by Holroyd, Tom
I met a guy in Glasgow who had worked on the European satellite network and he told me it was like watching ink falling on blotting paper. I read in the Olsen Report that something like 90% of the city burnt down, God knows how much crap that threw into the air but it’s no wonder that first winter was so harsh.
Anyway, the higher ups decided to evacuate us to the back-up command location in Hendon and I stayed there until just before the Battle of Junction. After that we just made a break for it and tried to make it to the Safe Zone in Scotland. We got half way there on a police helicopter before it ran out of fuel near Hull, then we walked the rest of the way. We made it as far as Alnwick before we realised we couldn’t go on any further. Of the twenty of us who started only six were left and even then, we were in terrible shape. I had a broken leg and a fever, we were all malnourished and exhausted. The Duke took us in, looked after us, fed us and I have been here ever since. I guess I had it easy compared to some of the poor bastards out there.
The Battle of The Mall
Port Stanley, Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands suffered heavily during the War but not from the infected themselves. Following the collapse of the Argentinean government and the fall of Buenos Aires the vast majority of the population fled to the Andes in search of sanctuary. However, a significant portion made for the Falkland Islands in the hope of security. The Islands fell to the Argentine refugees and Britain was in no position to intervene. Two years after VB day Britain sent an amphibious task force to recapture the Islands and re-claim the oil fields beneath. Part of the task force was Company Sergeant Major James “Jock” MacTavish, Scots Guards who has since retired and settled in Stanley as part of the Island Self Defence Force. He joined the Army a year before the war and served with distinction in all of his regiment’s operations, his first battle was The Mall.
Talk about bad timing, I had joined the Army the summer before the first outbreak and had gone straight to Phase 1 training in Catterick. Six months later and seventeen years old I was sized up for a tunic and bearskin and tramping around London on public duties with F Company Scots Guards. At the time, all new recruits would go through London for a year before joining their Battalions. Get a feel for the ceremonial, regimental history thing you know.
I arrived just as things were beginning to get twitchy and we were starting to get briefed up on the threat. Most of us thought it was a joke the first time we got the briefing but fairly soon we started to see all the preparation work that was going on and thought “Hang on, there might be something to this!”
What sort of thing did they brief you on?
It was a pretty basic outline really. They gave us the low down of the enemy, their motivation, patterns that sort of thing. It was quite funny really, this Intelligence Officer standing there trying to give a proper military brief on the threat with all these conventional war terms like Enemy, Objective, Threat and all the while he was talking about something that should be in a movie. It went right over my head I tell you. My Platoon Commander summed it up for us; he said “Right lads, basic version. Don’t let the bastards bite you or you die. Don’t let anyone who has been bitten into camp because they will die, then you will die. If you want to kill them; shoot them in the head and they will die. Simples!”
What type of preparations did you take?
Well for starters was the fact that we were all on 24 hours’ notice to move, which is basically where you have all your kit packed ready to go. Apparently, the last time we did this was after 7/7.
What else?
There was the stockpiling of food and ammunition. I was part of a work party that was unloading ammunition from a delivery vehicle to one of the ammo bunkers. I swear to God there was enough there to invade France. There were other things as well; food, bedding, dogs and heavy engineer vehicles started to arrive in Wellington Barracks and that was shit we never saw in London. I remember speaking to the Quarter Master during the siege and asking him why we were so well provisioned. He told me that the Barracks Commanding Officer had received a warning order during the winter that ordered him to begin stockpiling supplies and preparing the barracks for a long siege.
Wait, you said that the barracks was prepared for a siege but didn’t you end up in the Palace?
I’ll get to that in order if that’s OK?
Sure.
Ok so we were preparing for a siege and getting briefings about the enemy and all that and then the Cromwell happens, that reporter goes to press with the truth and we all get mobilised. We go from red tunics and empty rifles to combats and full war fighting scales of ammo. It was incredible; almost overnight the barracks was transformed into a fortress. All the gates were sealed and some of the more vulnerable ones were blocked with shipping containers, we built an infected clearing centre in the central car park out of cars and barbed wire. I don’t know if you know Wellington Barracks but the side facing Birdcage Walk was massively vulnerable, only a ten-foot-high iron railing fence and then a big open parade square. We built a second wall made from containers right up against the fence and built fire positions on top.
By the third day of the panic we were as ready as we could be, we had a fucking fortress and we were ready to defend it. What we didn’t count on was the hordes of civilians outside trying to get in.
How did you deal with it?
Well the Commander’s official policy was to not let anyone in but pretty soon we had all had more than we could stand. You have no idea how hard it is to sit inside your fortress and hear the world ending outside, knowing you can help but not being allowed to. It went on like this for a couple of days before there was almost a fucking mutiny and the Commander caved in and allowed us to start admitting people.
Surely there was a rush of people, how did you control it?
We parked a JCB right by the gate which stopped it being forced and then opened it enough to allow one person through at a time. We dragged them through and herded them into the clearing centre. We only let in about a hundred at a time and once they were all in we sent them past the dog cages one at a time. First time round we had no idea why but after the dogs went mental and we found our first infected we found out.
How did you deal with the infected?
(Jock looks down and slight quaver comes into his voice) We disposed of them?
Disposed?
Yeah.
Can you elaborate?
No. We did our job and we kept people alive. Can we move on please?
Ok. How many refugees did you end up taking in?
By the end of the second week we had close to a thousand and then we had to stop. We just didn’t have the space or the supplies. Besides by that point most people had left London and were on their way north. It was only us and the Gs.
Were there many by that point?
At first no, I guess most of them were chasing the refugees and as I heard later, eating their way up the motorways. They would turn up in ones and twos and we could normally deal with those. We had teams of lads scattered around the perimeter slotting the Gs as they appeared, trying to keep the numbers down. It was only when The Fire started that we started to see more.
How did The Fire affect you?
We got evicted.
The barracks was surrounded on three sides by high rise buildings and the fire was getting closer and closer. You could see it from the roof, thick columns of smoke rising into the sky and flattening out, casting the city into a weird perpetual twilight and all the Gs were being driven in front of it.
The Commander realised that the barracks would probably catch fire given the height of some of the buildings around us and he decided to move to Buckingham Palace. By this time we were properly under siege with probably a couple of thousand Gs around us.
The plan was that we would get all our supplies and ammunition and as many of the civis as possible onto the trucks, break out of the barracks and run for the south gate of the Palace. Nijmegen Company would block Buckingham Gate, 7
Coy would block Birdcage Walk, F Coy The Mall and the Buckingham Palace Guard would take Constitution Hill. At the same time, the Massed Bands would act as protection for the refugees as they crossed.
We had found out pretty early on that Gs were pretty basic and would go were the food was, so we hung over the wall on the Petty France side of the barracks and for two days yelled and shouted at the Gs to try and get as many of them on the other side of the camp as possible. We also shot as many of them as we could just to give ourselves a better chance when the time came.
When D-Day finally arrived, we were all bricking it. We were all in light scales so that we could run as fast as possible but with as much ammo as we could carry. The JCB went out first with its dozer blade lowered and cleared the first lot away from the gate, we all followed out slotting those that had been mangled by the dozer and trying to shoot as many of those nearby as possible. I know that a lot of armchair generals have said how difficult it was to transition from aiming for centre mass to head shots and it was at first but we had had two weeks of practice from inside the fence so we all felt pretty confident.
Anyway, we broke out and began to move to our set lines. We would leapfrog past one another forming a line as we went. In my case 7 Company went first their lead man going out the gate and then straight onto one knee and started firing, the next guy would run a meter past him and then go to ground. We repeated this till 7 Coy had Birdcage Walk blocked and then we kept going past them onto The Mall and set up our firing line. It was like something out of a Zulu movie. A single line of lads, shoulder to shoulder facing down the Mall; if we had been wearing our tunics it would have been perfect.
Initially we thought that we had the easy job as The Mall was pretty much empty but then the first Gs started to appear through Admiralty Arch. We didn’t know it at the time but we had chosen to break out just as one of the really big swarms had hit Trafalgar Square and they were being drawn straight towards us by the noise of the gunfire.
I could feel the lads either side of me shaking with either fear or adrenaline, I know that my own shakes were definitely based on fear. You don’t kneel in the middle of a massive road and watch a horde of fucking zombies heading toward you and not feel scared. You could sense all the lads were shitting it and ready to run. We could hear all the gunfire behind us and the engines as the trucks rolled out. The Company Commander obviously sensed it as well; he stepped out of the line and stood right in front of us. He turned his back to the Gs and said in a very calm voice. “Right lads, we’ve got a bit of a scrap ahead of us.” Typical bloody officer understatement!
“I want every man to keep calm, keep breathing and we will get through this together. Aim for the head and keep the shots slow and steady. No one fires until I give the word.”
He then turned to the Company Sergeant Major and told him to “Carry on, I going to get my eye in”. The Company Commander then turned away and as if he was on a fucking game shoot just started picking off the leading Gs in the oncoming horde. The Company Sergeant Major “carried on” by yelling that the first person to shoot without orders, he would “shove his pace stick up his arse and ride him around the Buckingham Palace forecourt like a fucking Stick Pony.” We all burst out laughing and felt the nerves fall away.
By then the Commander was falling back into line and raised his hand, the horde was three hundred meters away. “On my order, Fire!” we let rip with a ragged volley and the Gs at the head of the horde shuddered and collapsed. Two seconds had passed
“Take aim, Fire!” another two seconds and we fired again. We went on like this for longer than I can remember but the horde just got closer and closer. At one hundred meters we were told to fire at will and the noise became a rolling wall of thunder.
“Right lads, were doing well. Civis are almost across and we can start moving back.”
I can tell you that when a horde of Gs are only a hundred meters away and the civis are only half across things are definitely not moving fast enough for my liking. The Company Commander decided that the Gs were close enough and he sent half the Company another hundred meters down The Mall to form a second line. The Gs were now only fifty meters away and the Company Commander gave the word for us to fall back. We broke to either side of the road and ran like bastards, while the guys in the second line kept firing straight down the middle. I tell you what I probably gave Usain Bolt a run for his money that day.
We did probably two more leaps before we found ourselves on the steps of the Queen Victoria memorial and flanked by the other Companies who had also been pushed back. I remember taking a quick glance around and seeing a shuffling horde of Gs closing in from all sides. We were knocking them down but there were just so many of them. That was when the shooting started to get ragged as some of the lads started flapping and hurrying their shots. The Gs got closer and we stepped further back. The Company Commander was right behind me and I could hear over his headset that they were considering just legging it for the gate. A few seconds later the order came over the radio; rear rank would break off first and line the inside of the Palace fence and start firing outwards, then the rest would follow.
As soon as the order came I legged it for the gate and once in took up a place by the fence. I can’t tell you how good it felt to have a physical barrier between the Gs and me.
Once those on the inside began firing the rest broke off and ran. They all made it inside and the only hairy moment was when we closed that gate. Some of the lads had cut it a bit fine and were slipping through the gate with Gs right on their arse and the gate was in danger of being forced by the sheer weight of them trying to get through. Thank God the QM saw the danger and drove the digger right up against it and closed the gate. I think at that point we all just stood around breathing heavily and trying to get the adrenalin out of our systems. Of course, no one is allowed to stand around for long in the Army and pretty soon the Sergeant Major was yelling at us to form up in Companies for a roll call. It was only then that I noticed how badly mauled Nijmegen and 7 Company were, they looked like they had lost half of their lads in the fight.
How long were you in the Palace for?
Actually, not that long. We had timed the move pretty well and there was an evacuation planned for the next day to get the last of the Royal Family out to one of the Safe Zones. We managed to get on the radio and advise the HQ of the situation and they promised to send help to evacuate us. It turned up in the form of four Chinook helicopters. What we weren’t told was that it was only the military and the Royals who were being pulled out. The civis and palace staff cottoned on pretty fast and there was almost a fucking riot. It was only stopped when we fired over their heads.
It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do, being told to leave those people that we had fought for, some of us had died for, to their fate. I was one of the last to get on the heli and I remember looking at this one guy, he was the de-facto leader of the civis and had managed to hold them back. I caught his eye and said something lame like “We’ll come back for you.” He smiled and replied, “I’ll hold you to that.”
I kept my word though. Took a while but I was there, the first man through the gate when we liberated the Palace. He was still there; still the leader and he had just been named the official Governor of Buckingham Palace by the King. Nice to have a happy ending because I was not feeling that way as the Chinooks took off. As we flew over the city we got a birds eye view of The Fire and the devastation before we headed North.
Where did you end up?
I went home to Scotland and re-joined my Regiment.
Safety at Sea
Caernarfon, Wales
Dan Brightman has been a resident of Caernarfon since the Great Panic and is now a member of the Castle Council, responsible for security in the local area. This is the first year that no infected have been seen in the local area, although there is the odd incursion from the sea.
I started the Panic in my student digs at Liverpool University. I was in my second te
rm as a Fresher, having a great time and had just had an amazing holiday in Val d’Isere with my mates. I was definitely not focused on some zombie rumour that was floating around campus.
Did people not talk about it at Uni?
Not really at first but when more and more information began to appear on the internet it started to get mentioned. People would pass around stories and clips from You Tube, I got sent a load of things from outbreaks in South Africa, India, China all over the world really. That’s when it all got a bit more real for me you know. I spoke to my parents about once a month and I would try and make them understand that this was probably something they should take seriously but they were normal middle-class people you know and were confident that the Government would take care of it. I think like the rest of the country they were just not ready to believe something so unbelievable.
