“You’ve got be fucking kidding me.”
“What’s up?” asked Mark.
“When I released the strap of my rifle, it must have caught the radio as it whipped back and unhooked it,” sighed Nate, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. “It’s down there.”
“What do we do now then?”
“Without the rifle, that’s a whole shit ton of ammunition I’ve got on my person rendered useless. Ammo count?”
“Still got the two magazines of Glock and six shells left,” said Mark after a quick count.
“Same on the Glock, and eight 12-gauge,” sighed Alicia.
Nate quickly did the sums. “So, between us we’ve got a total of seven magazines of 9mm including those in the gun, so that’s eighty-five, and fourteen buckshot. Shitting hell,” he huffed in frustration.
“That’s not enough for all of them,” observed Mark. “Probably not enough for even a third of them as it stands.”
“No, it most certainly is not.”
“So, what do we do?”
“Right now?” Mark nodded in response to the query. Nate laid across the top of the plastic wrapped bricks. “We get our shit together and take a minute.”
“But Nate…”
“Mark,” he interrupted, his voice low. “Right now, we can’t do shit. We’re safe for the moment. These brick pallets are a solid platform, stacked to fourteen feet, and as heavy as my fucking heart is right now. The undead can’t shift this weight, the pallets are wrapped in thick plastic sheeting that would need a blade to cut through, banded with metal strapping so they don’t shift, so the bastards down there can’t knock the bricks out and fuck their stability.” He blew out his cheeks, just wanting a moment’s respite. “Everything has just gone to shit, I’m paggered, and I just need a fucking minute, reet?”
Mark and Alicia both looked at him quizzically.
“What?” he demanded.
“Paggered? Reet?” Alicia looked bewildered.
Nate snorted. Whenever he was exhausted, or had a few too many drinks, the old Yorkshire slang crept back into his vocabulary, the accent of his childhood having been smoothed out over years in the military.
“Paggered is exhausted, reet is right.” He smirked. “All reet?”
Nate looked at his watch; it was a little after 5.30pm. They had been trapped on their brick tower for almost an hour and a half, watching with trepidation as the light began to dim behind thick, ominous clouds. Sunset was only a couple of hours away.
Despite the heavy rainstorms of the previous week, the autumn had been unseasonably clement so far and one of the reasons they had done this run to the yard so soon. Mark could use the more temperate climate to get the generator housing built in readiness for the inevitable cold snap.
It would still be cold tonight though.
“I don’t understand where they all came from,” said Alicia, echoing Mark’s query from moments earlier.
“What I don’t understand is why they’ve suddenly gone so docile,” murmured Nate.
“Eh?”
“Look at ‘em,” he said, flicking a hand at them. “Despite us chatting up here, they’ve gone all docile, like they don’t really want us anymore, now we’re out of reach. They always react to sound, but they don’t give two flying shits about us now they can’t get us. It’s weird.”
“Everything’s weird nowadays,” huffed Mark.
“Weirder than usual, then.”
“What do we do, Nate?” Mark struggled to keep the fear from his voice. “Charlie’s alone back there. I need to get back to him.”
“Aye, you do, but you need to get back to him alive, sunshine. Try and make your escape now and you’ll be dead in a snap. And the boy isn’t alone. He’s well cared for.”
“We can’t just sit here.”
“Aye, we can,” said Nate. “We wait for backup.”
“There is no backup!” hissed Mark.
Nate turned to face him, a twitch of irritation narrowing his eyes.
“I get you want to get back to your kid, but listen to me, and listen well. We do have backup. She’s about five-foot six, as agile as a squirrel on steroids, and one of the most resourceful individuals I’ve ever known, and I’ve served with some of the best. No one gets left behind with that kid. No one.”
As if listening from afar, the radio below them crackled into life, the slight Liverpool accent like music to his ears.
“Nate, you fucking mentalist, where the fuck are you?”
Nate grinned back at Mark and Alicia. “There’s my girl,” he said with a wink. “Right on cue. “
The moment Erin’s voice hissed over the radio, the undead appeared to straighten, their sightless gaze aiming down towards the handset, and the swell moved.
“I swear to fucking God, Nate, if you’re fucking with me, I will cut your old man balls clean off. It’ll be easy, seeing as those low-hanging fruit slap the water every time you sit down for a shit.”
Nate couldn’t even laugh as Erin’s Liverpool accent thickened with anger. It always became more prominent when her blood was up, just as his Yorkshire accent intensified with tiredness or alcohol. Instead of laughing at one of his favourite quirks, he watched in morbid fascination as the undead moved like a creeping tide in the direction of the radio, crowding it in their silent mass.
“I’m going to keep checking in, Nate,” came Erin’s voice, slightly muffled by the density of monsters crowding the handset. “And if I find you’re fucking with me, those balls will come off with rusty scissors operated by my left hand… and I’m not left-handed. I’ll make an absolute pig’s ear of it, Nate.” Her tone changed then. “Nate? Nate? Nate, for fuck’s sake, answer me!”
His heart almost broke as her tone transformed from mock anger to genuine fear at his silence.
“I’m here, kid,” he whispered. “I’m right here.”
The next few hours were torture. Every fifteen minutes, Erin’s voice crackled into life, sparking the undead to crowd the radio again, and each time Nate could hear her fear intensify. The humour was gone, and all he could hear was her pleading for him to answer, shouting into the void of the
