The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 3)

by Luke Duffy

  “Like what?”

  The doctor stopped what he was doing and turned to Tommy and Tina. He suddenly appeared like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a fast approaching car. He looked from one to the next as he straightened up and then began nervously fiddling with a pen that he removed from his chest pocket, as he jotted down notes upon the charts he held in his hand. He hesitated, hoping that they would forget the question and move on to something else. However, he knew all too well that they would not change the subject, and that both their attentions would remained fixed upon him until he gave them the information.

  “You mean no one has gone over this with you?” he eventually asked without making eye-contact with either of them.

  “Gone over what?” Tommy said menacingly as he leaned forward in his chair and fixed the doctor with a hard glare. “No one is telling us shit around here. What long term effects are you worried about?”

  “Yes, well, we’ve had a lot to deal with. There have been a lot of casualties to take care of, and we don’t have enough medical staff to cope.”

  “What long-term effects, doctor?”

  “Well we can’t be sure yet, until he uh…”

  Finally, the doctor looked up from his clipboard. He was hesitant to continue the conversation, but he knew that he had to now. He had inadvertently given them a minute amount of information and now they wanted the remainder.

  “You need to understand, Tommy,” the doctor began. He cleared his throat and then folded his arms across his chest in a defensive posture. “Al has sustained a serious wound to his head. Not just from the bullet but also from the fall. Right now, he’s in a coma and might never recover. He’s on life-support, but we can’t keep him there indefinitely. There is a chance that he may never regain consciousness.”

  “Go on.”

  “If he does regain consciousness, then there’s always a possibility that he may have sustained… brain damage. For the first few minutes after being shot, Al was not breathing. He had a faint pulse, but there was no air getting into his lungs, and his brain was starved of oxygen. It took us a while to resuscitate him, and we have no idea what sort of impact that may have had in a neurological sense.”

  “You’re saying that he could be a vegetable?”

  The doctor glanced at Tina, his face betraying his nervousness and fear. He knew Tommy well but that did not give him any delusions of safety. Tommy was generally mild mannered, but he was well known for his aggressiveness when his placid façade was somehow removed. The people within the FOB had witnessed how the wiry man was capable of reducing hulking monsters to bloodied, quivering pulps. When backed into a corner, Tommy was capable of inflicting as much damage as a raging bull.

  “It’s a distinct possibility, yes, and I suggest that you prepare for the worst,” the doctor replied with a nod and a trembling voice, laden with regret.

  The room became silent for a while as the doctor watched Tommy. His feet shuffled uneasily and he continued to play with the pen in his hand as a light sweat broke out over his goose-bumped flesh. Again, he glanced at Tina, hoping that she could somehow prevent the unpredictable Tommy from losing his temper.

  “So when will we know for sure? Isn’t there some kind of test you can do to find out?” Tommy finally asked, his voice sounding calm but with a faint hint of hostility.

  “I suppose we won’t know for sure until, and only if, he wakes up. We just can’t tell right now, I’m afraid. All we can do is hope for the best. I promise you that we will do all we can.”

  “Hope for the fucking best? Are you taking the piss?” Tommy growled through gritted teeth. “You can hope in one hand and shit in the other, doc. Get back to me, and let me know which one filled up first.”

  “Tommy,” Tina said with warning, trying to remind him that it was not the doctor’s fault that Al had been seriously hurt. “We need to remain positive on this. You’re doing no one any good biting their heads off. Least of all Al.”

  Tommy snorted and leaned back into his chair. He knew that he was taking his frustration out on the people who did not deserve it. The medical staff were doing the best that they could and if it was not for their care and expertise, Al would already be dead. With their treatment, he stood a chance at surviving, regardless of how slim.

  “Thanks, doctor,” Tina said with a forced smile.

  The doctor took that as his chance to escape and made a sharp exit through the door, walking briskly and turning into the corridor. Once out of sight, the patter of his footsteps increased in tempo and volume as he took off along the corridor.

  Both of them sat in silence for a while until Tommy finally dragged himself up from his seat, wincing with the pain in his shoulder. He huffed loudly as he watched his friend for a moment. He took an unsteady step towards the bed and patted Al’s leg.

  “You’re right, Tina. I’m just worried, and I don’t think the drugs are helping me to think straight. I should go and apologise for being a dick to that bloke,” he murmured, turning away from the bed and heading out into the corridor and looking for the terrified doctor.

  It was just Tina and Al remaining in the room.

  “It’s over, Al,” she said after watching him for a while. “The attack; we beat them, and you were right, they didn’t expect it. You were also right about where their command post and mortar line would be. Once we began the assault, they didn’t stand a chance. They were caught in the open and we took them by complete surprise.”

  She looked down at her hands and studied her broken and grime filled nails. The base had indeed won a victory over the enemy forces that had attacked them, but it had come at a cost to their own side. Even now, it seemed unbelievable that the scraps of humanity were still trying to kill one another.

  “We lost another tank, but the crew made it out,” she continued. She knew that he could not hear her, but she felt obligated to speak to him, hoping that communication would eventually drag him back from wherever he was. “The heli took some hits, too. The mechanics think they can patch it up and keep it in working order, for now at least, but I don’t think it will last forever.”

  She went silent again and looked back down at her feet as she continued to wring her hands. She, too, was exhausted, having been unable to get any rest from the sounds, smells, and sights of the battle that remained imprinted upon her mind. Her tone changed from one of formality to one laden with emotion. The battle and her experiences had horrified her. The death and the sounds of gunfire, mingled with the screams of the dying, continued to buffer against her mind no matter how hard she tried to forget or justify what they had done.

  “Graham didn’t make it,” she continued with regret. “He was shot through the chest when we attacked their mortar line. We were pinned down, and if it wasn’t for him the attack would’ve failed. He pretty much took the position by himself, Al. One tough bastard.”

  There was no reaction from Al. He remained still and with his eyes closed, the machines beside him continuing to monitor him and beep rhythmically. There was more that Tina wanted to say, but her voice was beginning to break, causing her lips to tremble as a lump formed inside of her throat.

  “It was complete chaos, out there. No one knew what was really going on. There were people running in all directions and with the smoke and shooting, it was hard to get a clear picture. It was horrible, and I never want to go through that again.”

  She had considered making her confession to someone who was capable of hearing her words or even providing a degree of comfort and forgiveness from a religious point of view. However, there were no clergy within the base, and she was not about to turn to religion after a lifetime of refusing to believe in any God.

  “There were a lot of families with them. Kids and old people. We saw hundreds of bodies out there once the smoke cleared. It was a fucking massacre. We took in a few of the survivors, but we couldn’t stay out in the open for too long. The infected were everywhere. There were just too many of them. We had to leave a lot
of them behind, Al. We could hear them screaming for hours afterwards…”

  She stopped speaking and trailed off, staring at the foot of the bed, remembering what she had seen and heard. The fear and pain contorted faces of dead children would haunt her for many years to come. During the height of the attack, blood-lust had filled the veins and minds of her troops. They had shot at everyone they saw as the tanks had mercilessly driven over the enemy soldiers and civilians, churning them into the earth beneath their heavy tracks as they blasted away with their huge guns. With the ferocity and momentum of the assault, it would have been impossible to have stopped the soldiers, even if she had wanted to.

  She, too, had experienced the same ‘fog of war’. A red mist had veiled her mind and senses, and she had charged forward, fighting side by side with the assault group as they cut a path of blood through the enemy’s rear positions. All the time, the machineguns roared above them as the helicopter’s loadmasters poured out a savage rate of fire against the confused and fleeing people below.

  The soldiers from the base had fought like devils out of anger and desperation, knowing all too well that their survival was at stake. And when the last shots had been fired, the landscape looked like a gigantic meat grinder had been at work. Twisted bodies lay strewn everywhere. Wounded cried and groaned, dragging their broken bodies over the carcasses of the fallen. Families, left behind amongst the ruins and forgotten about, sobbed over the bodies of their loved ones as the remnants of their forces withdrew towards the south in disarray. It was only when the firing had stopped that Tina looked upon the people she had helped to kill as human beings.

  It quickly became apparent to all those involved that they had not been attacking just soldiers. The enemy unit seemed to have been on the move for a while, bringing their families with them as they searched for a safe place to live. Out of necessity, they had attacked the base. Afterwards, Tina had thought about what had happened and the stupidity and waste of it all. She came to the conclusion that the soldiers and civilians had been leading an almost nomadic lifestyle, possibly fighting numerous battles over the months as they struggled for survival. Her suspicions were more or less confirmed when she was told of the information that had been gained from some of the survivors.

  Early on during the outbreak, they, too, had occupied a base, similar to the one that Tina found herself in now. They had been attacked by a much stronger force of raiders and overwhelmed. They were the survivors of a FOB further to the north, and faced with the possibility of annihilation, had adopted the same strategy of attacking other communities and taking what was theirs.

  “Survival of the fittest. Darwin would’ve been proud,” she grunted with disdain. “What the fuck has the world come to? They didn’t need to attack us. We could’ve let them in and lived side by side. This didn’t need to happen.”

  After five more minutes of silence and reflection, she shook herself. With her confession over, Tina stood up and approached Al’s bedside. A tear had fallen from her eye and was slowly making its way along her cheek. She snorted and wiped her face, deciding that she needed to accept the new world order and put her old values and sentiments behind her. If she and the people around her were to survive, she had to become as strong and unemotional as their attackers had been. They had shown no empathy for the people inside the FOB. It was a necessary evil, and she began to understand that they needed to be just as ruthless. Her emotions would need to be locked away, only to see the light of day when the time came that they could declare themselves as safe.

  Having regained her composure, her face changed and became as hard as stone. In that instant, she had transformed into a completely different person from who she had been before the outbreak and the collapse of civilisation. She was their leader now.

  “You take it easy, mate,” she said, giving Al a gentle but reassuring pat on the shoulder. She leaned forward and kissed his bruised and swollen cheek.

  She left the room, headed for the perimeter defences.

  A short while later, as she stood on top of the wall, she surveyed the landscape. Smoke, still lingering from the assault and the endless explosions and rattling gunfire, clung low to the ground and drifted over the countless bodies. The burnt out tanks and destroyed vehicles sat in silence, still smouldering. But it was not the battlefield from the previous day that she watched but the battlefield of the future. Thousands of walking and howling corpses were now crowding their walls.

  22

  “Watch your depth, Chief,” the captain muttered.

  The view through the periscope revealed nothing, but Werner wanted to be sure that they were clear before surfacing the boat. He did not take anything for granted and methodically considered every possibility. They had been submerged for almost thirty-six hours, running at silent speed as they slipped by the large, dark silhouettes of the enemy ships.

  Bringing them as close to the southern English coast as he could, Werner and his boat drifted through the shallows, gliding on the currents and hugging the shoreline. The crew were nervous, some even terrified, as they drifted by the menacing vessels that were patrolling the English Channel. It was the first experience of a combat situation for most of them, and their taut expressions and bulging eyes betrayed that fact.

  Even amongst Stan and his men, the atmosphere was one of trepidation and uncertainty. They sat in silence, staring up at the curve of the pressure hull and wincing with the slightest noise as they expected to hear the sound of fast turning screws, churning the water and headed directly for them.

  The men inside the U-boat had played the nerve destroying game for what seemed an eternity. Time seemed to stand still, and some wondered whether or not they were actually making any headway through the water. Only the captain, chief engineer, and navigator seemed relaxed and sure of their excruciatingly slow progress. The hours ticked by with nothing but the sound of heavy breathing and the occasional creak of the hull to occupy their minds.

  Once they were clear of the enemy fleet, the captain allowed the boat to be ventilated through the snorkel. The auxiliary pumps and air scrubbers were started up, and after a while, with no sign of them being detected, Werner ordered the diesels to be engaged at low revolutions, and to their astonishment the low rumbling noise that they created did not seem to attract any unwanted attention.

  It seemed impossible that they had not been attacked while they escaped from the island and ever since it appeared that no one was bothering to look for them. With modern radar and sonar, it would not have been difficult for the ships on the surface to locate the submerged boat and deal it a deathly blow. However, the luck that had been bestowed upon the old boat and its crew persisted.

  Werner had insisted that they remain submerged throughout the following day, not wanting to tempt fate and allowing them to be easily picked up by radar and even the naked eye. Once the boat was ventilated and the batteries fully charged, the electric motors were re-engaged and the Type-XXI made steady progress towards the west. With each nautical mile that they gained from the island, Werner ordered an increase in speed, slowly building up until the boat was racing away at seventeen knots beneath the surface. By nightfall the next day they had made the turn north, passing between the Isle of Scilly and Land’s End, headed for St. George’s Channel and the Irish Sea. Now, as their captain made his final checks, the crew prepared to surface the boat and taste the fresh sea air again after two agonising and nerve tearing days of running submerged.

  “Any surface contacts?” Werner asked, his face still pressed up against the eyepiece of the periscope as he swivelled in a full circle.

  “Nothing heard, sir,” came the reply.

  Werner stepped back and checked the men standing around within the control room watching him intently and awaiting his commands. The chief, appearing calm and relaxed, was standing in his usual position close behind the helmsman and ready to pass on the orders from the captain. He raised an eyebrow and gave a slight nod of his head.

  “Su
rface the boat,” Werner ordered.

  Headed due-north, the boat made best speed as it chopped its way through the low rolling waves of the Irish Sea. The air was cool and crisp, and the sky above mostly clear with faint wispy clouds and the occasional seagull that swooped in on the U-boat to take a closer look at the strange addition to the seascape. The captain wanted to put as much distance as possible between them and the Isle of Wight before the next sunset. Beyond that, none of them had given any further thought to where they were going or what they would do when they got there.

  The crew had relaxed a little once they had passed Land’s End. The turn north was the psychological equivalent of having turned a corner to escape a pursuer. Inside the cramped hull, sailors and soldiers ate and slept wherever they could. The scraps of Stan’s team, exhausted and close to collapse, lay sprawled in the narrow bunks or propped up against machinery, snoring loudly against the rhythmic chug of the diesel engines.

  Only Paul seemed to be devoid of sleep. He was sitting in the bow compartment, as close to the front of the boat as was possible. Everyone else had opted to drop themselves down in sections that were further aft, but Paul wanted to be somewhere that did not mean him resting within the main thoroughfare, being constantly disturbed as people moved from one compartment to the next. He wanted peace and quiet, but more than anything, to slip into a deep slumber and forget what he had experienced over the previous forty-eight hours. However, no matter how hard he tried or how much his body screamed for it, sleep was impossible. Each time he closed his eyes he could see the smashed face of Danny, the mutilated Land Rover, and the bodies of the others sprawled over the blood-soaked tarmac. He could hear the endless rattle of machineguns, the dull but ear-splitting crump of high explosives, but more than anything, the screams of the wounded. He sat staring, hypnotised by the sway of the boat with his head lolling from side to side as he continued to stare at the back of the man lying in the bunk directly across from him.