Wildfire- Destruction of the Dead

by Shaun Harbinger

  I told them about the girl in the armoire and how she had been gagged and bound.

  “Her parents probably put her in there after she turned,” I said. “If nobody else went into the room, she might have gone into that dormant state that takes over the zombies when there’s no external stimulus.”

  “And we woke her up,” Tanya said.

  “Yeah.” I looked back toward the house. That girl had been someone’s daughter and they had been forced to shut her away, probably because they hadn’t wanted to kill her. I wondered if her mouth and hands were bound because her parents had continued to live with her after she had turned and were making sure they couldn’t be bitten.

  And then, I guessed, they themselves had turned and the girl had been forgotten.

  “She’s better off now,” Tanya said. “Better dead than…whatever the hell the zombies are.”

  I nodded. Breathing in a lungful of fresh sea air, I scanned the cliff for a way down. If we could get down to the beach below, we could double back to the Zodiac.

  But Tanya veered away from the cliff edge toward a narrow road that led from the village and disappeared into the distance.

  “Aren’t we going back to the boat?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “We need to find a vehicle to get us to Camp Apollo, remember?”

  “I just thought that…since we couldn’t get a vehicle at the village…we were going to go back to the Zodiac and search the coastline for a car or something.”

  “Waste of time,” she said. “We’re here now, so we might as well keep going. Retracing our steps will only slow us down.”

  I didn’t reply. Being out here on foot, without a vehicle or a safe place to hide, made me feel exposed and vulnerable. There was nowhere to run if the shit hit the fan.

  We reached the road. It looked barely wide enough for a single car and was pitted with potholes. Walking along the road was easier than trudging through the grass but my arms were aching from holding the boxes.

  “There’s a farm ahead,” Lucy said, pointing to a wooden sign by the side of the road that said FRESH EGGS, NEXT LEFT. Above the words was a drawing of a chicken.

  We increased our pace. I had no idea how far ahead the next left turn might be but the sign had given me a glimmer of hope.

  It was fifteen minutes later when we found the farm. A narrow track led from the road to a stone house in the distance. Behind the house was a collection of barns and animal pens. As we walked along the track, I could hear chickens clucking from somewhere close by.

  When I saw a dark blue Land Rover Defender parked by the side of the house, my heart leaped and I felt a sudden rush of optimism.

  All we had to do was drive that Land Rover to Camp Apollo, deliver the boxes, and get back to the boats.

  Maybe this mission was going to go according to plan after all.

  9

  The day had become sunny and warm, and the Land Rover seemed to gleam in the sunlight. The smell of farm animals filled the air, along with the clucking of chickens. The birds were running loose in a field behind the house, along with a dozen cows that were lazily grazing on the grass there.

  Sam went to the front door and tried it. After discovering that it was locked, he knocked on the wood. “Hello? Anyone home?”

  I was sure that if I lived here and four people dressed in army clothing and carrying weapons strolled up the path and knocked on the door, I wouldn’t answer.

  Sam shrugged when there was no reply and went around the back. I put down the boxes I’d carried all the way from the village and rubbed my aching arms. Lucy did the same, going over to inspect the Land Rover after dumping her box. She used her hand to shield her eyes from the sun and peered in through the driver’s window.

  Tanya set down her boxes and sat on the front step, closing her eyes and turning her face to the sun.

  I didn’t know how she could be so calm because, despite my earlier optimism, I felt nervous now that we were at the house.

  I heard bolts being drawn back and latched unlocked, then the front door opened and Sam stood there grinning. “Back door was open,” he said.

  “You get the Land Rover keys?” Tanya asked him.

  He dangled them from his fingers.

  “There’s nobody in the house?” I asked.

  Sam shook his head. “The radio is on but there’s nobody home.”

  Now that he mentioned the radio, I could hear music playing faintly somewhere within the house. I went inside. The place looked like it hadn’t been decorated in a long time and some of the cream-colored wallpaper that covered the walls was stained, with some of it damp and peeling in places.

  The kitchen was large, with an old stone fireplace that had been bricked up at some point to create space for a large oven. The radio was on the kitchen counter, playing “Heaven is a Place on Earth” by Belinda Carlisle. The back door was open, revealing a small graveled area beyond, and the fields beyond that.

  There were deep depressions in the gravel where a car had once been. Maybe the Land Rover had been parked back here at some point.

  The air in the house smelled damp but there was no rotten-meat stench.

  “Alex, are you coming?” Lucy called from the front door.

  “Yeah,” I said. I wasn’t even sure why I had entered the house. I was curious to know what had happened to the owners but there was nothing here to indicate their fate. Belinda Carlisle faded out and Nick Tucker, the new Survivor Radio DJ, announced that the next song was dedicated to all the survivors left in the world. The Doors began to sing “Strange Days”.

  “Alex?” Lucy called again.

  “I’m coming,” I said.

  As I passed the stairs on my way back to the front door, something upstairs caught my eye. I went up the first couple of steps to take a closer look, still wary even though I was sure the house was empty.

  One of the upstairs doors was open and through it I could see a bedroom that looked as if it had been hit by a cyclone. The closet doors were open and there were clothes scattered over the bed and floor.

  I went up to the top of the stairs and saw that the bathroom was in a similar state. The medicine cabinet on the wall was open and looked like somebody had rifled through its contents in a hurry. A smashed bottle of cough medicine lay in the sink, its dark brown contents congealed around the drain.

  A noise behind me made me whirl round, gun raised.

  It was Sam, standing halfway up the stairs. “Hey, man, we’re ready to go.”

  “Okay,” I said, following him down the stairs and out of the front door. The boxes were loaded into the back of the Land Rover. Tanya sat in the front passenger seat while Lucy sat in the back.

  I climbed in the back next to Lucy and stowed the M16 by my feet.

  “What was so interesting in there?” she asked.

  “It looks like the owners ran away,” I said. “I think there were clothes missing, and some of the medicines from the bathroom cabinet had gone too.”

  “The place was probably robbed,” she said. “The back door was open.”

  “I don’t think thieves would have taken the toothbrushes. There was an empty holder on the sink. Whoever lived there left in a hurry.”

  She looked through the side window at the house. “I wonder where they went.”

  Sam started the engine and revved it a couple of times before putting the Land Rover into gear and taking us along the path toward the narrow potholed road.

  “They probably went to the harbor and took a boat,” I said to Lucy.

  “I don’t blame them; they were living next to a village full of zombies.” She sat back in her seat and looked out at the sea as we hit the road and bounced over the potholes.

  I felt more relaxed now that we were in a vehicle. At least the Land Rover offered some protection if we were attacked.

  Tanya unfolded her map and opened it on her lap. When the road we were on intersected with a wider, two-lane road, she told Sam to turn left. The wider
road was much smoother.

  In the distance, I could see a group of zombies shambling across a field together. I wondered if they were wandering aimlessly or if they were following a noise or movement that had attracted their attention.

  We drove for almost an hour in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I wondered how long it would be before I saw Joe and my parents again. I tried to convince myself that they were still alive. Joe had always been tough. He was a natural survivor. He’d be okay and would make sure that our parents were too.

  I was dragged from my thoughts when Sam put the radio on. Nick Tucker was talking to a guest, which was something I had never heard on Survivor Radio before.

  “So what is your advice to survivors, General?” Tucker asked.

  A voice that was deep and confident replied, “Our advice to survivors is the same as it has always been. Find a survivors camp in your area and go there. Let us take care of you. It is too dangerous to try and survive on your own. If you don’t know where your loved ones are, they are probably in a camp. We can reunite you.”

  Sam shook his head. “If you don’t know where your loved ones are, they’re probably dead, man.” He reached to turn off the radio but I stopped him.

  “Wait. I want to hear what he has to say.”

  “Why, man?” Sam said. “You know they just talk bullshit.”

  Tucker thanked his guest and then said, “Remember, people, you need to be in one of our camps if you’re going to make it. There are signs on the roads and near every town and city denoting the location of the nearest camp. Go there now. I beg of you.” He paused for dramatic effect, and then added, “Here is David Bowie and ‘Life on Mars’.”

  “You hear that?” Sam asked. “They’ve got that DJ wrapped around their finger. ‘Come to the camps, I beg of you’. He even said ‘our camps’. I bet he’s working for the military.”

  “We’re working for the military,” I reminded him.

  “Well, it’s not the same thing. We’re not telling people lies.”

  “I don’t think they’re lying just because they’ve set up camps to help people.”

  “Those camps are there to control people,” he said. “They’ve told everyone that the rest of the world is infected and it isn’t true. People without hope are easier to control.”

  According to Sam and Tanya, the virus hadn’t reached America. “Have you ever thought that they might be right? We don’t know what’s happened to the rest of the world. For all we know, the virus has spread across the globe. A lot of the survivors are safer in the camps than wandering around out here with the zombies.”

  He looked at me in the rear-view mirror. “Wow, you’ve changed your tune, man. I thought you hated authority. You’ve seen the camps. Do you really think anyone is better off in one of those makeshift prisons? Because I sure don’t.”

  “I have to believe the camps give people a chance of survival,” I said, “because my brother and parents are in one.”

  “Okay, man,” he said, backing down slightly. “We’ll have to agree to disagree. I hope your folks are okay.”

  “And what about the people who lived in that farmhouse back there?” I asked. “Do you hope they’re okay too?”

  He shrugged. “Of course, but what do they have to do with…”

  “They were listening to the radio when they decided to leave their house and take their chances,” I said. “They didn’t even bother to switch it off when they left. What if they heard that broadcast you did and decided to bug out? They might have been safe enough in that isolated farmhouse but they heard that message and went for a boat to get to Europe. The nearest place they’d go would be Muldoon. There’s a harbor there after all, and plenty of boats. They might have wandered into a village full of zombies because of you and your damned message.”

  Tanya turned in her seat to face me. “Alex, there’s nothing wrong with telling people the truth. How they deal with it is up to them.”

  I ignored her and looked out of the window again at the fields rolling by. I wasn’t really mad at her or Sam for doing what they thought was right but I hoped that their radio broadcast hadn’t spurred Joe and my parents into leaving whichever camp they were in. If they were still in a camp, I could find them. If they were wandering in the wilds, we probably had zero chance of being reunited.

  Tanya turned to face front again and gave Sam some instructions, pointing at the map as she did so.

  We reached an intersection where the normal road sign had been covered over by a bright red sign with black lettering that read SURVIVORS CAMP. Next to the lettering was the same Ministry of Defense crest that was on our ID badges.

  “Well, there’s no chance of missing the camp,” Tanya said, folding the map and putting it into her pocket.

  Sam took the road indicated by the bright sign. High trees on both sides of the road blocked the view and most of the sunlight so that we were plunged into shadow. Knowing that the camp was close made me feel nervous.

  Since the apocalypse had begun, I had spent most of my time running from the military or avoiding them. The thought of having to come into close contact with soldiers made me anxious.

  My anxiety grew when, after we had driven for another twenty minutes, I saw a large red sign affixed to a tree. Like the other sign, this one bore the MoD crest and the words SURVIVORS CAMP, along with a thick black arrow pointing at a side road that led through the woods.

  Sam slowed down and turned onto the smaller road. It was not much more than a dirt track, but I could see wide tire tracks left by other vehicles. The route looked like it was used frequently and had been used recently.

  We had gone about a mile when Sam began to slow down. Ahead of us was a checkpoint, which consisted of a sentry box with a small gate that could be raised or lowered. At the moment, it was lowered and a sign on its metal grille said STOP.

  The sentry box seemed to be empty.

  Sam hit the brakes and put the Land Rover into neutral. “We need to lift the gate, man.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said. The area seemed to be deserted and I supposed that the soldiers who should be working the checkpoint were taking a break somewhere nearby. I opened my door and got out. Maybe I should call out. It could be that the soldier who should be manning the sentry box was taking a piss behind one of the trees.

  I listened but the only sound was the low, idling rumble of the Land Rover’s engine. I approached the sentry box, looking in through the window. There was nothing in there except an office chair, a table upon which an Andy McNab paperback lay face down and open, a small TV that was turned off, and the controls for the gate.

  I tried the door. It was unlocked. I went inside and inspected the control panel. There was a green button marked OPEN and a red button marked CLOSE. It couldn’t be any simpler. I hit the green button and the gate slowly began to rise up with a mechanical whirring sound.

  I went back outside and got back into the Land Rover.

  Sam waited until the gate was all the way up and then drove forward. As we drove farther along the path, I looked out of the rear window at the empty sentry box.

  “Something wrong?” Lucy asked.

  “Just wondering where the guards are.”

  “Me too,” she admitted.

  The trees gave way suddenly and the track crossed rolling grassland. Ahead of us was the camp. I saw a wire fence that must have been at least twenty feet tall and sentry towers that reminded me of the World War II prisoner of war camps you see in movies. Within the fences was a cluster of olive green tents of varying sizes from big marquees to one-person camping tents, and wooden huts that, again, reminded me of POW camps.

  There was a main gate, above which a stenciled wooden sign said CAMP APOLLO.

  The gate was open.

  There were no guards in the towers and I couldn’t see any movement within the camp.

  “Nobody home, man,” Sam said, bringing the Land Rover to a halt just outside the main gate and killing the e
ngine.

  “There should be five thousand people here,” Tanya said. “Where did they all go?”

  I kept my mouth shut. Tanya and Sam had broadcast a message on the radio telling people to leave the camps and now they were surprised that this camp was empty. Not wanting to return to the earlier argument, I grabbed my M16, opened the Land Rover door, and said, “Let’s go take a look.”

  There might still be a computer here that was linked to the survivor database. I could still find out where my family was.

  As I stood on the grass, which was still wet from the earlier rain, I felt a sense of unease. I couldn’t put my finger on anything specific that was making me feel that way but I stood watching and listening, ready to scramble back into the Land Rover if something came rushing out of the trees or from the tents.

  The others must have felt it too because as they exited the vehicle, they stood silently surveying the area before moving toward the camp gate.

  I could hear the sound of my own rapid breathing, but nothing else. Camp Apollo was as quiet as a grave.

  “Does anyone else feel like we’re about to walk into a trap?” Tanya asked.

  “Yeah, man,” Sam said. He had turned to face the woods, his back to the camp, his eyes searching the shadows beneath the trees.

  “Maybe two of us should stay out here,” Tanya suggested.

  “No way,” I said. “We shouldn’t split up.” I’d seen more than enough horror movies to know that splitting up was never a good idea.

  “Okay, then let’s go,” she said, moving forward warily.

  We fell in behind her, weapons pointing in all directions as we made our way to the open gate.

  A sudden sound made us all jump and I almost squeezed the trigger of my M16 before I realized that it as just a crow cawing somewhere in the woods.

  Great. That was just what we needed right now, a creepy sound effect.

  We reached the gate and paused. It was made of the same steel as the fences and was just as tall. A heavy steel bolt had been pulled aside, allowing the gate to be opened.