Breakout

by Craig Jones

  Redcliffe pivoted towards the door as light footfalls sprinted up the hall.

  “Mom?” asked Robbie as he ran into the kitchen.

  Jenny opened her eyes and blinked as she realized that it was really her boy in front of her.

  “Oh, Robbie,” she cried as he threw himself into his arms.

  Redcliffe radioed his men to stand down and reached his hand out to me.

  “Look what you did today,” he reminded me as we shook hands.

  “Thank you,” I replied.

  “That was pretty brave what you did, throwing yourself at her like you did. What if it had been a zombie?”

  I tried to smile. “You guys would have shot it before it bit me.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “You know what? After today, I really think we’re going to make it.”

  And as I watched Robbie hold his mother has hard as he could, I had hope too.

  ESCAPE

  38

  “I’m so sorry for what happened to Danny,” Jenny told me as the bus rolled on. “I’m sorry for what happened in Usk after you rescued us. I don’t think I ever told you that.”

  Outside, the dull and rain sodden afternoon was fading away to a cold, grim evening but it remained warm on the bus. Robbie had fallen asleep with his head on Jenny’s lap and although she talked to me across the bus aisle, her eyes never left his smudged and dirty face. Jenny’s arrival had boosted the spirits within the convoy. People who had family members still out there began to believe that maybe, just maybe, one day they might be reunited. It was hard for me to listen to all the excited voices without shouting that even if they’d survived somehow, then they were dead anyway. The cure would see to that. Of course, there’d be no need for the cure at all if I hadn’t tried to keep Danny alive.

  “You’re not the only one who’s sorry,” I told Jenny.

  She lifted her head and met my eyes. She looked both concerned and confused.

  “Nick told you about the drinking, didn’t he?” she asked. I couldn’t meet her eyes. “It’s okay that he did. I was out of control. Being with Mom and Dad though, that helped me…helped me until…”

  She paused, took a deep breath.

  “But that’s not an excuse. I should have been there for my children.”

  “I’m sorry for what happened to your family,” I said, trying to divert the conversation away from Danny, away from Usk. I watched and listened as Robbie told her what had happened to her daughters, how they had been torn from the Range Rover by the undead. Her eyes had grown wide when he explained how Nick had first hunted and then trapped us before letting us go. I turned my head away as they wept together, mourning the destruction of their family. But then Robbie had shown the strength that he had developed and over the weeks to explain to her how he’d seen them again, together. He told her how his sisters had come to the front of the growing zombie horde to stand with their dad. And how Nick had allowed the convoy to pass he’d recognized Robbie but how General Rogers had fired the bullet that had stopped Nick’s undead heart from reaching out to his son ever again.

  “I never thought I’d see any of them again,” she sighed. “If I’m honest, I was sure they were all dead. But it was all I had to cling to. All I had to keep me alive. I couldn’t believe it was happening all over again. I’ve started to think there’s some greater force than any of us understand that just doesn’t want us to make it.”

  Not some greater force, I thought. Just a selfish and spoiled eighteen-year-old who wouldn’t say goodbye to his brother.

  I let her carry on. For once, I listened. Since the first epidemic, I’d spent so much of my time as the center of attention that I’d lost sight of the problems people around me had, how they were trying to come to terms with their losses. I’d been aware on some peripheral level that Nick and Jenny were breaking up but even when he told me, it was some abstract thing that didn’t really affect me. It was only when Nick told me that the reason for their parting had been her guilt. That she felt so bad for encouraging me and Danny to ride our motorbikes into town. Only then had I began to see outside of my own cocoon. It had, of course, helped that he’d punched me to the floor first.

  Jenny stroked Robbie’s hair.

  “Twelve years old and he’s seen so much,” she whispered. Then she said, “And you’ve had to see so much too. First your parents in that terrible accident and then…”

  And then it struck me. Robbie did say she’d been living with her parents. And there had been the streaks of blood all over the hallway carpet.

  “Your parents!” I blurted. “I totally forgot, I didn’t even ask--”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Well, no. It’s not okay, but you don’t have to feel bad for not asking about them. We just assume the worst now, don’t we?”

  I nodded. Of course we did. Bateman, Redcliffe, and I hadn’t expected to find Jenny in the house. We’d just hoped to be able to find something concrete to tell Robbie, one way or the other, but mostly we expected to be telling him that his mother was dead.

  “How did you survive?” I asked her. “What happened to your parents?”

  She looked down at Robbie as he stirred for a moment in her lap. She made sure his blanket was wrapped around him and rubbed his back like he was still a baby. It seemed to work and he settled again, a tiny smile sneaking onto his face. Jenny stared straight forward as if the head rest of the chair in front of her was the most interesting thing to be seen.

  “We had no idea anything was going on,” she began. “Anything bad, anyway. I’d driven my parents to the shops and on the way home we’d gone for a walk alongside the river. The weather was nice, and I remember my father said we couldn’t guess how long it would last. I’ve thought of that often since. It was like he knew life was going to change, even though he was talking about the sunshine.

  “We drove home and at the time, I didn’t even notice how quiet the roads were. I was unpacking the shopping with my mother, putting the food away in the cupboards when there was an almighty crash on the front door. My father was in the living room, reading the paper. Before the rest of us had a chance to move, he was up and at the door, clearly not happy with the rude way whoever was visiting us had announced themselves.

  “Suddenly Dad was shouting and then the door slammed, and he came through to the kitchen, holding his hand. He was bleeding. Mom went to him as he said it was some kids at the door and when he’d asked them what they wanted, one had bitten him and then a girl had ran across the road. The rest had followed. Mom opened a cabinet and pulled out a green first aid kit, but while she had her back turned, I saw my father change.”

  Jenny stopped and brought her hand up to her mouth. Tears welled in her eyes. I was aware of our fellow refugees leaning in to listen to her story. The monotonous deep purr of the bus engine provided a backing track that somehow managed to add to the tension.

  “One second he was holding his injured hand, carefully examining it, the next his arms fell to his sides. Listless. I thought he was going to faint and then he blinked… When he opened his eyes…well they weren’t his eyes anymore. He looked at me with cold, dead…nothing.”

  Now the tears fell. I watched as they dropped into Robbie’s hair.

  “My mother went to him, still talking about bandages and plasters and the likelihood of him needing a shot at the hospital. Then he swatted her to the floor without hesitation. He knocked her out cold. He fell on her… If I’d have been the one closer to him, it would have been me… maybe that would have been better because I saw my father kill my mother.

  “I should have run then, I suppose, but I had to stop him. So I picked up the breadknife and even as he…even as he…I drove the knife down into the back of his head. Only he moved and the knife stuck deep into his neck. He roared. He screamed. And then he ran. Away from me, down the hall way and smashed his way out of the house. I don’t know if he’s been back here but I haven’t seen him.

  I fell to my knees, tried to revive my moth
er, but she was gone. Her blood was everywhere. She didn’t come back. While he’d fed on her…one of his thumbs…it had gone into her eye socket…deep, deep, all the way...”

  She didn’t need to tell us what we could all picture. Her father had driven his digit so deeply into her face that he’d damaged her brain.

  “I pulled her outside, into the street. I couldn’t have her lying there, having to look at her. I was also scared. Scared and selfish that she’d attract more of them into the house. So I dumped her outside.”

  I didn’t highlight the fact that when we’d arrived that there was no dead body in front of the house. Whatever had been left of her mother would have been snacked on by the hungry living dead.

  “I took all the food and hid in the cellar. The floorboards were really noisy, so I could hear when anything was in the house and I kept quiet. When you and the soldiers came in, I didn’t know what was going on. The zombies only came in one at a time, but all of a sudden there were more footsteps…and then I heard voices. And I know the undead don’t talk.”

  “Not yet they don’t,” someone behind us said and Jenny almost leapt out of her skin. She’d been so focused on telling her story that she hadn’t realized that she’d held the attention of everyone on the bus.

  Before Jenny had a chance to respond to the comment, the bus began to slow.

  “Been told to pull over,” Mooney called out in explanation. “The general has regained contact with high command.”

  39

  I was growing immune to General Rogers’s ability to hypnotize a crowd. It was clear that I wasn’t the only one. I firmly believed that if we had another option now, like if we were still back in the stadium and we were offered the chance to stay, then most of us would have abandoned him and taken our chances. But we didn’t have the protection of the security gates and closed roof of the stadium that we had in Cardiff to fall back on. Instead, we were somewhere south of London, heading for the Channel Tunnel in Folkestone, isolated in the darkness. And I knew that unless we got clear of Britain, then we’d all be killed along with the zombies when the aerosol spray that the scientists at Bath University had created was unleashed.

  After all of the vehicles stopped, and after the soldiers double checked that we were in as safe an environment as possible, Rogers boosted himself up on top of the armored troop transport. He gestured that everyone should gather around him. I’d witnessed before that all he’d have to do was wave a hand and we’d all have flocked, but now we walked to him with less energy than a starving Romero zombie. He shot a glance towards Bateman and Redcliffe as they stood off to his side. I wondered if the general was concerned that his right hand man had found a new ally. The police sergeant and the military captain certainly worked well together in the role of reconnaissance personnel, but I was sure Bateman was too loyal to support any kind of coup against his boss, no matter how unhinged Rogers’ behavior was threatening to become.

  “Tomorrow we reach Folkestone,” Rogers began. His chin and cheeks were peppered with dark stubble. His clothes were filthy, matted with dirt, and splattered with blood stains. I hadn’t seen him looking so disheveled. “Tomorrow we reach safety.”

  While his first statement had barely registered with the crowd, the second was engineered to draw us into his rhetoric. Safety had been an inflammatory word for some time. It was always just out of reach, almost there but somehow intangible. There may have been nights when you’d be on the verge of falling asleep, feeling safe because the stadium was secure and there were armed troops on patrol. And then something would begin to pound on the roof and the true nature of our dire situation would come shrieking back to keep us awake. But now he was promising it to us. Not soon. Not one day. Tomorrow.

  “There have been days when it seemed bleak,” he continued, clearly satisfied that he had enough of us back in his camp. “We have lost friends. We have lost family. And we had lost contact with high command. For a while I didn’t even know if we still had any reason to reach Folkestone.”

  He stopped and lowered his head, took off his cap and mopped the sweat from his bald head with a grimy handkerchief. The scar that ran from his forehead to his crown looked red and angry and that was the General Rogers we had all been used to seeing. But as he continued to speak, he kept his tone controlled and even. Either he was on the ultimate public relations campaign, or he had realized how close to the edge he had been and roped himself back in. He placed the cap back on top of his head.

  “But we have managed to re-establish contact with high command. The news was not all good…”

  Gasps and shouts rang out from the massed civilians. Most were indecipherable, lost in the cacophony of challenges that rose around me. General Rogers raised his arms to try to influence some calm, and after a few minutes the noise abated. Then a single question hung in the air.

  “Is there a train waiting to take my son away from this madness?”

  Everyone turned towards Jenny. She stood behind Robbie, with her arms draped over his shoulders.

  “Yes,” Rogers replied at once. “That is the good news. I have had that fact confirmed to me. The final train to leave Great Britain will wait for our arrival before it pulls out of the station and into the tunnel. As soon as we leave, the tunnel will be blown up.”

  The noise around me increased in volume again before Bateman shouted out.

  “If we are going to make it to the tunnel tomorrow, we need to get moving again soon…Please, if you can save your questions for later.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Rogers smiled and there was something in his grin that belied his feelings. Hidden behind his teeth was a sour, acidic taste. “We have been the lucky ones. Since leaving Cardiff, we have encountered very few of the undead. I took a risk when I shot their apparent leaders, but I think it has paid off.”

  I didn’t need to look at Robbie to picture his shoulders tensing and a zombie snarl creeping across his face.

  “But we are the fortunate ones. The only fortunate ones. We are the last group still making progress towards Folkestone. Well, as far as high command is aware, at least. The rest are no longer responding to radio contact. That is not the worst thing I have to tell you.”

  His honesty, and the words of Bateman, meant everyone maintained their silence.

  “The station at Folkestone has become overrun with the undead. A battalion is due to arrive there tonight to make our journey to the train easier, but I have to warn you. Some of us may not make it to the train. So if anyone wants to leave tonight, I will allow you to take your fair share of the food and water. I will not judge you. But you must understand how important it is that I get the cure across to France. How important it is that I succeed.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Rogers knew that staying was a death wish, and yet he was offering people an easy way out. Worse, he was offering them the choice of almost guaranteed death or enough food and water to see them through to the certain painful demise of the cure. His plan was transparent to me. The fewer civilians he had to look after, the more chance there was that the vial of serum would make it through. The more chance there was that he would make it through. There had been no we succeed. With Rogers it was all about him carrying the test tube onto the train, probably riding a white horse right into the carriage.

  I looked across the crowd and made eye contact with Jenny. She still held Robbie close to her. I didn’t care about the cure getting to France. All that mattered to me was getting that young boy onto the train.

  40

  The convoy made good progress. Robbie had insisted his mom sleep, and he took a seat next to me. We peered out of the window together when the bus finally came to a halt. The roadside sign told us it was just two miles to Folkestone, but it may as well have been a million marathons. The news Captain Bateman and Sergeant Redcliffe had brought us back from the train station was not good.

  We’d not seen another living soul, or even a cursed dead one, since we’d left Burgess Hill. R
obbie told me that he believed his mother was our lucky charm and now that they’d been reunited, he knew he’d always be safe.

  “I think we’re going to be okay,” he told me. “I knew you’d always keep your eye on me, but now my mom is here I feel… ”

  He turned his face from me, and I knew he was crying.

  “It’s alright,” I said. “I’m just so happy you’ve got your mom back. After all you’ve been through, I just --”

  “Thank you, Matt!” he blurted, interrupting me. He threw himself at me, wrapping his arms around my back. “For everything you’ve done.”

  I ’d broken down, unable to hide my feelings. He’d needed someone to look after him and I’d been able to step up to the mark. I’d done my job. After Danny’s death, I never thought I’d be able to achieve anything in my life again, but Robbie made me believe that I had. I have been there for him, just as I’d promised.

  I had no words for him, and I guessed he didn’t need any Jenny, who had been sleeping across the aisle from us, woke and looked at me with deep gratitude over the top of her son’s hair.

  “Thank you” she mouthed to me, and that just made me cry more. Nothing was ever going to make me forget about Danny. Nothing was ever going to allow me to forget what I’d done, but for that moment I was able to look forward to a life I never thought I’d see. Like Robbie, I began to believe.

  Then we’d arrived at the sign telling us we were extremely close to the train that would take us away from all of this.

  The troop transport, the Jeep and the two buses pulled over when Bateman and Redcliffe flagged down the lead vehicle. They’d picked a great spot. The road was three lanes wide going in each direction and there were open fields as far as the eye could see. In the mid-morning sunlight nothing would be able to creep up on us, alive or dead. Even the road itself was clear, except for the occasional random car or truck. When the bus engine was killed, the air of anticipation on the bus had a silent, pulsing life of its own. Mooney opened the door and climbed off the bus. I could feel the eyes of my co-travelers on me. They knew I had a different relationship with the soldiers than they did, and that I’d be the only one on board with a chance of finding out what was going on. Reluctantly, I climbed to my feet and followed Mooney.