A glossy, slab-door larder cabinet filled one side of the kitchen, and inside he found a vast array of tins and dried packets, all assembled on pull-out wire shelves. Kamiyo stuffed his rucksack full of dried rice and tinned fruit until there was no room left, then filled his coat pockets with several tubes of tomato puree—high in calories and useful for moistening anything too dry to eat. Overall, it set him up for a good few days. If he could find medical supplies in the bathroom, he would call today a massive win. He’d had enough of fixing himself up with super-glue.
Kamiyo smiled, but the expression felt odd. Could it be that he was actually good at this survivor-man existence? Or had he been lucky so far? No, there’s no such thing as luck anymore. Not the good kind anyway.
He gathered as much food as he could carry, then shoved the wire trays back into the larder cabinet. As he went to close the door, he fumbled a can of peaches. It dented against the tiled floor, and in the silence of his solitary existence, the sound was jarring and made him flinch.
“Kelsey Grammer!” he garbled in fright. An odd habit he had picked up to avoid swearing on the ward. He clutched his chest and chuckled to himself, then knelt to pick the can up. He placed it back on the shelf and closed the larder door the rest of the way. Time to leave.
A demon glared at Kamiyo.
Kamiyo leapt back in fright, tripping over the dead homeowner and landing on his butt. The demon was one of the burnt kind, the smell of charred flesh intoxicating. How had he not noticed the stench earlier? Had the demon been hiding in the house this whole time?
The abomination clumsily stalked him—left leg seared to the ankle bone. Kamiyo scrambled to his feet and made for the door, but the demon closed the distance and wrapped its blackened hands around his throat. His lungs seized up, unable to draw breath. He gagged. If he didn’t get free, he might have as little as two minutes before he lost consciousness.
Was this it? Was this his death?
His borrowed time was due to be paid back.
No, I’m not ready.
Kamiyo threw his arms out, blindly groping along the granite work surface at his back. His hands found various objects—fingers slipping inside the crumby slots of a toaster one second and the handle of a coffee maker the next. When he yanked the appliances, they refused to come to him, plug and flex tethering them to the wall.
His vision swirled, pressure forcing the capillaries in his eyes to haemorrhage. Light-headedness set in, brain already deprived of oxygen. Time was running out. Fast.
He fumbled frantically along the counter, cajoling his attacker at his front. The demon’s eyes were soulless, two lumps of coal inside a blackened skull. Hatred poured off it in fumes. A flap of pink and black skin hung from its chin—rancid kebab meat.
Kamiyo’s hands finally found something hanging on the wall behind him. He knocked the thing loose. It made a loud clatter, something heavy, and thankfully it didn’t fall far from his reach. He closed his fingers around whatever it was and wasted no time in swinging it against the demon’s head.
Air rushed into Kamiyo’s lungs as the pipeline in his throat re-opened. He gasped and wheezed. Stars swirled in his vision. He was alive, but barely.
The demon stumbled backwards, the side of its head caved in like a dog-bitten football. Despite already being burnt to a crisp, its body smouldered. Kamiyo had struck it as hard as he could, yet it made little sense it would be so gravely injured. He looked down at his hands and found himself holding a cast-iron skillet. Bits of congealed flesh clung to its rim, sizzling like barbecue. He tossed the skillet down in disgust.
The demon slumped to the ground, coming to rest on top of one of the dead Alsatians. Kamiyo took it as his cue to leave, so he snatched up his rucksack and headed for the door.
Back out in the garden, he realised he was no longer alone—a dozen demons waited for him on the lawn, burnt faces sneering. All at once, they shrieked like devils.
Kamiyo fled.
6
DR KAMIYO
This was not the first time Kamiyo had run for his life—he’d been doing it regularly for months now—and the truth was he’d gotten rather sprightly. A slender individual before the fall of mankind, after surviving on the road for weeks, he was now all sinew and muscle. He bolted from the house, a thoroughbred horse, and made it back onto the road before the demons even entered a jog. That they were the burnt variety meant he had a hope of getting away, for they were clumsy and damaged, not at all like their hulking, ape-like cousins.
Kamiyo got himself a decent head-start, but was running down the middle of the road with a laden rucksack. Eventually, he would tire, and then the question would be whether the demons got tired too. If they didn’t, they would wear him down like a fox.
His only chance was to shake them off.
The demons hissed at his back, and when he glanced over his shoulder, he saw them reaching out their hands like Frankenstein’s monster, yet it was that lack of coordination which allowed him to pull even farther ahead.
How had they snuck up on him? Had they been nearby when he’d fired up the chainsaw? Why was this group out here alone? Were they another of the death squads he’d seen cleansing the streets outside his apartment building? Had they done such a thorough job that only the countryside remained? Soon, there would be nowhere left to hide.
Nothing lay on the horizon, the road seeming to go on forever. Fields lay to his left, too exposed to lose a pursuer, and on the other side of the road were thick trees and tangled bushes. He could break his neck running through there, but what other choice did he have?
I have to lose them.
Kamiyo bolted to his right, leaping over a roadside ditch and entering the first row of trees. The branches fought him, thorns whipping at his face and slicing his cheeks. The demons followed. He could hear them crunching and snapping through the undergrowth behind him. He felt more than ever like a hunted fox. His lungs burned, and his throat ached from having been strangled. I’m not out of the woods yet.
Laughing at his own joke, Kamiyo wondered if he was crazy or if it was just the adrenaline in his system playing havoc with his emotions. He leapt over a fallen tree trunk and ducked under a willow canopy before zigzagging between other trees he couldn’t name. Desperately, he fought to disappear into the thick foliage. The noise of his pursuers seemed to fade. The distance between them was growing.
Kamiyo locked his jaws and powered forward. The ground fell away beneath his boots as he bounded over a dried-out stream, and the split-second of air made him feel like a leaping stag. The more the sounds of his pursuers faded, the more elated he became. While most of the world was dead, he was alive and defying the odds. The demons couldn’t kill him, no matter how many times they tried. He wouldn’t let them. It made him feel powerful, denying the universe control over him like that. An alien sentiment, to answer only to himself. No parents, no superiors. No plan. Only survival.
He wanted to slow down and catch his breath, but he couldn’t. Even though the demons had lost sight of him, they would keep on coming. He needed to ensure he moved completely out of their path before he allowed himself to stop.
The woods were vast, and he considered he might have reached Kielder Forest Park in Northumberland, a vast swath of nature marking one of England’s last surviving wildernesses. He’d planned to visit it a year ago, to relax and connect with nature, but studies and work had got in the way. How idiotic that felt now.
Heading ever deeper into the forest, Kamiyo entered a world without signs or pathways. The vast tangle of nature contrasted with the perverse monstrosities chasing him. This was a place of solitude and peace, and as much as the forest unsettled him, it also offered safety.
Kamiyo kept on running for another twenty minutes or so, and when he stopped, it was because his knees buckled. Flopping against the mud, his fingers slipped into a thatch of weeds, twigs, and brambles. This deep in the forest, the floor was a carpet, and it made it even harder to resist just lying there
and taking a nap, but it was only late afternoon. Incredible, how adrenaline could burn out a body so rapidly.
He allowed himself a few minutes, tempting death by enjoying the sway of the trees overhead—the first movement in weeks that hadn’t immediately panicked him into hiding. The forest embraced him, hid him, and made him feel protected. He couldn’t help but cling to it for a few moments more.
Once he’d caught his breath, Kamiyo got up and continued, but this time he kept to a walk. The demons were clumsy enough that he would hear them if they got close, and he was fairly confident he’d dodged out of their path. They could be two miles in the other direction by now, as lost as he was. Not that it was possible to be lost when there was no place to go.
For now, walking through the vast forest was as far ahead as Kamiyo wanted to think. Perhaps he would stay here and learn to hunt as planned. Squirrels and birds zipped about everywhere between these branches, and if he could just figure out a way to snare them… He could even fell trees and make himself a cabin. Find a stream to fish in. Maybe survive until he was an old man. Was this the place? Could he survive here? Ha, I’ll be half mad within the year. Solitude is not good for emotional health.
But it sure as heck beats dying.
He increased his pace, catching the last of his breath. A slight stitch needled his ribs, but he was in good shape overall—uninjured, and with a rucksack laden with supplies. Although, as he inspected his pack now, he saw it had torn at the bottom. It must have caught on a branch. A large bag of rice had split open inside and now contained barely a dozen grains, the rest spilled on the ground behind him in a meandering line. Not a disaster, for there was still plenty of food left in his rucksack, so he tossed the empty packet to the ground and headed up the slight incline ahead.
Then, as he started down the other side, he saw an end to the forest. The trees thinned out abruptly in an ordered line, and he could make out some kind of structure beyond. It caused him to stop and think.
Part of him was excited, as it always was when he encountered a possible source of supplies or aid, but there was also that sickening trepidation that there might be demons around—or unhinged survivors. After barely fleeing with his life intact once already today, did he want to risk exposing himself again? How much longer could his luck hold up?
He should just skirt around the clearing—follow the trees until they reformed on the other side—but what if he missed out on even greater sanctuary? Whatever lay ahead was hidden in the depths of the forest, and perhaps it would remain hidden. A ready-made roof over his head was better than having to fell trees and build one. Or going back out on the road.
With no choice at all, Kamiyo’s curious nature ordered him to at least take a peep at what lay nestled beyond the trees. Perhaps it would be curiosity that killed him in the end, but the thought of acting against his own nature was a death in itself.
Staying low, he traipsed the remaining fifty-metres of woodland and headed for the clearing. The bushes snagged his jeans, and it was difficult to get an unobstructed view of the structure, but once he managed it, there was little doubt of what he saw.
A stone gatehouse marked the bottom of a long elevation leading up to a crumbling castle on a hill. The gatehouse adjoined a single-storey ruin that sat in front of a ten-foot stone wall, thick and old like plaque-hardened teeth. The only part of the fortification not to stand the test of time was the gate itself. Cast from iron, it lay flat in a patch of long grass.
The castle drew his attention, and he floated towards it in a daydream. He had travelled back in time and could imagine colourful knights on horses trotting down the hill to meet him. But in reality, the castle and its courtyards stood deserted. Unlike the lower gatehouse, the large iron portcullis of the upper gatehouse still hung in the recesses of the castle’s front aspect, locked in place by a pair of modern steel cuffs on either side. A bronze plaque adorned the wall on the left side of the gate and read: ‘Portcullis’ derives from a French word meaning ‘sliding door.’ This iron grate can be lowered in an instant if the castle is under attack and has been functional for over four hundred years. It is raised by a pair of interlocking chains housed inside a small room above the gate.
Was this castle a tourist attraction? It made sense, for it was more than a ruin. In fact, it appeared almost whole, and as he passed beneath the portcullis, he briefly feared it might drop like a guillotine and slice him in two. The castle itself wasn’t huge, a large manor house rather than a feudal fortress like Stirling or Edinburgh, but it stood stout and proud. Three-stories high, it was almost square, but slightly wider than it was tall, with a central tower breaking up the uniformity by jutting out in a hexagonal shape. The crenellated roof was the only broken part of the castle. Its right side had fallen away, replaced by thick swaths of ivy that trailed all the way to the ground. Timber frames and glass made up the windows and would not have been part of the original structure, but they didn’t take away from the castle’s antiquity. Defensive walls looped around the castle on every side, the portcullis punctuating the front approach. A small, but very real castle. And it was his!
At least that was what he thought until he felt a poke between his shoulder blades. “Dow yow move!” came a gruff voice in his ear.
Kamiyo was pretty sure it wasn’t a chivalrous knight.
7
TED
Ted groaned when he heard Hannah’s footsteps behind him. He’d expected nothing else, but a slim chance had existed that she might walk the other way. “We should keep to the side of the road,” she warned. “The forest will give us cover if we need it.”
“You know the area?” asked Ted without looking back at her. If he didn’t look at her, she might go away.
“Not really. I was based out of Stafford with 16 Signals but I’m from Durham originally. Only been in the service two years, just made Lance-Corporal. What a time to enlist, huh?”
“Least you had a gun when all this started. You had a better chance than most.”
She was silent for a moment, the only sound their boots on the tarmac. When she spoke again, her voice was pained. “Believe me, guns didn’t make a whole lot of difference.”
Ted huffed. “No kidding. A lot of use you lot turned out to be.”
Hannah surprised Ted then by grabbing his shoulder and whirling him around to face her in the middle of the road. She might have been a tiny bird, but she was stronger than she looked. “Fuck you, pal! You have no idea how hard we fought. I watched hundreds of good men and women run straight into certain death because they knew their duty. We did everything we could…. We… You have no fucking idea, okay?”
Ted was angry at being manhandled, but the fragile fury on Hannah’s face was enough to make him seek peace. He shrugged her off but apologised. “You’re right. I’ve seen enough to know there’s nothing anyone could have done. It wouldn’t have mattered how hard the Army fought. I’m sorry, okay?”
Hannah relaxed her shoulders and stared down the road vacantly. “We were slaughtered.”
“What you talking about?”
“The Army,” she said, looking back at him. “It’s gone. Wiped out. We made our last stand on the outskirts of Derby. Command set up at the Rolls Royce plant there. We had tanks, helicopters, even a few light aircraft scrounged from civilian airstrips and equipped with various armaments. We assembled two-thousand servicemen, and twice as many civilians, the most organised we’d been since the shit first hit the fan. We were taking the fight to the enemy.”
Ted couldn’t believe such a thing had happened without him knowing—a massive battle involving thousands of people. The world was a different place without daily news, phones, or internet. Used to be a shot fired in Glasgow echoed in London thirty-seconds later. Now the world could explode, and you’d have no way of knowing until you were staring into the blast wave. It reminded Ted of those Japanese snipers still guarding their rural outposts years after the war had ended. He’d always assumed those types of stories
were urban legends, but now he could see how easily they could become a reality.
“I had no idea,” Ted admitted. “I thought the fight was over before it got started. Most of our forces were abroad, I assumed.”
Hannah nodded. “A majority, but not all. There were soldiers on leave, reserves, and the token forces left to provide security on our stockpiles and camps. We had police officers with us too. Not a massive army, but enough to make a go of things—or so we thought.
At first, things went well. We found the dees gathered near one of their gates in Nottingham, like they were trying to assemble an army of their own or something. We rolled in our tanks and sent them into a panic, blasting them to pieces with flechette rounds and anti-personnel rockets. Then our two choppers battered them with Hellfires while our planes surveyed the area. It looked like a sure thing. We moved in our troops to clean up, tearing the dees apart with small arms fire. We must have dropped a thousand in less than an hour. Hit ‘em harder than anything’s ever been hit.”
“So what happened?” Ted couldn’t see how this tale could turn bloody.
“It was a trap.” Her jaw tightened, upper lip curling. “The dees we found were just cannon fodder to draw us in. We had pushed through into a cramped industrial estate, full of long factory buildings and chain-link fencing. We assumed it was an enemy base camp, but really, it was a container for our army. The tanks got wedged in alleyways, and our troops bunched together so much that the choppers couldn’t recognise us from them. The second wave of dees came from behind, spilling out of a supermarket depot at the front of the estate. A thousand of ‘em right at our backs. We opened fire, but we were so squashed together that we shot as many of our own as we did the dees. A few hundred of us retreated to a car lot, taking cover behind the vehicles and trying to build a barrier between us and them. But there was no chance of us coming out of that fight alive. The dees were everywhere, and we were running low on ammo. We held out for a whole day, but when I saw the enemy general coming, I knew our time was up.”
Hell on Earth- the Complete Series Box Set Page 86
