First to come into view was the armoured car. The soldier manning the machine gun in its turret was pumping his fists like an overexcited trucker. Next came two lorries both ‘up armoured’ with familiar looking wedges and steel sheets fixed all around them. The sheets were dented, scratched and in places coated with blood and gore that bore witness to the events of the journey they’d undertaken. The drivers and passengers were leaning out of the windows, hammering their fists in celebration on the metal of the doors.
Both dogs got caught up in the excitement as well, bouncing around with their tails wagging furiously and added their barks to the celebrations.
Finally, and to the biggest cheer from all of us onlookers, including those who’d not met him yet, only knowing about him from the stories told of our saga so far, came Willie. Beaming and waving madly, he drove his heavily adapted tractor and trailer into the courtyard.
Marc pulled the van back across the archway and jumping from it, joined the rest of us.
Captain Hammond was the first to step from the vehicles and was quickly joined by his sergeant, who’d been driving the armoured car.
Both Woody and Eddy walked up to the captain, smartly came to attention and saluted the officer crisply. The captain returned the salute and smiling, extended his hand and shook both of theirs warmly in turn.
Any conversations were lost in the hubbub of laughter, yells of delight, barking and general merriment that filled the courtyard as the two groups combined into one.
Willie, I noticed, was standing on the high wheel arch of his tractor, his head turning and his eyes scanning the milling crowd of people. Then he spotted her.
Maud was standing in the ornate stone, open-sided entrance to the Great Hall, her face displaying a small smile. She locked eyes with Willie. By now, all our group had heard about what happened when they’d said farewell to each other at Willie’s farm on the moors. Slowly, as if knowing something important was going to happen, one by one, we all fell silent.
Hesitantly, she slowly walked down the few steps of the entranceway and across the courtyard. Willie, seeing her approaching, clambered down from his tractor and made his way to her. Stopping a few paces apart from each other, we all watched as they both stood staring at each other.
Maud spoke first, her voice quiet and trembling slightly, “Willie, why are you here? You told me you wouldn’t leave the moors.”
Willie went red with embarrassment and looked at the floor, shuffling his feet. His mouth kept opening and closing as the beginnings of sentences started but faded as soon as the first mumbled word emerged from his lips.
Coming to a decision, he raised his head and stood upright. Staring her straight in the eyes he spoke gently, “Och, Maud. And I meant every word I said. That was, until you left and then suddenly everything seemed empty and without purpose.” He waved towards Captain Hammond. “Even before I found that lot, I knew I’d made a mistake in not coming with you.” He paused as if again thinking what to say. He stood staring at her silently for a long time.
As she returned his stare, a tear formed in Maud’s eye and slowly ran down her cheek. Seeing this, a smile came to his lips and he continued.
“I’m too old to beat about the bush. Maud, you are the most attractive and the strongest woman I’ve met, and I was a fool to let you go before. If you’ll have an old soldier who’s grumpy and set in his ways, I would be honoured if you would allow me to court you and get to know you better.”
Maud blinked in surprise at what she was hearing, but as she absorbed and truly understood the words, she burst out crying, her face displaying pure joy as she flung herself into his arms. He hugged her back fiercely as he lifted her up and held her tightly against his body.
The courtyard burst into spontaneous applause and cheering. I looked around, smiling at Becky as I clapped and shouted myself, and she was smiling and wiping away the tears that streamed down her face. Putting my arm around her, I could also see that a few others were wiping away tears as well.
Eventually, he gently put Maud back down. Becky and I, along with everyone else gathered around the beaming, very happy looking couple. Maud suddenly looked shocked. “I’ve forgotten about Sarah!’ she blurted out. “She’s asleep, but all the noise we’ve been making must surely have woken her up.”
Nicky’s pregnancy seemed to have put her maternal instincts on high alert, and because she was banned from any heavy lifting by the rest of us, she’d happily taken over some of the baby care duty from Maud. She put a hand on Maud’s shoulder.
“Maud, don’t worry, I’ll go. If she’s awake she wouldn’t want to miss the party now, would she?” She turned and pushing gently through the gathered throng, walked towards the Great Hall.
The barking of the excited dogs echoing off the walls and the noise we were all making made me realise with a start that we’d forgotten our plan to keep quiet and not attract any unwanted attention from the potentially thousands of zombies roaming around in the local area.
Raising my hands in the air and shouting for quiet, I eventually got everyone’s attention.
“I hate to break this up,” I said, smiling, “but we were meant to try and keep quiet around here.” Pointing to the main castle, I continued, “Can we all take this inside, folks?”
Fifty-two people and two dogs went inside to join Nicky and baby Sarah.
Our group now unbelievably numbered fifty-four; and two dogs.
Chapter Eight
The grandeur and impressiveness of the Great Hall momentarily quietened the new arrivals as they filed into the room. They stared around opened mouthed at the scale of the room with its weapon-covered walls and huge fireplace bracketed by windows that stretched upwards towards the high ceiling.
Taking advantage of the momentary quiet, I raised my voice and walked to the centre of the room with my arms held out in a theatrical gesture.
“Welcome to Warwick Castle,” I said, smiling. “I know we all have a hell of a lot to talk about, but first of all, can we sort out security arrangements? We already have plans in place, but it would seem prudent to get all the new arrivals up to speed and in agreement. As your arrival has just proved, we just don’t know what’s going to happen from one moment to the next, so we all need to be on the same hymn sheet, so to speak.”
There was a general murmuring of agreement and heads nodded. The new arrivals looked towards their captain, who walked over to me, but before he could speak, Charles, the vicar, walked into the middle of the room and raised his hands, appealing for the quiet to continue.
The soldiers and Willie all stared open mouthed at the sight of an elderly man adorned in the typical black shirt and white dog collar of his calling, but with the addition of a tactical vest over it stuffed with magazines, and a rifle on a sling over his shoulder.
“Before we begin, would you allow me to say a short prayer of thanks for the arrival of more people into our midst? I hope you don’t mind.”
Charles had, in the short time he’d been with us, become an integral part of our group. Always willing to help, not once despite his advancing years had he shirked any duty. He continued with the pastoral care that he’d administered before to his parish. He was not evangelical about religion and was always sympathetic and supportive with all he spoke to. He’d started giving a short prayer of thanks before meals which were more of a report on activities completed and others planned. Delivered with cheerfulness and humour, even though I was not religious, they were a pleasure to listen to and the obligatory ‘Amen’ at the end came naturally to everyone.
Bob and Jim both said that the work he’d done in their village community was fantastic, and his light-hearted and cheerful sermons attracted a lot of people to his small church. The pub in the village was another centre of the community and he was often in there, talking and laughing with the locals as he kept an eye on his flock and enjoyed a pint or two.
When he’d finished officially welcoming everyone, we got down to business.
>
“Sergeant Wood,” began Captain Hammond, “why don’t you start by giving us all a tour of the place and show us what you’ve achieved so far? I can then report to the Admiral of the Fleet and update him on the suitability of this place.”
“Admiral?” I asked in amazement. “Have you contacted the fleet in the Solent?”
“How… how do you know about them?” he replied immediately, his voice full of curiosity.
So I told him about our brief contact with Graham and Arthur and what they’d picked up on the radios and their plan to sail their boats there. In return, he told us about their contact with them, using Willie’s ham radio. Having the information confirmed gave us all another boost and my mind started racing as I imagined all the scenarios that might occur.
I started asking the Captain questions, but he didn’t have any answers. All he knew was what he’d just told me, so I had to curb my curiosity and deal with the matters in hand: giving the new arrivals a tour of our castle home.
An hour later, a very impressed Willie, Captain Hammond and his men gathered back in the Great Hall. As we’d been touring the castle, they’d told us about their journey. Following the route they’d taken a few days before, their only dicey moment was when they’d encountered a huge horde heading towards them along the motorway. They were strung out over miles of road and not packed close enough to be a problem. So they’d decided to seal themselves in their vehicles and keeping their foot to the floor, smash through them. For mile after mile, the vehicles in tight single file formation had cleaved through thousands upon thousands of zombies that heedlessly kept walking into their path. There were one or two nervous moments when the weight of the corpses began to slow them down, but they kept pushing on, relying on the power and weight of the vehicles to defeat the undead. He described the destroyed still smouldering roadblock of vehicles under a motorway bridge, which remained a mystery to him, until we told them about our adventures and the sad loss of Daniel to the scum who’d set it up.
Becky, Eddy and Maud hadn’t been idle while the tour had been taking place and had, with many willing hands, organised more rooms for everyone to use as private quarters. The suites of rooms the castle rented out to tourists would be the most comfortable. When we returned, they showed everyone the rooms they’d been allocated.
By universal agreement, Nicky and Chris, our expectant new parents, were given one. We insisted Maud take one of the apartments and she went all red with embarrassment, but didn’t disagree when Eddy asked her, with a twinkle in his eye, if he should knock Willie off the list as having a place allocated to him.
We decided the other apartment should be taken by one of the families with kids, who could all be easily accommodated in it. Lots would be drawn as the fairest way of choosing who would take it. The multitudinous other rooms could easily accommodate all of us and leave many others for us to use as communal areas. We had a good supply of sleeping mats and airbeds that we’d got from the camping shop. We also put beds and mattresses on our ever-growing list of items required, because in the long term, they’d be a lot more comfortable.
While we’d been touring the castle, the sergeants, Willie included, discussed and agreed where to position the extra heavy weapons the soldiers had brought with them. They had GPMGs; general purpose machine guns, light machine guns, similar to those they’d already given us, and some fifty-calibre machine guns which, if mounted around the walls, would provide enough firepower to decimate any threat, both living and dead, that might want to try and take the castle from us. They’d also brought with them from the armoury at Imjin barracks an eighty-one-millimetre mortar. All the sergeants got very excited at this. If it was positioned in the centre of the castle courtyard, it would enable the mortar to lob its bombs over the castle walls accurately at any target within a three hundred and sixty degree arc; that was, once ranges had been spotted and marked all around our location. The mortar could fire both high explosive and illumination rounds, of which they had a fair supply of both.
I was trying not to get overexcited and overconfident when I saw what was being planned. It might all have seemed over the top and overkill, but as Eddy explained, there was no point them sitting in the lorry, and as we had the equipment, we might as well get it set up ready for use. I reminded him of the conversation we’d had about his plan to turn the castle into an armed camp, with machine guns mounted on the walls and artillery to blast anything that came near to clouds of blood and guts, and how that was happening on only our second day there.
He blinked in surprise as he remembered our conversation and subconsciously patted the pocket where he still had the lone shotgun cartridge which he’d found on the floor of the farmhouse. He could remember saying that if he ever found himself reaching for it, then they were well and truly fucked.
“Someone’s certainly looking after us, I reckon,” he stated simply. “Maybe this luck we keep finding will run out, but while it’s being offered, we need to grab as much of it as we can.” Laughing, he finished with, “So, let’s cross everything we have and hope it keeps up.”
Woody joined us and pointed at his friend Eddy. “I think we can set all this lot up with Captain Hammond’s men. He wants to use Willie’s radio to contact this admiral, so can you get who you need and go and help, please, Tom?”
I called to Shawn, who was with the others either unloading the supplies we still had in the trailer or moving furniture around to wherever Becky or Maud wanted it. All the children were helping, too, and we’d promised them that as a reward later, we’d let them go and play in the large playground that had zip wires and climbing nets and large wooden climbing frames designed as castles. It was in an enclosed area near the stables entrance and we figured that with a strong adult presence to act as guards, we could use a vehicle to take them the short distance to it and let them have some fun.
Willie helped us set the radio up, running the long antennae wire up to a high point on the building, while Shawn moved a small generator from the bus and ran a power cable to it from where he put it outside.
Willie sat down in front of it and grunted with satisfaction when at the press of a button it lit up, indicating it had survived the journey.
Turning to the correct frequency, he relinquished his chair to the captain, who sat down and picked up the handset.
“Captain Hammond requesting contact from Admiral Walker-Jones.”
He waited for one minute and then repeated his call. The set crackled and a few broken words came in response. Willie leaned over him and turned a few dials and pressed some buttons.
“Try again, laddie,” he said. This time the response was slightly better but still not clear.
“I’ll have to go and extend the antennae some more,” Willie said, unfazed by the frustration I was feeling at it not working yet. He turned to Shawn. “Come and give me a hand. I have more wire in ma trailer. If we run it up the highest point we can, it should do the trick.”
Twenty minutes later, the two men returned and told the Captain to try again. This time, to my relief, the answer came back loud and clear.
“Captain Hammond,” said the voice through the speaker, “this is Admiral Walker-Jones. It’s good to hear your voice again, please update me on your progress.”
First, he described their journey and how they’d found a complete lack of any other survivors as they’d driven through over two hundred miles of the country. He gave a brief description of our group and how perfectly suitable Warwick Castle was for our purposes. He’d already told him about us earlier from the information Willie had given him, so he was familiar with our story.
“Captain Hammond,” the admiral began when he’d finished, “I agree your location seems ideal. Could you pass on my messages of congratulations and thanks to your hosts. Their tenacity and ingenuity are an example to us all. The tales you told us of their adapted vehicles have got us all thinking and planning along similar lines for when the time is right to take the fight to them and start r
eclaiming our country.”
The captain turned to me and smiled as he replied. “Some are listening, Sir, but I will certainly pass your message along.” He then turned serious again. “How are your plans progressing?”
“More Royal Navy ships and submarines have arrived. Arriving civilian boats have slowed to a trickle, but we are still broadcasting our location continually, so we hope that more will make it. They are sheltering in our lee at the moment and we are trying to get around them all in our small boats to distribute what rations we can. I have ordered all domestically owned commercial cargo and container ships to join us in the Solent and we are emptying those that have already arrived of any useful cargo as we speak. Without dockside assistance, it is a labour-intensive job, but I have teams of sailors with cutting gear opening up and working through containers, tunnelling into them and transferring what they find as best we can.
“Contact has also been made with Navies around the world. The situation we are in is being mirrored by most. The survivors are gathering together and are desperately trying to get organised to ensure not just their own, but the survival of their nations. It’s too early to say if there will be any joint action, but lines of communication are remaining open and any useful information is being shared.”
He gave an audible sigh.
“This morning I dispatched patrol craft to investigate small local ports, harbours and villages to see if a location for a defensible beachhead can be discovered, but as yet, no encouraging reports have come in. On a more positive note the helicopter carrier ship has entered the channel and will be with us within hours. I can then start reconnoitring for a suitable place for the fleet to shelter. The Scilly Isles still look favourite, but until we get eyes on it, we won’t know for sure.
Zombie Castle Series (Book 4): ZC Four Page 5
