Redemption's Song and other short stories

Hope Inhuman

In the morning, there was a zombie looking at her through the window of the old camper van. It had been the best shelter she could find as the sun had gone down, and an old tin of peaches stashed at the back of one of the cupboards had been an unexpected joy.

Karen rose silently, boots already on, rifle handy, rucksack packed and ready to go.

Dead white eyes continued to stare through the window and through her. As long as she didn't make a sound she'd be okay.

Gathering her sleeping bag, Karen tied it quickly to the top of her rucksack and stood carefully in the confines of the old Type 2 VW. It was a darker blue than her parents old one had been, but the pop top had still worked when she put it up, and it had remained dry despite the rain. But the doors creaked, and the side door was a slider, guaranteed to make a noise. She paused with her hand on the door handle and turned back to face the zombie.

It was just one.

She had a clear field of vision of about fifty yards to the woods beyond the car park. Nothing else was moving or making a sound that she could hear through the canvas roof.

The single shot of her handgun took the zed through the forehead, the grey sunken face collapsing from view as the spume of jellylike blood and grey matter ballooned from its head, the driver's side window exploding outwards in sprinkling shards of glass. She wrinkled her nose in disgust as the smell hit her, the zed hitting the tarmac of the disused car park with a dull thud. But as the birds in the nearby trees took flight, a chorus of stuttering moans broke the post gunshot silence.

"Dammit." Karen swore, rammed her pistol back in its holster, grabbed her rifle and bolted from the camper van, the old sliding door screeching in rusty protest as the hunting call of the zeds rose anew. More answered from a different part of the woods, and Karen altered her course to steer away from as many of them as she could.

~

An hour later, she stopped, breathing heavily and looked at the valley below her. She'd quickly lost the zombies, their shambling canter no match for her long distance runner stamina. From a granite outcrop, she looked through her binoculars at the town, eyes alert for movement of any sort.

Happy she was out of danger for the moment, Karen laid her rifle on the grass, removed her rucksack and unpacked the small gas stove and her army rations. As the pan bubbled to the boil she hand cranked the power on her clockwork radio and called in to base.

"Hello base? This is Scout 2, do you read me?"

"Morning Scout 2, Mal here, how's it going?"

Karen grinned, Mal was one of her favourite operatives, calm, unflappable and usually up for a pint in the old army canteen. "All good here Mal, although I nearly came unstuck this morning when I had to shoot a zed before breakfast."

"He forgot the milk?"

"Aye, the service was terrible. Although I did find a tin of peaches last night. The woods were full of zombies though so I had a bit of an early morning jog."

"Peaches? Nasty. Now tinned pineapple, that's more like it. I love tinned pineapple. You shot him with a gun?"

"Yes, my crossbow broke a couple of days ago, otherwise it wouldn't have been so noisy."

"What's your current situation?"

"Still no milk, just cooking breakfast."

Mal sighed deliberately over the radio, and Karen grinned as he continued. "Your status clever clogs; where are you, what's going on, are you in mortal peril? etc etc."