The Last Alive - Book One

Chapter Four - The Longest Mile

Chapter Four - The Longest Mile

Following a short walk along the same path, Sean entered a more suburban and familiar area. He passed by some trees that had been untended and left to grow over the majority of the path, their spindly, twisting arms scraping against the material of his parka as he shimmied through them. Houses rose from the greenery towering over him on both sides. Just like every other house he had passed on his perilous journey home, their windows and doors were agape, cracked or smashed and riddled with filth, muck or blood. Tattered, ruined in a state of decay and in need of repair. Their gardens and fences were in similar fashions, over grown, packed with weeds and knee length grass. Flowers wilted by some of the door steps, and bicycles were discarded on the lawn. Sean’s attention was brought to a child’s toy pram, it was black, rusted to hell and was standing upright with a cockled wheel, bent and misshapen. A small doll sat alone, tucked beneath a sodden and stained blanket, it stared lifelessly at him from its dirty, glazed eyes.

Passing through this side of town was somewhat of a rare occurrence. The town’s cemetery was just up the road and thankfully in the opposite direction to where he was headed. This road also led to a small adjacent village which then led back around to the town’s landmark bridge which Sean had crossed yesterday. His brother had once taken residence in one of the houses that he had passed a few years before, he had vacated due to a split from his then partner and departed to one of the county’s cities. Sean had not received word from him amidst the chaos. For once he was the last of his worries but a worry none the less. Perhaps he would one day be able to locate his brother or discover his fate, maybe he was in a similar position to Sean, searching for his loved ones and as usual Sean and his family would be the last of his worries.

Sean came to a cross road, to the left he could see the cemetery in the distance and the nearby church’s spire pointed to the sky, a section had collapsed revealing its innards, the tiles from the spire scattered the road and the pavement. A small number of bodies littered the street. The distance between them was too great for Sean to be noticed but he kept quiet and followed the road to the right in hope to avoid any further confrontation with axe in hand. He couldn’t take any chances and was prepared to fight his way through the town if needed which is what he expected he would have to do.

As he walked further down the road there were a few walking corpses, nothing he couldn’t handle one on one but taking them on all at once could easily overwhelm him. He crouched behind the nearest car just by the side of the pavement which had careered into a hedge. This provided ample cover and presented  a minute to think things through. He planned to sneak past undetected, something that he had almost perfected on his journey across the country, he was prepared to do battle should his tactics be unsuccessful and turn against his favour. The easiest way to pass the zombies was to sneak through the front gardens of the nearby houses, they all had walls or hedges which were high enough to keep him hidden if he was to stay low, the opened gates along the way would test his abilities and patience as he waited for openings to cross the yards and leap in to the neighbouring gardens.

Upon entering the closest garden he was able to jump the hedge with relative ease, the corner of the house was out of view. He scrambled towards the front hedge that stood by the pavement and edged towards the iron gate. Every step was nerve-wracking, the crunch of dead leaves and the rustle of the long grass a cause for concern. Every few steps he would stop and wait for the moans and groans or shuffling and dragging of feet to identify their positions before continuing.

He reached the gate and halted, patiently waiting for an opportunity, peering through the railings of the gate every twenty or thirty seconds. Sean was tense and felt the palms of his hands clam up, the moisture greasing the handle of the axe. His body still ached from waking that morning, and for every second that he squatted the greater the pain increased. He took another look and span across the gate to the other side as the shell of a woman in the road turned and stumbled further down the street. Sean dashed and hopped the fence between the two yards taking shelter behind the continuing hedge.