“What’s the best thing to do here?” Jonathan asked, “Should we approach them, or sound the alarm?”

“How far away are they?”

“About five hundred feet and closing.”

Gary pressed down on the sudden panic he felt. He also noted that for all of his leadership talk, Jonathan was asking Gary what they should do.

“Okay, fuck. Right. There’s only five of them, right? So that’s not a lot, unless they’re higher levels. They’re moving slowly, which suggests they’re just level ones. So the first thing we need to do is get a visual on them, I guess. You’re sure it’s only five?”

Jonathan checked his map. “Yeah, just five, I think. It’s a bit fuzzy.”

“Right. We’ve got the advantage here. I took out a hundred level ones outside the church because they wouldn’t fight back. So let’s get close, see what’s what. I can take them out without too much fuss. They’ll target you and ignore me. I’ve been through this before, but the numbers were much worse. As long as I’m between them and you, you’ll be safe. If it’s more dangerous than it seems, I guess you run back to the farmhouse and alert the others.”

Jonathan nodded, “Sounds like a plan.”

The pair of them walked back through one field, heading southeast, to meet the oncoming undead. Gary gripped Simon whilst Jonathan held his long-sword.

“Okay, they’ve changed direction,” Jonathan said. “They’re moving towards us now instead of the farmhouse.”

“Right, they’ll have picked up on you. Okay, where are they?”

Jonathan pointed and through the grey gloom of his nightvision, Gary saw the five shambling figures approaching them. They were dressed in casual country clothes and weren’t carrying any weapons. As they got closer, their groans became audible.

Gary squinted.

“Oh hell. I think I know them. That’s the McPearsons.”

“Who?”

“The farmers from the next farm over. Jesus.”

It had been ten years since Gary had met the farming family, but he still remembered them. A pleasant couple who had given up the rat race and become new-age farmers with their three children. They’d been hippyish, but Gary remembered having a huge crush, at fourteen, on the then sixteen-year-old daughter Saffron. During the summer weekends converting his uncle’s farmhouse, he’d made as many excuses as he could to visit the McPearsons’ farm and shop. His uncle had noticed that there was a suspiciously regular need to restock on milk and eggs, but hadn’t realised it was because of Gary disposing of the current supplies so that he could head over to the neighbouring farm.

And now the whole family was dead. The husband and wife, their eldest son, Saffie and…

Gary gazed in horror at the fifth member of the group as it shambled towards them.

The last time he’d seen Rowan, he’d been twelve months old. Now here he was, an eleven-year-old zombie.

“Oh no,” Gary said, “I don’t believe this.”

“What is it?” Jonathan asked, the zombies too far away for his torchlight to make out the details.

“There’s a kid zombie. Oh christ.”

“A kid? How old?”

“Twelve at most.”

Jonathan gritted his teeth. “Okay, but it’s a zombie, right? I mean...”

His voice trailed off.

Jonathan had killed one living person and one teenage zombie today, the only people he’d killed in his life.

But killing a kid zombie? A child? That was another step.

The group was a hundred feet away now. Gary stared at them, Vivaldi’s Spring ringing in his ears. The cheerful tune was yet again at complete odds with the grimness of the situation.

“Gary, snap out of it. We have to deal with this. We’ve got to kill them, all of them. It’s either that or they get to the farmhouse.”

Earlier in the day, Gary hadn’t had too much trouble killing the zombies at the church once he had started grinding away at it. But they had been desiccated monsters, rag and bone and dried up flesh. Here he faced zombies that still looked human. Worse, they were people he knew. Or had known.

But he knew Jonathan was right.

“Okay. I guess I’ll take out the adult four and we can work out what to do with the kid, right? I mean, we could, I don’t know, lock it up or something? Either way, I should be able to deal with the adult four with no pushback, so you should hang back whilst I… kill them.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Jonathan said. “You don’t get any experience points for killing them, am I right?”

“No.”

Which is really annoying, he mentally added, can’t help wondering what level I’d be at now if I’d gained experience for all the zombies back at the church.

“Okay, how about this? You weaken them and I finish them off? That way I get closer to level three.”

Tactically, Gary knew it was a sound plan. The stronger Jonathan got, the safer they all were.

“Okay. But you can’t afford to get scratched or bitten.”

“I’ve got a power to deal with that, but yeah, you’re right.”

The five zombies were almost upon them now.

Gary lifted Simon and walked towards the group.

*

As before, the level one zombies paid him no attention as he raised Simon and swung. He laid four quick sharp blows on each of the adult zombies, cutting their meagre average of 25 hit points in half. His blows were more powerful than before, the damage racking up faster. He closed his eyes for the first couple of swings, shuddering as Simon smacked into the flesh of the McPearson’s, their eldest son and Saffron.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he smacked Simon into the family, “I’m so, so sorry.”

None of the four adult zombies responded, except to stagger left or right as he hit them. They had Jonathan in their sights now. Jonathan ran around them, causing the five to keep shifting and stumbling. Gary laid in a few more hits with Simon before Jonathan moved in for the coup de grâce kills. The father and the mother went down, then the elder son and then Saffron. None of them had time to take a swipe at the level two paladin as he ran them through.

It was over in a matter of minutes.

Apart from Rowan, the kid-zombie.

Gary hadn’t been able to bring Simon down on the kid, and Jonathan was also hesitating.

“I can’t do it,” Gary said.

“Me neither. Fuck. Fuck.”

The kid zombie followed Jonathan as he ran around in circles, staying out of reach.

“Right, we lead him – it – to the garage, lock it in there.”

“What, right next to the others in the farmhouse?”

“Have you got a better idea?”

Jonathan swore again, “Fine. Let’s do that.”

Despite the horror of the day and although Jonathan had now killed five zombies and one living person, he just couldn’t bring himself to attack an eleven-year-old, even if it was intent on eating him alive.

He hurried back towards the farmhouse, whilst Gary walked beside the kid-zombie. The kid-zombie ignored him. It was almost as if they were out for a night time stroll together.

When they reached the garage, Gary unlocked and pushed up one of the two garage’s overhead doors. Then he unlocked the side door. Jonathan ran inside through the overhead door and then out of the side door, the kid zombie just behind him.

Gary pulled the locked the side door, returned to the front of the garage and pulled the overhead door back down.

From inside the garage, they could hear the sounds of the kid zombies’ moans as it tried to find a way out.

“We have to warn the others first thing,” Jonathan said as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

“We should spray paint the door or something,” Gary nodded, “Zombie inside do not enter. That kind of thing.”

“Kid zombies,” Jonathan said, “Bloody kid zombies. That’s just sick. And how did the whole family get turned into zombies so fast? What happened? I don’t get it.”

A sudden sickening suspicion hit Gary. He’d been wondering the same thing.

“Wait here. I need to check something.”

He made his way back to the four corpses of the McPearsons and knelt down beside them, checking each one. His first suspicion confirmed, he returned to where Jonathan was guarding the garage. He directed the other man to stand by the closed overhead doors, drawing the kid zombie towards him, then slipped in through the side door.

“What are you doing?”

“Wait,” Gary said.

His stomach was sinking as the suspicion he had was turning into a dark conviction.

The kid zombie paid him no attention as Gary entered the garage. He switched the lights on, amazed that the electricity was still running, to get a clearer look at the undead kid as it clawed angrily at the sheet of metal separating it from its target.

Gary’s stomach sank as the examination confirmed his worst fears.

He switched the lights out, leaving the kid zombie in darkness. Locked the door behind him.

Overwhelmed by his revelation, he slumped to the floor, his head in his hands.

Jonathan found him staring into space.

“Gary? What happened?”

Gary looked up at Jonathan, a horrified expression on his face.

“It was the kids,” he choked. “It was the bloody kids...”