No time to think.
Wilkins took an open door at the front of a house immediately to his left, but immediately found himself outside again, as the building had almost completely collapsed in on itself. But there was opportunity in this wreckage – there had to be! – and he scrambled up the side of an enormous, pyramid-like pile of broken bricks, struggling with the ice and the uneven, constantly shifting surface under his boots. A quick, breathless climb and he was up, walking along what remained of a supporting wall between two terraced homes, balancing with his arms outstretched like an inexperienced tightrope walker at a particularly macabre circus. He ducked through a hole and dropped into a neighbouring building. This one was in a worse state than the first and he could feel its foundations shaking with his every footfall. He knew he was committed. He had to keep moving. Whatever happened next could be no worse than the savage hell he was fleeing.
Wilkins jumped down into what had previously been a family’s living room, but was now open to the elements. There was a sideboard where once-prized possessions and framed photographs lay under a covering of dust, snow and ice. It was surreal to see the inside turned outside like this, but Wilkins forced himself to ignore the distractions and keep moving, still listening out for the sounds of the battle nearby.
This dilapidated house had become something of a puzzle; a maze where nothing was where it should have been. In the next room, the upstairs was downstairs. A heavy, wooden-framed bed was sitting uncomfortably astride a few sticks of wood which had, until the shells had hit, been a relatively grand dining suite.
Out of one door and in through the next.
He was closer now, but the gunfire had stopped and the fighting was over. Was he too late?
He threw himself across a narrow alleyway which was swarming with the dead. His speed and strength seemed to take all of them by surprise, and though several tried to grab at him, he was too fast and too strong. He burst through another door into the next building along, only then stopping to think what might have happened had it been locked and he’d been stuck outside with those damned, merciless creatures.
Up again… a staircase which went nowhere. On the top step he took a leap of faith across an unexpected chasm, then ran through the first floor of this building before leaping again, this time from one house to the next. The gap was perfectly manageable, but there was a considerable drop waiting for him, with nothing but the dead to cushion his fall.
There was a church up ahead.
Wilkins used another enormous pile of rubble to climb back down to street level, then ran for all he was worth to reach the grey-stone church. Sanctuary, he thought, in more ways than one. He weaved through the milling crowds outside, knowing that if he dared slow down or stop, his number would be up.
A Nazi with half its face missing.
A barely-clothed local woman who he might once have found attractive, but whose body was now so consumed with gangrenous rot and decay as to render her completely abhorrent.
A child with a twisted visage who came at him with the ferocity of an SS killer.
A GI that tripped over his own innards which spilled out like glistening paper-chains from an ugly-looking hole in his belly.
A priest who’d had his throat torn out…
The sights surrounding Wilkins were relentless and uniformly horrific. So terrifying, in fact, that he became disorientated again. He reached the church and frantically climbed the steps, but paused before pushing his way inside through the heavy wooden doors. He looked back and surveyed the horrific landscape through which he’d just travelled and wondered if this torture was some kind of divine retribution for the countless lives he’d taken in the name of freedom since this damned war had begun?
The dead were beginning to advance up the steps towards him. He had a couple of second’s grace. Many of them struggled with the coordination required to climb.
The church doors were locked. Or blocked. One thing was certain – he wasn’t going to get inside.
He listened keenly for some kind of clue which might lead him in the right direction, but there was nothing. As he waited, struggling to keep his composure with so many grotesque ghouls now closing in, he became aware of the horrible noises they made. Dragging feet, but little other sound. Silence where he’d expected to hear moans and groans. The occasional rattle of air trapped in lungs, and sounds of deflation when one of them hit the ground. Individually he’d have struggled to hear anything, but this was a crowd of incredible proportions, and the cumulative noise was deafening.
Over the chaos, Wilkins heard another brief burst of noise coming from elsewhere. The Americans. One of them screaming. Was he too late?
No time to lose.
He estimated the battle to be taking place somewhere in the region of a quarter of a mile north-east of his current position. He made a note of the various buildings between here and there, then ran like hell; straight back down the steps and deep into the advancing cadavers. He dropped his shoulder and went hell-for-leather, not daring to stop or slow for fear he’d never get moving again and that he’d be overcome by the relentless waves of rot threatening to crash over him from all directions.
A grimy-looking, white-washed building was his next port of call. He entered through a mouth-like hole in a side wall, pursued by an alarming number of staggering corpses. He felt like the Pied Piper in a nightmarish twist on the old folk tale. He lost his footing and fell. His right foot was caught, and he feared for a moment that he might be trapped. He had, in fact, been caught by a grotesquely disfigured soldier who had himself been partially buried under fallen masonry. The soldier had a hold of his boot and was doing all it could to sink its germ-filled teeth into his leg. Wilkins writhed to get away but the creature was deceptively strong and determined, and it took an un-gentlemanly boot to the dead thing’s face to free himself. In fact, one boot wasn’t enough. Wilkins kicked out again and again, reducing the dead man’s face to a virtually unrecognisable pulp. He felt a pang of guilt when he realised the unnatural beast had once been an American soldier. Satisfied he’d done enough to render the poor bastard completely incapacitated, he checked his dog-tags. Private Owen. What happened to you, Private? he wondered sadly. How did you end up here like this?
Back up and running again, Wilkins weaved around more of the creatures, again slipping through their grabbing hands. He took a sharp right and collided with several more, the force of impact having a greater effect on them than him as they fell like skittles. Another right turn. Still more of them coming from every conceivable angle. So many now that they were all he could see.
And then Wilkins burst out into the open and found himself in the middle of a large space which looked like it had been the scene of the bloodiest of massacres. He was on his own in a decent-sized bubble of space almost at the centre of the area, but his relief was short-lived as the dead came at him from all angles. He could see numerous potential escape routes where there were gaps in and between the battle-damaged buildings, but right now none of them appeared to be viable options. Each exit was choked by throngs of corpses, and it felt like they were all converging on his isolated position. He had about thirty seconds until they swallowed him up, he reckoned, maybe a minute at best.
Sorry, Jocelyn… I tried, but it wasn’t enough…
A wolf whistle.
The high-pitched noise was unexpected and strangely directionless as it bounced off the walls of the buildings which surrounded him. Wilkins looked around, then up. Got them! A bunch of yanks hanging out of an empty top floor window, gesticulating at him wildly.