They rushed past the trees, bushes and buildings lining the sides of the roads at a dangerous speed but neither Michael or Emma cared. Both were individually content to risk a degree of safety to get back home in the shortest possible time.
Carl was almost there.
Just a couple of hundred yards remained between him and the turning onto the track to the farm. He too searched constantly for the elusive junction. There were bodies all around him, stumbling onto the road in whichever direction he looked. Yet again the silence of the rest of the world seemed to have amplified out of all proportion every sound the motorbike made. Like a perverse Pied Piper a growing crowd of restless corpses followed him, attracted by the throaty roar of the powerful engine.
Carl’s heart sank as that same roar suddenly spluttered and died.
He was out of fuel. Damn close to the farmhouse, but not close enough.
As the bike freewheeled to a standstill he frantically tried to decide what to do. He quickly took off his helmet and threw it at the closest few bodies before dumping the bike and beginning to run. Exhausted, hot and tired he sprinted down the road and towards the track with what seemed like hundreds of corpses in close (but slow) pursuit and with more swarming around him from the trees and shadows surrounding. He was faintly aware of a low mechanical sound in the distance but he was too scared to stop. He had to keep moving. He reached the turning onto the track and began to sprint up the hill in the direction of the farmhouse.
At that moment the Landrover and car appeared, both still in close convoy and both out of sight of Carl. Disorientated and surprised by the unexpected appearance of so many bodies, Michael missed the turning. The sound of their vehicles had attracted plenty of cadavers along the way, but why were so many of them here now? Had their collective interest been aroused by the noise from the Landrover when they’d first left Penn Farm earlier that morning?
Emma flashed her headlamps at Michael and gave a blast on the horn, not sure if he knew he’d passed the turning onto the track. Furious for allowing himself to be distracted by the crowds, he braked hard and tried to turn around. The road was infuriatingly narrow and his frantic three point turn took many more turns than it should have done. Each time he reversed or drove forward more and more of the shambling creatures were dragged under the wheels of the Landrover.
Emma smashed through the rotting crowd and accelerated up the hill back towards the house. The rough track seemed worse than ever – the wheels of the car were smaller and less forgiving than the larger wheels of the van and Landrover. Each dip and trough of the uneven ground caused her to lurch forward in her seat and rattled her to the core. Weak and defenceless bodies were thrown to the side but there seemed to be still more and more of them further ahead. She accelerated again and managed a momentary glance into the rear view mirror. Michael was on his way up the track close behind her.
Carl was managing to outrun the bodies. Now that he had ditched the motorbike the sound he made was greatly reduced, and in turn that reduced his attraction to the ragged corpses all around him. But he was tiring fast. The air was dry and he had a painful stitch which he tried unsuccessfully to breathe through. He knew that he could not afford to stop but at the same time he was beginning to have real difficulty in keeping going. For a second he could hear the noise he’d heard at the bottom of the track again, and this time he realised that its volume was steadily increasing. The corpses dragging themselves up the hill towards him gradually broke off their pursuit and began to stumble back down again, distracted by this new sound. Carl looked over his shoulder and then turned back to look ahead again. In the near distance he could see the gate and the barrier and, just beyond that, Penn Farm.
Without warning Emma’s car appeared with Michael in the Landrover close behind. Carl span around and could hardly believe what he was seeing. He stood in the middle of the track waving his arms and yelling out loud, desperately hoping to attract the attention of one of the survivors. Emma noticed him, but at the same time three close shadowy figures also heard his anxious cries and threw themselves at him. They dragged him down to the ground where he kicked and punched and struggled to pick himself up. With an instinctive venom and anger, the creatures ripped at his flesh with vicious, twisted fingers.
Emma slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the car. Michael pulled up close behind (the track was too narrow to pull up alongside Emma) and ran to Carl’s side.
‘Fucking hell, it’s Carl,’ he shouted as he grabbed hold of the first of the three bodies and threw it to one side. ‘Where did he appear from?’
Emma took hold of another cadaver’s shoulders and wrenched it away from the man on the ground. Michael kicked the last one away and then helped Emma to get Carl into the car. Already they were being surrounded by hundreds of diseased figures.
‘Get back to the house,’ he screamed as he bundled Carl into the back of the car and pushed Emma into the front. Before he had even closed the door she had accelerated away again and was careering down the final incline towards the gate spanning the stone bridge.
Michael shoulder charged his way back through the sickly throng to the Landrover and managed to force his way back into the driver’s seat. He slammed and locked the door and then looked up and down the track. More and more bodies were converging on the road ahead. The frequent noise from the house over the last day or two must have attracted them. Perhaps their brains were beginning to function with more clarity and reason than before? Maybe these hundreds of corpses had actually stayed close to the farm and laid in wait because they knew that the survivors had been hiding in there? And now the combined noise from the bike, the Landrover and the car that Emma was driving seemed to have brought every last one of them out into the open.
He put the Landrover into gear and drove forwards, obliterating any of the corpses that foolishly remained in his way. But there were literally hundreds of them now, maybe even more than a thousand. He noticed that Emma had stopped a little way short of the gate and already her car was being swamped by ragged figures. Why didn’t she open the gate and go through? Cruel realisation suddenly dawned. He had the keys.
Like a man possessed he sped down the track. There were just too many of the damn creatures around. There was no way he could get out of the car and unlock the single padlock which they used to secure the gate when they left the farm. There were too many bodies around for him to risk being out in the open. There was only one option. He drove on and smashed through the wooden gate, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions. He drove across the dusty yard and skidded to a sudden halt right outside the steps leading up to the front door of the house. He anxiously looked back to make sure that Emma was following. She careered into the yard with a body clinging onto the bonnet of the car, trying desperately to smash the windscreen with a tired and wizened hand.
Knowing that he literally had just seconds to spare, Michael grabbed the keys to the Landrover from the ignition and took the house keys out of his jacket pocket. He jumped out of the car and ran up the steps and tried to unlock the door. His hands were shaking with nerves.
