, the zombie slumped to the ground. Cannon shook off the grip, prizing the last couple of stubborn fingers free with the tip of his knife. The zombie’s body dangled slightly, suspended by the arm snagged in the wire. What was left of its head tipped back and the mush from its cranium sloshed onto the ground.
As soon as it had fallen away a new zombie filled the gap. Unperturbed by the fate of its predecessor, the replacement zombie slipped its ragged fingers through the mesh, mauling the air, desperate to squeeze through.
Cannon holstered his weapon and bent down on one knee. He slipped his knife down to the next link and cursed the damage he was causing to the blade as he hacked through the wire.
“But what about Ali?” Ryan protested.
“He’s obviously capable of looking after himself,” Cahz said. “Have you got the handbrake on yet?”
Cahz was leaning against the bumper, holding the car at a stop. This was the second vehicle he and Ryan had broken into and lined up facing the fence. From his position at the front of the car, Cahz was looking directly at the fenced-out zombies. “They’re getting very excited.”
“There’s got to be something we can do for him,” Ryan complained.
“The best thing we can do is get rescued,” Cahz said. “We get rescued and then we take a nice safe helicopter ride to go pick up your friend. Now hurry up. The natives are getting restless.”
The zombies on the other side of the flimsy wire were shaking it with tremendous force. Cahz guessed the fence had been weakened by the years of weathering, but it looked like the undead in their frenzy might just be able to tear it down themselves.
“I’ve cut away about half the links,” Cannon reported as he rejoined the others. “But I daren’t do any more than that in case they break through.”
“I was just thinking that,” Cahz confessed.
Ryan got out of the driver’s seat and wiped chunks of shattered safety glass from his backside. “Next time I’ll remember to put in the passenger window.”
“You not going to pump up those tyres?” Cannon asked.
“No point,” Ryan said. “I doubt they’ll take any pressure. They’ve been sitting on the rims for god knows how long. The rubber will be cracked and perished.”
“So no chance of getting one of these started and driving out of here?” Cannon asked, a note of hopefulness in
