by Frank Tayell
I got back on the bike and continued heading west, keeping close to, but always out of sight of the motorway. Every five or so miles I would dismount, creep closer and find a concealed spot from where I could survey the road, its fence and the numbers of the undead within. Nowhere was the fence broken. Nowhere were the numbers less dense.
After a depressing day and a half, I'd covered close to ninety miles to get the thirty or so miles west as far as Swindon. There, within sight of that city, I stopped. I could see no point going any further.
15:45, 25th June.
Fifty two shots now, but I’m not worried. It's not bravado, it's the knowledge that it will be getting dark soon. For some reason these snipers don't want to come out here, so I just have to wait until nightfall and then I'll be able to slip away. They do seem happy enough to waste ammunition, though. That must mean they have a good supply of it, and I think that at least one of them knows how to use the gun. I think that he or she is teaching someone else how to shoot. That would explain the inaccuracy and odd length of time between shots.
Probably the only one who'd feel confident enough to come down here and take someone on hand to hand is the same one who knows how to shoot well enough to offer covering fire. It's conjecture, of course, but it's the only explanation I can think of right now. So long as I stay put, and, literally, keep my head down for the next six hours, I'll be fine.
It's funny. I mean really funny, I’m being shot at by snipers, and what I can't help thinking is that I have genuinely been in worse situations than this, and doesn't that say it all.
I reached Swindon, a day and a half ago. There is an atmosphere to towns and cities now, something intangible and forbidding. To me they are now nothing more than a testament to a world that was lost so recently yet seems, in its way, already ancient and forgotten. These silent mausoleums of concrete and steel are a lifetime away from the cacophonous roar of civilisation whose memory has faded with each passing day, until now it seems less real than a fairytale.
It is connected to the way that life seems to flourish all around me. The trees are overgrown, the fields are filled with weeds and brambles encroach on roads slowly being reclaimed by grass and moss. All about me, the countryside is untidy, unkempt and not at all English, but it is alive. There are birds, there are insects, occasionally, and all too rarely for my tastes, there are even some small mammals. Not in the cities, they are dead.
Leading into Swindon is the motorway, the fence unbroken, the undead, undisturbed within. These were the evacuees heading to Bristol. Their fate should have been a life of drudgery on a farm or down some Welsh coal mine. It should not have been this.
I was at a loss as to what I should do. The motorway changed everything, but at the same time it changed nothing. That desire to know the truth of what happened still burnt strongly. As my mind danced with schemes to get around or over this barrier, I tried to come up with a plan that didn't involve returning to Brazely Abbey, however temporarily, with nothing to show for the trip.
Then I remembered the laptop. I had it, and the hard drive, in my pack. I carry them everywhere. It's totemic, I suppose, my last link with the past. Looking at Swindon, looking at the motorway, I made a decision. I needed to know what was on the computer, what was in the Lenham Hill Trials file. I thought that, perhaps, I might discover that I didn't need to go to Lenham Hill, that I could just return to the Abbey and make my home there.
I have looked for laptops in the houses I've looted, though if I’m honest, I didn't look that hard. I had found tablets, desktops and phones galore, but the few laptops I found were all drained of power. I decided I would venture into some small town, or even into one of the cities, if I had to. I could begin a systematic house to house, office to office search. I took out my map, unfolded it and began to scan the place names. I searched my memory, thinking back on the places I had visited, trying to remember the government statistics on internet usage that might give some clue as to where would be best to look. Then I saw it, Devizes, and I smiled with pleasure at the memory of a vicarious triumph.
During the last election, I had been volunteered into doing some mid-campaign speech polishing. My job, after that incident in Burnley that the press described as “A gaff too far”, was to rewrite the stump speeches to make sure that the references tallied with the places the politicians were actually in, not those they'd just left.
It was a tedious job, and one I got by being one of the few outsiders the party trusted not to sell anything I heard or saw to the press. One of the stops on this mind-numbing round-Britain coach trip was Devizes. I remember it well, because it was the stop after the Chief Whip spilled mustard over my laptop. The computer froze, locking away that afternoon's speeches. Fortunately, there was a computer repair shop in the town, which managed to retrieve the documents just in time for the Whip to stand up in front of a crowd made up mostly of reporters and give them a few seconds of B-roll. He had the speech, but he'd forgotten his reading glasses, so he improvised. They didn't win that seat, and the Chief Whip, after that clip was aired over and over, lost his. I felt really good about that.
The point is that I remembered there was a computer repair shop on the edge of Devizes. More than that, during that anxious half hour wait to find out if anything could be saved, I had noticed, and asked about, the stack of odd shaped boxes in the rear of the shop. They were portable power supplies, giant batteries that could be recharged from a car. What's more, the shop didn't sell them, they rented them out, mostly during the festival season to music-lovers who couldn't bear a night under canvas without the knowledge of a kettle full of boiling water the next morning.
I headed south west, and had covered the fifteen miles or so before nightfall. The scene I found in Devizes was unlike any other I have seen since leaving London. Barricades had been thrown up across the roads, windows were boarded up and about the streets, and inside the shops and houses, lay the dead and undead alike. A battle had taken place there, and it was clear the humans had not won.
The computer repair shop was still there, but only just. A fire had been started at the other end of the row, leaving a half dozen shops nothing but burnt-out remains. The door to the shop had been blocked from the inside. I had to break in through a first floor window around the back, all the time listening out for the sound of the undead.
I found only one power supply unit left. It was too heavy to carry on the bike, but it worked. That night, as I was waiting for the battery to charge up, I finally saw the files Sholto had sent to me.
16:05, 25th June.
Fifty three shots. It's such a waste. How much ammunition do they have? A lot clearly, but that's just a guess.
Around four am, yesterday, I realised there wasn't much point looking at the same video over and over again. I turned my attention to the map, once more trying to come up with a way of getting to the other side of the motorway that wasn't as suicidal as just cycling over some footbridge. I couldn't find one.
It was putting off the inevitable, I know, just delaying the time before a return to the Abbey to face some hard choices. As I was leaving the town, unsure which direction to go, I saw a sign for Longshanks Wildlife Park, and thought, why not? If anywhere in the neighbourhood had become a refuge for survivors it would be here. It was only another fifteen miles out of my way. I thought it would only add an extra few hours to the journey.
I was wrong. It took all day to cover the distance. I had to keep backtracking to avoid roads blocked by trees, vehicles or the undead. After about the ninth diversion, and running low on water, I decided to stop for the day. I was only five miles away, but something about the houses I had investigated was making me hesitate. The closer I got, the more I found that they had already been looted, everything from food, to herbs to bottles, even the jewellery, had been taken.
The last time I spent any real time at this rambling old estate on the western edge of Salisbury Plain, was about twenty years ago. Jen Masterton was packaged off here one
summer and I, who usually spent my school holidays with her family, had to tag along. Back then, the wildlife park was little more than a home for animals rescued from crumbling zoos across the world. By the time the world ended last February, it had grown into one of the largest safari parks in Europe. I'd always meant to come back, but there was never the time. It was just one of many places I knew would be around forever, so what was the hurry?
With its thick walls, lake and fresh, and tantalizingly exotic, meat courtesy of the wildlife park, on paper, at least, it had everything going for it. It was almost on the way, I thought, not really a diversion at all.
The bodies littering the ground should have been a warning sign. It's just that the only time I've seen zombies who have been shot has been around that Muster Point. Even in Devizes, the undead I had seen had been killed with blade or blunt instrument. I suppose I didn't really know what I was seeing. Britain was not a country of guns. I just saw the bodies of the undead, the boarded up windows and lifeless house and came to exactly the wrong conclusion.
Fifty four shots, now. There are at least two snipers. When the wind shifts I can hear the occasional snatch of conversation. I've tried working out the distance, tried to remember how cosines and tangents work, but if I ever knew how to do those kinds of sums, these are not the conditions to remember. All I’ve worked out is that they are either in one of the top floor bedrooms or in one of the towers that jut out above the roof, and that they are not worried about running out of bullets.
The hedges are a mixed blessing. They provide some cover, but with the elevation the gunmen have, it's not much. More importantly, my only way out is going to be by pushing my way through those densely interlocked branches. Will the snipers be able to see that at night? There's no cloud in the sky right now. It looks like it will be a clear night. Will they be able to see the rustling of branches above my head? I suppose I'll find out.
16:30, 25th June.
I think this forced rest is actually good for me. I know that sounds odd, but I have spent so much of the last few weeks worrying over what I should do next, that I haven't really just stopped to think about where I am now.
Not that I plan to make a habit out of this kind of thing, but at the very least I'll make sure I carry more water in my pack. My water bottle was only half full when I first ducked into the maze, now there's barely two inches left. The rest of my supply is in the bag on the bike, and that's by a wall outside the grounds, about half a mile away. I thought it was better to approach on foot, leaving my hands free, less encumbered. You live and learn.
There's about another five hours to go until dark. That's not too bad, I'll be in the shade for most of that. It's hot, but not quite heat-wave hot, though I can tell that's on the cards. Five hours then I'll crawl through the hedges, sneak back to the bike and disappear into the night.
As a rule I don't do much travelling after dark. The undead don't seem to rely on sight as much as the living, but I won't need to go far. There's a ticket booth near the entrance to the safari park, just a few miles down the road, if I can get there, I can climb onto the roof and wait for dawn. Then it's back to the Abbey for supplies, and then, with no more diversion, straight to Lenham Hill.
17:30, 25th June.
“Look mate, we've got a night sight on this rifle. Make it easy on yourself and just stand up,” a guttural voice called out about an hour ago.
That's the first human voice I've heard in... months, I suppose. Do I believe them? Yes. As to why they want to kill me, I don't know. I tried talking to them. They shot at me. I tried telling them I only wanted supplies. They shot at me. I tried saying I wasn't who they thought I was, whoever that might be. They shot at me.
Each time I tried to say something, they fired. Then I realised what they were doing. They didn't want me to talk. They wanted me to shout. They wanted the undead to come here and finish the job for them, but they were out of luck.
What's the longest you've gone without speaking? All I managed was a throaty rasp, barely intelligible as words even to my own ears. So now I’m silent again, and trying to come up with a new plan.
I could wait until nightfall and hope they were lying about the night sight, but if they were why waste so much ammo? Why do they want me dead? No, those kinds of questions can't be answered from here.
How long did the exchange go on for? I wish I'd checked my watch. Say it was fifteen minutes. Was that too long, did the undead hear us? The rifle might be silenced, but the impacts of the bullets aren't. How long before They come?
It seems I've a choice between heading towards the lake and being shot in the back, or staying put and hoping the undead don't find me. Neither is particularly appealing.
19:00, 25th June.
Or I could head towards them. Or towards the house, at least. I’m almost positive they are in one of the bedrooms, which means they've got a pretty limited angle of fire. If I can make it to the house, and follow the wall around, I can make a run for the tree-line from either the north side or the west. They won't know which side of the building I’m on until they've picked a bedroom and looked. So I've a fifty-fifty chance they'll pick the wrong one. Or, to put it another way, a fifty-fifty chance that I'll make it to the trees before they shoot me.
Are they good enough to be able to shoot a moving target? One of them probably is. Too many guesses and assumptions. What I do I know?
The only thing I know about night-sights is that they don't work in daytime. Obvious, right? But nor do they work in well lit buildings or when a light is shining on them. Do you remember all those movies where the bank robbers would use a flash-bang to blind the SWAT teams? Well, I've no flash bangs, and with no electricity except in a thunderstorm, there's no prospect of the floodlights suddenly coming on, but I do have my torch.
It's about a hundred yards of lawn between the edge of the maze and the house. Probably about the same distance on the other side of the building. Perhaps more. Probably more, I don't know.
My right leg didn't heal properly from the break I sustained on the same day the outbreak started in New York. Now it's slightly twisted, an inch so shorter than the left, and I have to wear the leg brace for support. I can walk, I can hop, I can skip out of the way of the grasping arms of the undead, but I can't really run. The limping lope I manage instead is still faster than any zombie can manage and up until now that is all that has mattered.
Day 106, Longshanks Manor.
10:00, 26th June.
Last night, I waited until about half past nine. It wasn't fully dark, but in the still night air I heard something approaching. The undead were coming. Fighting off one, or even two, whilst staying hidden from the snipers would be possible, not easy, but possible. Except, when it comes to the undead, where there is one, soon after, there are more. If it's a choice between a bullet and being torn apart, well, what choice is that?
I took off my coat, wrapped it around the pike and raised it so it was just peeking above the corner at the other end of the gazebo. I moved it about for less than a second, then pulled it down just as a shot was fired. They weren't lying about the night-sight, but clearly it wasn't powerful enough to distinguish between a person and the oldest trick in the book.
Trying not to expose anything more than the tips of my fingers, I reached up and placed the torch on the gazebo's wooden handrail, pointing it towards the house. Then I tried the trick with the coat once more, this time raising it higher in a sudden jerking motion that I hoped would be interpreted as an attempt to clamber up over the railing. A bullet flew through the jacket, hitting it dead centre. It folded over in what, even to me, looked like a fair imitation of a collapsing body. I let go of the pike, reached up and turned the torch on. Then I dived from cover towards the hedge.
In the near dark, with so much new growth, there was no point wasting time looking for a path through the maze. Three seconds after I'd left the shelter of the gazebo I heard a bullet striking wood. I dived at the hedge, shoving and pushing as t
he branches tore at my hands and face. Five long seconds later and I was through, just, as another shot was fired. This time it must have hit the railing because the torch moved, rolling so its light now shone directly on the branches above my head.
I dropped to the ground and began to crawl, my hands outstretched, searching for a gap in the undergrowth. I found it as a third shot was fired, and the light went out.
As darkness suddenly returned, it seemed as if a deathly stillness settled on the grounds through which every last little sound seemed amplified. The water lapping against the shore of the lake, the trumpeting call of some far off animal, the wheeze of the approaching undead, even the click-clack of the next round being chambered in the rifle. I crawled on.
I was on my hands and knees, halfway out of a hedge when a sudden weight pushed me down. My chin smashed into the soft leaf litter, my teeth jarred upwards biting into my tongue. I could taste blood but I ignored this small pain, waiting for the agonising spasm when my brain realised I had been shot. It didn't come.
I breathed in, and it hurt to do so, but there was no bubbling rasp of a punctured lung, no numb collapse of a severed spine, no spreading cold of a mortal wound. I began to pull myself along, faster and faster. I was surprised to find that as my hands pulled at the branches and weeds dragging me closer to the next wall of the maze, my legs and feet started kicking out, pushing me along. I was sure I'd been shot but, somehow, I was still alive. Everything still worked, and though it ached to breathe, I knew I wasn't going to die. Not then, not yet.
At the next hedgerow I crawled along it a dozen feet, before forcing a path through, and this time I didn't rush. Fighting my instincts, I forced myself to carefully brush the branches out of my way, trying to make the hedge move as little as possible. When I heard a bullet whistling through the leaves, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was nowhere near me, they didn't know where I was.
