The Undead. The First Seven Days by R R Haywood Read Free Book Online

extract my head from under her vice-like grip. I get my head free and look at her, her eyes are open, completely bloodshot; the whites replaced with red. Her lips are pulled back and her perfect white teeth are exposed. She rolls over towards me and I jerk backwards, trying to keep out of her reach.
  ‘Fucking bitch… you fucking bitch,’ I shout out, in sudden anger and fear.
  I get to my feet and kick her in the face. She is still writhing and I do it again; pulling back like a footballer, ramming my foot into her nose. I feel the bone crunch and her head snaps back, I do it again and her head is snapped to the side at an unnatural angle - and yet she carries on.
    I stagger away with my hands to my head, deeply in shock and feeling sick that I lashed out like that, kicking a woman in the face.
  She spoke to me and we shared something, maybe only a few seconds in time but we shared a connection; two living people.
  We have hundreds, sometimes thousands of interactions every day; we speak to people without thinking anything of it. But after everything that’s happened since last night and seeing the undead kill people and watch them turn, then seeing the car crash and getting to her while she was alive… another human being that needed help. She was alive and spoke to me and I failed, I failed to rescue her.
  If I hadn’t fallen off that bike, if I had got up quicker and moved faster. If I had pulled hard enough the first time, I may have saved her, but I didn’t do those things and she died.
  It’s my fault. She looked at me, spoke to me, we made eye contact and I told her that I would help her.
  The sickening action of kicking her replays in my mind - the image of my foot connecting with her face.
  This is awful, the most awful thing I have ever done.
    Every previous sin can be forgiven and forgotten. Every previous bad act I have perpetrated is erased. Nothing will ever be the same again from this point on.
  I tried to save her and I failed but then she came back and was attacking me; the strength in her hands and arms was incredible. She turned and became undead, and I had to stop her… didn’t I?
  I justify the action to myself… if I didn’t kill her, she could have got me or someone else.
  I have to change this thought process. She was not a she when I kicked her, she was an undead.
  They are all undead.
  The woman from earlier on was not a young lady out for the evening, getting excited about wearing her new low-cut, blue dress. She was not a she. It was an undead.
  They all are.
  The quicker I get that into my head, the safer I will be and the greater chance for survival I will have.
  They are all the undead.
    I lower my hands from my head; resolute, changed and hardened. I have killed to survive and I will do it again - if I have to.
  I admit there was a part of me that enjoyed the first kill with the hammer. No, not enjoyed, that isn’t right, something else. Something primeval. An instinct buried and softened by modern society; this sickens me but, at the same time, it provides comfort and I walk away without looking back.
     
    After half an hour I am still on the motorway, the fields and trees off to both sides slowly giving way as we pass a village.
  I haven’t seen or heard anyone, the adrenalin has fully worn off and I feel totally and utterly drained.
  At walking pace it will take me ages to reach my parents house. There is nothing on the motorway that I can use, I should go into the village and find a vehicle.
  I can’t see a junction anywhere or a turn off, I’m sure that the next junction is miles up the road, near my parent’s village.
  I walk over to the side of the road and clamber over the crash barrier, then down a ditch and across into a field. There is a barbed wire fence in a bad state of repair; it is held in place by wooden posts. A few kicks at one of the posts brings it down, the wire sagging lower, and I can step