“My parents flipped their shit when they found out I was living and working in the world’s hot spots. Never mind that my older brother was doing exactly the same.
“They tried to convince me to change my life. I was in Pakistan when my dad rang me and said I needed to do what was right for the family and come home to take my place at the company. He said that it was too dangerous to do what I was doing and that I’d end up getting killed. I told him I was going to do things my way and he would just have to accept that. We’ve barely spoken since.”
He threw another log on the fire and watched it blacken as the flames licked over it.
“What’s your story?” Tanya asked Lucy.
“Well, my life was boring compared to yours,” Lucy said. “I went to work on the weekdays and spent most of my weekends at home. My mother was very ill. Sometimes, I went hiking or camping on the weekends with my friend Elena. She’s dead now, but you probably know that. Alex and I were with Elena and her boyfriend, Mike, when the outbreak began. I’ll look to see if my parents are on the survivor database but I really don’t think they will be. My dad is the type of man who will never leave his wife, no matter the circumstances. And since she’s bed-bound, I think that means they’re both dead by now.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away with her sleeve.
“That just leave you, Alex,” Sam said. “We all know your story, man. Shitty job, no social life, video games and fast food.”
I shrugged. Maybe he was trying to get me back for when I got mad at him earlier. But what he had said was totally true. And I wasn’t ashamed of my life.
“The thing is,” he added, “you’ve changed a lot since then. We’ve been through some shit and you’ve always held it together. I respect that, man.”
“Thanks,” I said. His words sounded heartfelt and I was truly touched by them.
“So what about your brother and parents?” he asked me. “Are they tough survivors like you?”
“I’d like to think so. Joe definitely is. He stuck up for me my whole life and he’s always been strong, both mentally and physically. If he’s looking after my parents, then I’m sure they’re safe too.”
“That’s good, man.”
“We should probably get some sleep,” Tanya said. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
We all agreed. And as Sam kicked dirt over the fire and the girls walked over to the Mastiff, I glanced toward the coast. Somewhere in the night sky, the drone patrolled the cliffs and beaches, cutting us off from the boats that had become our homes and sanctuaries.
Operation Wildfire had sounded simple when Hart had described it. All we had to do was deliver the vaccine. Now we were facing a perilous road trip through zombie territory.
Was any of this ever going to get any easier? I reminded myself that that was why we were delivering the vaccine in the first place, to try and put an end to this nightmare.
No matter what hardships we faced, if we could help save the country, it would all be worth it.
Sam slapped me on the shoulder and said, “What’re you thinking, man?”
We walked to the Mastiff. I said, “I was just thinking that tomorrow is going to be a shitty day.”
“You know it,” he said as he went around to the driver’s door.
I climbed into the back of the Mastiff and closed the rear hatch, shutting out the world.
17
The next day, we were on the road at six in the morning. A low mist hung over the fields and the gray clouds in the dull sky threatened rain. We were all tired. Sam and Tanya had slept in the front seats of the vehicle, leaving the rear compartment to Lucy and me.
We found a couple of sleeping bags rolled up beneath the front seats and laid them out on the floor, but it was uncomfortable lying on cold, hard steel. I barely slept, and when I did manage to doze, I had nightmares about Joe. In my dream, he had been turned and was lurching toward me with an angry look in his yellow eyes.
So now, as we drove south from Scotland to England, I was in a bad mood. Wherever we ended up tonight, I hoped there was a proper bed.
The others seemed just as tired as I was. None of us spoke as we drove along the road. The only sounds were the rumble of the engine and pop tunes being played back-to-back on Survivor Radio. I guessed that Nick Tucker was still in bed. The man had sense.
The road was deserted. I had thought that we might see other survivors but that wasn’t the case here in Scotland. But then if any survivors saw the Mastiff rumbling along the road, they probably went into hiding. The army was rounding up everyone they could for the camps and they weren’t taking no for an answer.
In a way, I could see why they had adopted a zero tolerance policy in getting everyone into the camps. This wasn’t like any other evacuation where refusal to be rescued simply meant you might die. In the zombie apocalypse, if you weren’t put into a camp, you were probably going to add to the number of zombies the army had to deal with later.
By seven, the sky was still dull but the rain hadn’t yet begun to fall. Survivor Reach Out came on the radio. More tales of woe and lost loved ones. The desperation in the voices of the survivors looking for their sons and daughters, wives, husbands, and lovers did little to alleviate the depressed mood in the Mastiff.
But then, after the Reach Out segment had ended, a new DJ came on air. She sounded way chirpier than anyone had a right to be at this early hour. “Good morning, everyone. My name is Sasha Green and this is The Morning Show, a new radio program for all you survivors.
“Now, before we listen to some rockin’ tunes, I have a public service announcement. We all know that zombies don’t like the rain, right? Well, I’ve been asked to warn you not to try and fight the zombies with buckets of water. Apparently, some people have tried to do this and the outcome has not been good. So, zombies don’t like rain, but they aren’t afraid of a bucket of water, okay?
“Great, now to blow those morning cobwebs away, here’s The Cars and ‘Drive’.”
I burst out laughing. The thought of someone trying to defend themselves against a horde of zombies with a bucket of water was too hilarious. I knew that people did dumb things but that had to be the dumbest I had ever heard.
Sam, Tanya, and Lucy were laughing too. The depressive atmosphere in the vehicle was lifted.
“Oh, man, can you imagine that?” Sam said. “Imagine their face when they threw a bucket of water on a zombie and it had no effect. What did they think was going to happen, that it would melt like the Wicked Witch of the West?”
That sent me into another spasm of laughter. When I was able to speak again, I said, “That person deserves a Darwin Award.”
As if on cue, the rain began to fall. It pinged against the Mastiff slowly at first in sporadic bursts, then came down in a torrent. Sam flicked on the wipers. The road ahead became hazy as water bounced from its surface.
“Now this is what the zombies don’t like,” I said. “Hopefully we won’t see many today if the weather stays like this.”
Tanya, who had the map open on her lap, said, “Hopefully not, but the rain doesn’t affect the hybrids, so we need to stay alert.”
I was all too aware of that. The virus kept the zombies out of the rain and, I assumed, other extreme weather conditions, because the host bodies were rotting and it was trying to slow the process. But the hybrids were alive so the weather had no more effect on them than it had on any other living person.
I could hardly believe that some people had taken the zombies’ avoidance of the rain to mean that they could be harmed by it. They took shelter purely out of a survival instinct, a need for the virus to keep the hosts functioning in the long term.
It was almost an hour later when Tanya said to Sam, “We should reach the motorway soon. There are motorway services a mile after that. You want to try to get fuel and food there?”
He nodded. “Sure thing. I bet most of the services will have been looted so we may have to try them all until
we find one with fuel.”
Sasha Green was reminding everyone not already in a camp to find one as soon as possible. Then she played Van Halen’s “Jump”.
Lucy said, “I wonder why they have new DJs.”
“It’s psychological, man,” Sam said. “When they only had Johnny Drake or Nick Tucker, a lot of the air time was just music playing on a loop. One DJ can only do so much. If they get more DJs on the radio, they can persuade more people to go to the camps. It’s the human touch.
“Survivor Radio has one purpose, to act as a propaganda machine for the government. So they get a pleasant female voice on here and more survivors will decide to go to the camps. The way the message is presented is as powerful as the message itself.”
“Surely people aren’t that gullible,” I said.
“Hey, man, there are people out there attacking zombies with buckets of water.”
He had a point. “Well, those people would be better off in a camp,” I said. “They’d have more chance of survival.”
Sam nodded slowly. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I never thought of it that way.”
I decided not to say what came into my head, that he saw the world in black and white and that not everyone was an accomplished survivor like he was. Instead, I simply said, “I miss Johnny.”
“Me too,” Tanya said.
On the radio, Tiffany began to sing “I Think We’re Alone Now”.
Ahead of us, a blue sign said M74 SOUTH. Sam took the slip road and we found ourselves on the motorway.
Then all hell broke loose.
18
The slip road led us onto the motorway. The three lanes heading south were clear, with no cars in sight ahead of us, but across the median, past a low metal safety barrier that separated us from the three lanes going north, a group of cars was traveling on the motorway.
When they saw us, the occupants of the cars lowered their windows and began firing. The bullets hit the Mastiff’s metal safety cage with loud clangs.
Because we were going south and the cars were going north, we passed them quickly. I heard their engines rev as they sped up, probably to get to the next junction so they could come off the northbound lanes, turn around, and follow us south.
“What the fuck?” Sam asked after the cars had disappeared. “Did anyone see how many of them there were?”
“I counted six cars,” Lucy said.
“They’ll be turning around and coming after us,” I told him, although I was sure he knew that. He had already increased our speed.
Tanya put down the map and climbed out of her seat. She came into the rear compartment, stepped onto the platform, and opened the top hatch. “I’ll show those fuckers who they’re dealing with.”
She stood so that the top half of her body went through the hatch. Then I heard whirring as the gun emplacement on the roof turned around to face rear.
Sam was grinning as he turned around to say, “They must be crazy if they think they can take on Big Betty.”
Lucy turned on the Situation Display Unit to show the view from the rear camera. The motorway stretched out behind us and in the distance, coming through the rain, the six cars were throwing up sheets of water in their wake.
They had to be crazy to attack a military vehicle using civilian cars. Crazy or desperate.
The top gun roared and the road in front of the leading vehicle, a silver Mercedes, was cut up as Lucy adjusted her aim. Then a second round of shots sent the car spinning into the central safety barrier, black smoke trailing from its radiator grille.
Sam punched the air. “Woohoo!”
The other cars dropped back after seeing their leader crash into the barrier.
Then they all roared forward.
Two Volkswagen Golfs, one white, one black, took the left and center lane while a dark blue Astra stayed in the right-hand lane. Behind them, a silver Citroen Picasso and a black BMW hung back slightly. I could see men and women in the vehicles and it looked like they were dressed in civilian clothing.
A woman with dark hair hung out of the passenger-side window of the Astra, firing at us with a machine gun.
“Where did they get the weapons?” I wondered aloud as Tanya returned fire.
“They’ve probably attacked military vehicles before,” Lucy said over the booming of the top gun.
The Astra exploded in a ball of orange flame. The Picasso swerved to avoid hitting the flaming carcass but over-corrected and skidded off the road, ramming through a fence and into a field.
The BMW accelerated to join the Golfs. Two men leaned out of the back windows, firing at us.
Tanya fired again and the shots tore into the white Golf. I saw the driver slump to one side, the windscreen in front of her face cracked open by a bullet. The car veered to the left and came to a dead stop.
That left the black Golf and the BMW. They were getting closer.
“I’m out of ammo,” Tanya shouted down to us. “Pass me the M16.”
I passed it up to her. Her legs disappeared through the hatch as she pulled herself up onto the roof.
“Maybe we should help,” Lucy suggested, going to the rear door with her own rifle in her hand.
I grabbed my M16 and nodded.
She opened the door.
The noise of the vehicles cutting through the rain on the road filled the Mastiff, along with the roar of the engines and the cracks of the shots being fired from the BMW.
Lucy brought her M16 up and fired. The shots peppered the front of the BMW. The driver swerved slightly but remained on the road, accelerating toward us.
I heard shots from the roof. The front tire of the Golf blew and it slowed down but it kept coming until more shots from Tanya blew the windscreen apart and the car came slowed to a stop.
I fired my M16, trying to ignore the pain as the gun kicked against my sore shoulder. My three-round burst hit the BMW’s bumper and right headlights.
Lucy and Tanya both fired at the same time and the entire front of the car seemed to erupt with gunshots. It peeled off the road and into the grass at the side of the road. The men hanging out of windows were shouting at us and firing but now they were too far behind us for that to matter.
Tanya climbed down into the Mastiff and closed the top hatch. Her hair and face were soaked but she was grinning. “Big Betty six, bandits zero.”
Lucy closed the rear door and breathed a sigh of relief. I let out a sigh of relief myself but I couldn’t’ share in Lucy’s jubilation. The people we had just killed were living, breathing human beings. They weren’t infected with the virus, they weren’t zombies or hybrids. They were people like us, trying to survive in the chaos that had overtaken everything.
I kept quiet about it. I knew that those people had been trying to kill us and it was an “us or them” situation. I knew that we had been justified in doing what we’d done. I just wished we hadn’t had to do it in the first place, that humanity hadn’t devolved into this state of savagery.
Tanya took her place next to Sam, shaking her wet hair to shower him with rainwater. He laughed and cried out, “I’m melting! I’m melting!”
That lightened my mood a little. I had to forget about the bandits back there on the road. They were, after all, bandits. They could have chosen to go to a camp or survive on their own without trying to kill other living humans but they had chosen to steal and kill to survive. I wasn’t going to rejoice in their deaths but I refused to dwell on them.
By killing them, we’d probably saved the lives of many other people.
“Not far to the services,” Sam said, pointing through the window at a sign that said SERVICES 1M. Beneath the words were the logos for McDonald’s and Costa Coffee, and a symbol of a petrol pump.
“Anyone want a Big Mac?” Sam asked.
Nobody replied. We were all checking our weapons.
19
We left the motorway and drove up the short road that led to the services, which consisted of a one-level building that housed the e
ating establishments and shops and a petrol station located near the exit road that led back to the motorway.
The car park outside the main building wasn’t empty. There were twenty or so cars parked there. There were no people inside them.
Sam drove us into the car park and brought us to a stop near the glass doors that led into the building. The lights inside were off and all I could see beyond the doors was darkness.
“You guys want to check inside for food and water while Tanya and I get the fuel?” Sam asked, turning in his seat to face us.
I shook my head, looking at the dark building. “I don’t think we should split up. It’s too dangerous.”
“I agree,” Tanya said. “We’ll all check out the main building and then we’ll all go to get fuel.”
Sam nodded. “Sure thing, man.” He turned off the engine and said, “Let’s go.”
We got out of the Mastiff and stood looking at the doors, M16s in hand. “Let’s make this quick,” Tanya said.
I couldn’t agree more. This place gave me the creeps.
We moved forward, Tanya in the lead, Sam slightly behind her. Lucy and I brought up the rear, checking behind us every few seconds.
When we got to the automatic doors, they remained closed. Either the power was out or they had been locked.
Sam smashed the glass with the butt of his gun and used his boots to remove the glass from one of the panels in the door.
We climbed through, one after the other. I went last, checking behind us before climbing through the broken door.
The dark interior of the building smelled of sweat and rotten food but I couldn’t detect the telltale aroma of zombies. That didn’t mean the place wasn’t a bandit hideout, though.
“Let’s find the shop and get out of here,” Tanya whispered, turning on her flashlight. She sounded nervous.
Wildfire- Destruction of the Dead Page 9
