Gathering around as they lay on the floor, we could see how close to death they still were.
“Let’s get them out of here,” said Dave. “They’re going to need some careful looking after if they’re going to recover. It’s not just a case of giving them food and water. They look so far gone they could be in danger of organ failure if we don’t get it right.”
Jim spoke up, “I had some training as part of a disaster relief programme once. We got told how to treat famine victims before medical help arrived.”
“Great, Jim,” replied Dave. “I would say these two fall into that category. You’re their doctor now. If a few of you could help carry them outside, you can begin nursing them back to health. The rest of us need to check this whole place is clear and then we need to start shopping.”
We made some stretchers out of some sturdy signs, and the boys were carried outside and placed into the trailer, where Jim began supervising their care.
Twenty minutes later we were satisfied that no surprises waited for us in any of the many back rooms the store had, and we began what we had intended to do and gathered more supplies.
There were so many items for us to choose from, all of which we could put to good use, and it was difficult not to empty the whole shop. We did know that we could always raid similar shops in the future, so there was no point being daft, and we only took items from the list we had hastily agreed between ourselves.
But the van and the bus still got filled up with sleeping bags, tents, clothing, torches and many other items we just had to take. I did resist the temptation to take one of the canoes I’d always decided I absolutely needed whenever I had visited one of the chain’s shops before.
The two patients were responding to their treatment. When I checked on them between pushing fully loaded trollies from the store, Jim was carefully assisting them to take small sips from an energy drink. He told me they were doing okay and asked if one of us could get some clothes for them from the store, so they could change them out of their filth-encrusted clothes, which were a health hazard.
When we had everything we needed, we all boarded our vehicles and continued the journey north.
Steve took over Jim’s place on Simon’s Land Rover.
We were now forty-four and two dogs.
Chapter Twenty-One
Glancing left as we drove over a bridge that crossed the River Avon, I slowed down, sure I’d seen a boat emerging from under the bridge as we passed over it.
I got Dave’s attention, and he craned his neck to look back and confirmed he could see it too. None of the other vehicles ahead of me would have seen it, because it would have been under the bridge as they drove over it. By pure chance, I’d caught sight of it out of the corner of my eye.
Dave told the others to stop and I reversed back up the carriageway, stopping in the middle of the bridge.
“Cover me,” was all he said as he grabbed his rifle and climbed down from the car, scrambled over the central barrier and ran to the railing at the side of the carriageway. Needing to answer the questions that were coming through the radio, I picked it up and told them what I’d seen, and that Dave was trying to contact them. I was questioned whether I wanted them to turn around and head back. In the time it had taken me to spot the boat, to slow down for Dave to confirm what I’d seen, and to get the others to stop, they had got a few hundred meters ahead of us. Then I’d reversed another hundred metres back along the bridge.
I told them not to bother yet. The motorway had been zombie free for a while.
Dave was shouting over the bridge. I couldn’t make out what was being said, but he was having a conversation with them.
Eventually he pushed away from the side of the bridge and jogged back over to us.
“Tom, get the others back here to form square please. The boats are mooring and one or two of them are coming up to meet us. I told them I would start heading their way to escort them.”
“Which side are they mooring?” I asked.
“I think they’re dropping anchor in the middle of the river and using a small boat to reach the bank, if that helps. Why?”
“We’re in the middle of a long bridge. Surely it would be better to form our square at the end where they’ll be appearing,” I said, a smile of ‘oh what a good idea that is’ playing across my face.
“Smart arse,” he replied, “Okay I’ll give you that. Just let me go and look.”
He hopped back over the central barrier and looked down at the river, turned and jogged back to us and pointed towards where the others were waiting.
“That way. I’ll get the others to start getting into position.” Simon picked up the radio as I drove towards them.
Before we got there, he turned to Chet And Jamie.
“Can you two come with me please? We’ll jump out when they’re getting into position and we’ll go to meet them.”
Shawn had moved forward the short distance to the end of the bridge and by the time I turned up, the others were getting themselves into position around him. Stopping to let my three passengers out, I watched them run to the barrier, climb over it and disappear from view before pulling into the final position in the square.
The news that we were going to meet more survivors had got everyone excited. As soon as the ramp was lowered and doors opened, we gathered in the middle of the square and waited eagerly for them to arrive.
Daisy kept Princess on a lead when she brought her down from the trailer. The last thing any of us wanted was for her to run off, requiring us to chase her. Horace could be trusted and was never far from Ian, anyone with food, or the children. She was well behaved, though, and didn’t pull on the lead and was happy to follow Daisy. An indication her previous owners had trained her well.
Jim stayed in the trailer to continue caring for our two new arrivals.
Today had gone well so far, apart from the diversion, which hadn’t slowed us down much, and the visit to the retail park. We were about half way to Worcester by my estimate. It had only taken us about three hours so far and it wasn’t ten o’clock in the morning yet. I didn’t know how long we were going to spend with these people we were just about to meet, but when we continued, and if we encountered no more problems, we should be ready to try to enter Worcester an hour after we started moving again.
All heads turned to watch Dave and the others climb over the barrier and walk towards us. The two strangers stopped briefly and stared with obvious amazement at our eclectic mix of vehicles, before following them and squeezing through the gap we’d left in our wall of vehicles.
I welcomed them and introduced myself before asking them what we all wanted to know: their story.
Their names were Graham and Arthur. After gratefully accepting some tea we poured from a thermos flask, they began.
Not knowing each other before the virus hit, they were both holidaying on the River Severn with their families, when they woke up one morning at neighbouring moorings at an isolated spot on the River Severn near Shrewsbury, to hear the news that was broadcasting over the radio and television.
Confident it was an elaborate practical joke and being the social bunch that the boating community was, and neither party being in a rush to get to any destination, they were enjoying a coffee on Graham’s boat while their children played on the river bank with new found friends. That was when the reality of the situation came crashing home after they spotted a body floating towards them, slowly being led to them on the lazy current.
Bursting into action, the two men hurriedly jumped into Graham’s tender he towed behind his boat to retrieve the body, while their wives tried to call the emergency services. To their horror, the body, that of a young man, was dead and appeared to have terrible bite marks over his face and neck. They could tell that the injuries were fresh and had only happened recently.
Dragging the body onto the bank, they could do no more than to cover it with a blanket and wait for the emergency services to arrive. The problem was they couldn�
��t contact anybody, and they knew enough that they shouldn’t disturb a potential crime scene, but they were at a loss to know what to do next. Then more bodies began to appear from upstream, all showing wounds of some description.
Terrified of what they might find, but also knowing that they needed to know, they decided to leave the body where it was and investigate what was going on further up the river. Cautiously making their way towards Shrewsbury, they turned around before they got there. The normally calm and beautiful river had turned into a carnal house of terror. More and more bodies filled the river and even from a distance Shrewsbury looked to be completely ablaze. Both men were forced to take up positions in the bows of their boats and use boat hooks to push more and more bodies out of the way out of respect for them and also because they were fearful of fouling their propellers.
At a few points, roads ran next to the river, and there it was confirmed to them that the unbelievable news must have been telling the truth. Watching in disbelief, they saw cars tearing down the roads, the faster drivers completely disregarding their own safety as well as that of anyone else as they forced others off the road in their desperation to escape. Crashed cars that still contained living people were ignored.
Normal human nature was to help these poor people, but it was clear that normal was not the rule of the day. Unwilling to moor the boats on the banks of the river, they found a small island in the middle of the flow and tied up, spending the next hours watching the news reports in disbelief, until one by one they went off the air to be replaced by the looping message from the Government.
Indecision reigned between the two distraught families brought together by the horror of what was occurring right around them. They simply did not know what to do next, until the noise of an approaching boat made them run up onto the flybridge of Graham’s Cruiser. Its engines were roaring as it blasted along on full power, rocking from side to side erratically as if out of control. It was heading straight towards them. Fearing it might crash straight into them, but not having the time to do anything about it, they scrambled to the sides of the boat and prepared to jump off onto the island when at the last moment, it veered away from them and crashed at full speed into the bank opposite. Its momentum hurled it up the bank, its bow crushed and mangled as it smashed through trees and shrubs, ending up mostly out of the water, its propellers still spinning at maximum revolutions, churning the water, with its engine screaming in protest.
Shaken up from the near miss, they looked across at what was left of the once sleek boat. Its driver lay crumpled and unmoving on the bridge, either dead or severely injured, they couldn’t tell which. The news reports and radio broadcasts had shown and described the terrible happenings around the country, but that was in the third person, still not quite believable or real.
Graham was looking at the boat through his binoculars, looking for any movement from the driver, when more movement from the boat caught their attention. A passenger emerged from the cabin of the boat. Binoculars were not needed to see the person was a woman and she was alive, but seriously injured. She was covered in blood and was crawling along the deck, both her legs sticking out at unnatural angles from the knees, obviously badly broken. It looked to the watchers as if she was crawling towards her partner to check on his condition. Eventually she reached him.
Graham had the best view through his binoculars and it was when he threw them down and started retching, that they all knew that there was no denying it. A zombie apocalypse had started.
The woman was not rendering aid, she was eating him, ripping chucks of flesh from his body and devouring them.
In panic and the urgent need to get away from what they were witnessing, they untied the boats from the trees they’d moored them to and headed back downstream together. Eventually, after seeing more evidence of death and destruction on either bank as they passed close to roads and houses, and fearful of going near the banks at all, they moored at another island to get together again and plan what the hell to do next.
Logistically, they were both in good shape. As they were both at the start of their holidays, both boats had enough fuel for a few weeks’ gentle river cruising and food to last for the same period. It was where to go and what to do that they had no idea about. The obvious answer, from what they had witnessed, was that the river seemed to be the safest place to be, the land beyond the banks too terrifying to contemplate setting foot on.
Setting up a watch rota so one of their group was always on lookout, they remained at their island sanctuary for days, supplementing their dwindling food supplies by fishing, and conserving fuel by cooking on a camp fire on the island. Constantly monitoring the radio channels, both marine and land-based for any news, they waited.
From their isolated position they didn’t see another living soul. Bodies continually floated past, reminding them of what was happening, but they had no contact with anyone. Their first experience with a zombie was when the lookout on deck spotted what they thought was a live person hanging onto a floating log, weakly thrashing around trying to get their attention. Graham and Arthur immediately untied the tender and starting the small outboard motor, went to help.
What they found was a zombie who had somehow impaled itself on a large tree branch that was now floating downstream. Its eyes locked on them as they approached, it reached its arms out towards them, growling and snapping its teeth. Recoiling in horror, Graham just managed to engage reverse and avoid coming into contact with it. Keeping at a safe distance, they followed the log and its trapped monster, studying it carefully, again trying to comprehend that what they were seeing was real.
There was no way the person with the injuries it had could still be alive. Its throat was ripped out and half of its face was devoid of flesh. And it had a branch protruding through its chest, an injury that would alone have been enough to end its life.
When they had returned to the boats and told their families, the children, who had more zombie experience through video game and TV shows, instructed the adults on the best way they knew to kill zombies. Anything that could be used as a head-smashing, brain-destroying weapon was found and placed ready to use.
One morning a few days ago they picked up a faint and barely audible broadcast on the marine emergency channel. Using their scant knowledge, they jury-rigged an extension to the antenna to see if they could pick up the faint and intermittent signal better.
It worked. The message was being relayed from another private craft further down the River Severn. Their equipment did not have the range to reply, but they listened avidly to the message.
The Royal Navy was sheltering in the Solent and all remaining Royal Navy ships worldwide were making best speed to their location. The message informed anyone listening to make their way to their location, if at all possible.
That galvanised them into action. Now they had a goal, something to stop them just sitting there waiting for something to happen. Both experienced boaters, they pulled out maps and charts and began plotting the course. Even though they spent most of their times on rivers, both boats were seaworthy enough to make the journey. The main issue would be fuel. Depending on sea and tide conditions, they would probably need to refill their tanks a few times and that worried them.
Normally when undertaking such a journey, you would have every safe harbour, anchorage and ports with fuel, water and other facilities mapped and planned. Access to some might be restricted due to tide times and conditions which might alter your choice, but you would always have a safe anchorage to moor your boat if you planned it correctly.
Now the tide times and conditions were the only known quantity. Sea conditions and weather, since the weather and shipping forecasts had stopped, would be unknown. It was impossible to know if any of the refuelling points were safe too.
The number of unknown factors meant danger. They both knew well enough the normal dangers any sea journey could entail. All the unknowns made the prospect a truly daunting one.
Pooling all t
heir knowledge and experience, they reached the conclusion that the best course of action would be to procure enough fuel to render the need to touch land unnecessary. The food supplies could be stretched and if the weather and sea conditions turned against them, they could drop anchor in one of the numerous coves, bays, estuaries and inlets along the coast until conditions improved enough for them to continue. Finding enough fuel was the only problem they needed to solve, which is why we had spotted them.
Leaving their island sanctuary, they journeyed down the river, intending to try every wharf and boatyard along the route until they found a safe place to get the fuel they needed. Unfortunately, time and time again they found every location swarming with shambling herds of what they began calling Walkers, after the Walking Dead TV series.
Steve stopped them at this point, knowing they’d travelled through Worcester on their journey south, and asked them what they’d seen in the city. He explained that his family lived there and that we were going there to see if they were somehow, miraculously, still alive.
The news wasn’t good. They hadn’t even stopped to check the numerous boat yards and refuelling points they knew were there, because the whole river frontage was swarming with walkers, who as soon as they noticed them, headed towards them and blindly walked or fell off the raised embankments straight into the river in their hundreds. Most sank immediately but some, buoyed up by air trapped in their clothes, thrashed their way towards them.
Worcester was the first place they had to resort to killing them, using the sharp end of their boat hooks to stab down into the heads of the ones who managed to reach the sides of their boats.
Zombie Castle Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 51
