It's Grim Up North (Book 1): It's Grim Up North

by Wilkinson, Sean

  Eventually I drifted off into a deep dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 18 – The rude awakening

  I awoke with a jolt at dawn. As if smelling salts had been placed directly under my nose. I’d experienced this feeling before when I was in middle school.

  I was one of the youngest in my class, hence one of the smallest. Never being any good at sports I was somehow elected as house captain. It was purely a popularity vote and had nothing to do with my sporting prowess. This fact didn’t endear me to the teacher who was house leader, and he reminded me at every opportunity that the choice made by my peers in electing me was the wrong one.

  The smelling salts incident happened on the final sports day of the last year before going to high school. As I mentioned before, I wasn’t any good at sports so imagine my surprise when I found my name on the rugby team sheet. WTF? After ten minutes of remonstrating to the evil twat of a teacher that not only did I not know the rules of said sport, I was also fucking tiny compared with the rest of the team. The majority of them sported bum fluff beards and protruding Adam’s apples. At the time I had just entered into the realms of puberty and possessed a very unreliable voice and two pubes.

  As expected, my rugby experience wasn’t pleasant and within the first three minutes of the game I received the gift of a serious concussion, a broken arm and a nose full of smelling salts. The teacher had won. Wanker.

  These memories came flooding back as I lay there in my hammock and felt a phantom ache in the arm I’d broken. Awareness of my surroundings broke through my temporary walk down memory lane. The sun was beginning to rise as I peered over the side of the hammock and down to the forest floor. As soon as I did so, the moaning started. There were three of them. Stinking deedaz. They were dry so they hadn’t traversed the river. They had to be the ones that followed me from the highway. I must have been snoring during the night and they’d zeroed in on me. The moaning soon stopped when I lay back down, but they didn’t move away. I had two choices, stay where I was and hope that they eventually left or get in amongst it and go Chuck Norris on the fuckers. I decided to stay where I was and hoped they left. What can I say. At the time I was obviously a coward. It was evident. It had been six weeks and all I’d done was run and hide. I’d been lucky enough that I’d never had to properly defend myself against one of them and I wasn’t about to start now.

  Three hours passed and the burning sensation in my bladder was starting to become a problem. I have my routine, you see, and this wasn’t it. The deedaz were still down there and hadn’t moved an inch. I’d hoped something in the woods might have lured them away. A fox, a bird. Anything. Nothing came to my rescue with a diversion. Only one thing for it. I unzipped the sleeping bag and inched the bivi bag down to my waist, shuffled onto my side and emptied my bladder all over the fuckers. This sent them into an absolute frenzy. Either they were really upset that I was pissing on them or somehow they knew warm piss meant warm food. Their moans echoed through the forest and were answered with other distant moans. Shit.

  Spurred in to action I climbed out of the hammock and sat in the crook of the tree. It was large enough that it obscured their view of me and the moaning soon stopped, as did the distant moaning.

  The time to step up and be the person I thought I’d be, had come. I had to get the fuck out of dodge again. Back in the loft I’d had the foresight to bring some of the pund chunks from the loose change jar for this very reason. I took one out of the bugout bag. Before I threw it, I unhooked my machete and hatchet and looped the lanyards of both around my wrists. The plan was to distract them with the money, jump down and windmill into the horrible bastards. Not the best plan, I admit, but the only one I could think of. The drop from the lowest branch was only around eight feet and the ground was soft with debris. If I didn’t break my ankle in the process I had a fighting chance. The deedaz would be facing away from me so I could hopefully weigh into them before they knew what was happening.

  With a flick of my wrist the coin flew straight and true and clattered off the trunk of a tree a short distance away. As expected the dead were pulled away from my tree in search of the sound. The moaning started again, as did the distant moaning.

  I summoned every ounce of courage, which, if you could actually weigh courage, would have probably only weighed about an ounce, and dropped down onto the forest floor.

  They all turned towards me simultaneously. FUCK! So glad I’d had that piss. I’d be doing the backstroke if I hadn’t.

  My mind went into overdrive. Fight or flight. If I ran I’d be running away from my bugout bag. At least I was down from that tree and not trapped anymore. So there I was. In a small clearing, in a forest, dressed in a camo onesie, loaded for bear with a weapon in each hand and three zombie mother fuckers twelve feet away from me. I ran away. You knew I would. But I didn’t run far. It was all part of plan B.

  The zombies ‘lauped’ after me but, being zombies and having limited locomotive skills, they soon tripped on the various roots and branches on the forest floor. This was the opportunity I had planned for. With the hatchet in my right hand I retraced my steps and slammed the pointy end smack in the top of the first zombie I came to. It was a man dressed in a two-piece suit with a single bite on the right side of his face. His skin was battleship grey and his lips were a deep purple. Good name for a band that.

  I was surprised how easily the axe penetrated the skull. This could have been the adrenaline making me super strong or because of decomposition. I opted for the first reason. Mainly because of the confidence it gave me for my upcoming battle royal with the other two deedaz. With a gut-churning slurp, I removed the gore-covered axe from its head and stalked up to my next target.

  This one was nearly up on his feet. As I approached he lunged at me, teeth gnashing. I quickly side stepped what was left of its mauled, grasping hands and sliced down left handed with the machete on the back of its neck. To my surprise its head came clean off. I felt like the fucking Hulk!

  The confidence that flowed through me nearly became the end of me. As I stood triumphantly over the headless corpse, the final deeda thought it a good time to introduce itself. This one was a woman and a big fucker she was too. She came up from behind and grabbed my right arm and went in for a bite. If I hadn’t screamed like a girl and pulled away she’d have bitten me. She still gripped my arm as I started running around in a circle, with her in the centre, trying to knock her off balance. I did the first thing that came to mind. Still believing I had superpowers I imagined a hefty swipe with machete would slice clean through the fat fuck’s arm. I found out, in pure shock, that I didn’t have super powers after all. The machete sliced through her bingo wings and stopped at the bone. I withdrew the machete and hacked away at her arm while still doing the Morris dance from hell. The bone was just too strong. Fat lasses must really be just big boned after all.

  Then it dawned on me what to do. I placed the sharp side of the machete on the underside of her wrist that held me and drew it across with as much strength as I could muster. The grip on my arm relinquished immediately as I cut through the tendons. Without having me there to lean on, she stumbled forward and fell face first into the nearest tree. With a crunch, she lay there unmoving except for the still chomping teeth. She must have broken her neck when she’d face planted the sturdy trunk. I didn’t have the stomach to finish her off and couldn’t face the dry heaving that would surely follow. With the adrenaline well and truly out of my system I made my way back to my tree to recover my possessions. I had to do this quickly. The noise I’d just made despatching the three stooges must have attracted the deedaz I’d heard earlier, as I could hear the breaking of twigs and branches coming from the direction I’d travelled from the day before.

  Stuffing the hammock and sleeping bag in the rucksack it dawned on me that I could have used my crossbow to end the fuckers from the safety of my tree. What a fuckwit.

  Chapter 19 – The loner

  I strapped on the bag and headed east towa
rds the sea, immensely proud of myself and feeling a lot more confident in my abilities.

  Following the river on this side would eventually bring me to the seaside town of Blyth.

  Blyth is one of the other large towns in Northumberland so would obviously be full of the infected, but it did have a harbour and would surely have boats there. On the other side of the river opposite Blyth was a little place called North Blyth, which was really just a dozen rows of terraced houses and was literally cut off from ‘big’ Blyth in the late eighties when the ferry that joined the two stopped running. Now the residents of North Blyth had a tenmile drive via the nearest bridge to get into Blyth itself. To the north of North Blyth was a place called Cambois, pronounced cammis. Don’t really know the origins of the name. It sounds French. I’d google it if I could.

  Anyway, Cambois was really just a long street with a row of terraced houses on one side, overlooking the road and facing the sea. It used to be home to the local power station but that was demolished a few years ago. I knew that two miles north of Cambois, at the mouth of the estuary of the River Wansbeck, was a little boatyard that was home to numerous fishing boats. Maybe I could find something there.

  It was further away than the harbour at Blyth but wasn’t nearly as populated as the large town would be.

  After a three-hour trudge, still stopping and listening with every step I took, I navigated my way over a road that led to the ex’s town, and continued on, cutting my way through the overgrown south side. Eventually, at around noon, I came out of the woods into bright sunshine and crossed a single-lane bridge and made my way towards Cambois, now travelling on the north side of the river. This was the stretch of the journey I wasn’t looking forward to. The path next to the river ran parallel to a road that was situated on the outskirts of a place called Bedlington Station. Though the road was a good thirty meters away and was separated from the path by bushes and a slight incline, I still felt, for the first time since leaving my housing estate, that I was rather exposed and hemmed in. I knew if I had to, I could probably jump the fence and make an escape through the river, but being close to the sea now meant the river had widened considerably and the mud flats would be a dangerous obstacle whether the tide was in or out.

  Suddenly on the path in front of me a deeda stumbled out of the undergrowth and stopped. Luckily it faced away from me but unluckily it was blocking the only route I could take. Why had he moved onto the path in the first place? Had he heard me coming? I had been walking as stealthily as I could, but the with the path being gravel it was virtually impossible not to make some kind of sound.

  If he had heard me coming, why was he facing away from me? Something else must have piqued his interest.

  What was I going to do? I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t detour without having to travel through quite a big built-up area and the river option was only for extreme emergencies.

  I’d have to fucking kill it. I was a little more confident in my abilities after the showdown I’d had that morning with the three deedaz that gave me my early morning wake up call. The first two were easy and even though the big fat mamma nearly got the best of me, I had thought on my feet, stayed relatively calm and triumphed.

  I had three choices.

  1. I could go in running, catch it by surprise and finish it quickly, then be on my way.

  2. I could go all ninja on the mutha fucker and stealth kill it.

  3. I could distract it with the pund chunk trick and sneak past it.

  Each choice had negative points to take into consideration.

  Choice one would get noisy and definitely attract more of the scary bastards towards my vicinity.

  Choice two would mean I’d have to get close to it without it hearing me before I could deliver the ending strike.

  Choice three would probably cost me a fucking fortune.

  I decided that this time discretion was in order. Ninja time!

  Next to the path was a six-inch wide swathe of grass and weeds that ran alongside. I would use this to disguise the sound of my footsteps on the gravel path. The filthy bastard was, at the most, thirty feet away. Carefully and silently I stalked down the walkway in one hand my hatchet and in the other, my crossbow pistol. Finally I was going to get to use it. When I was around ten feet away I stopped and lined the sights of the crossbow with the back of the deedaz’ head. All of a sudden the deedaz’ head started to tilt backwards. What was he doing? Was there something in the sky drawing his attention? A bird, or better still a rescue helicopter. I started scanning the sky too, in hope it was someone coming to my salvation.

  Then it dawned on me. He wasn’t looking at anything. He was sniffing. That was the reason he’d moved out of the bushes. He’d gotten a whiff of me then lost the scent.

  The deeda spun round towards me when he’d pinpointed the direction the scent had come from. How could I have forgotten the smell thing, after I’d gone to all that trouble retrieving the money jar to test out the deedaz’ abilities?

  In a panic, I squeezed the trigger on the crossbow at exactly the same time the zombie had started to lunge and moan. To my utter amazement the bolt flew out of the crossbow and into the right eye of the deeda. It slumped to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. The whole event was over in seconds without a noise being made. Well, apart from the twang of the crossbow, but that was minimal and I was sure it hadn’t been heard. He could keep the bolt. There was no way I was plucking that out. I couldn’t bear the thought that it could pop out with the eyeball attached. I had another forty-nine bolts in my rucksack anyway. I just hoped I’d never regret not taking it back one day.

  I travelled on, counting my lucky stars and thanking whoever was looking out for me. I just hoped my luck would last until I reached the boatyard.

  Chapter 20 – The flying dead

  Before long I had to pass under the bridged main road that ran north to south and connected many of the towns along the northern coastline. It was aptly named the spine road and from what I could see, it was total gridlock. It was also packed with deedaz. As I approached it from beside the river I was spotted by one of them. Then the moans went up and more of them began to crowd the fence overlooking me. I wasn’t too worried about this because the bridge was around seventy feet high. I quickened my pace and knew once out of sight they would calm and stop making such a fucking racket.

  Never in a million years did I think it would start raining fucking zombies. The first one missed me by inches. I jumped back and another splattered on top of it. I looked up and another five were on their way down. I ran as fast as I could and prepared to leap over the first two zombies that had fallen, completely forgetting Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of gravity again. Big rucksack = no jumpy jumpy.

  My leading foot clipped the top zombie and I went arse over tit, gaining a face full of gravel as my reward for being such a stupid fuck. I’d learn eventually.

  Shocked and dazed I crawled away from the rising pile of deedaz behind me and chanced a glance back toward them. I wish I hadn’t. Three of them had survived the fall and we’re crawling towards me. I’d finally gained control of my bladder now, so thankfully didn’t add to the river running at my side. Amazingly, apart from the gravel in my face, I wasn’t injured in any way, so I scrambled to my feet and ran as fast as I could.

  I knew now I had to head north and parallel to the spine road. There was a small tributary that filtered into the river further along and no way of getting across it if I kept going east. Throwing myself over a fence I travelled north through a farmer’s field, traversing beside a thick hedge which thankfully hid me from any milky dead eyes that may have spotted me from the spine road.

  Finally I came to the small bridge I’d have to use. I’d be stepping out of the safety of the field but there was no other way across.

  At this point I’d realised that I’d never seen another living person since I’d left the culde-sac. How could the majority of the country have been affected this way? The only reason that I
could fathom was family. Again, I was lucky in this situation because I had none. Imagine, you’re sitting having a cup of tea and your wife/husband comes in looking decidedly drunk and injured. You wouldn’t run. You’d go straight to them to help or give them shit for being drunk so early in the day. Then you’re one of them. As simple as that. If I hadn’t had that bout of insomnia on that fateful night, I too would have been outside with Max watching the helicopter and I’d have run to the aid of the old man. Maybe.

  The resulting exodus of people trying to escape in their cars was the final nail in the coffin. Where did they expect to go to? Nowhere on this tiny island we live on is safe, and even if you did think of somewhere, the probability that a thousand more people had thought of the same place was too great. It dawned on me that my plan had most probably been thought of too. My heart sank. If I got to the boatyard and there was nothing to get me out to sea I’d be fucked. Proper fucked.

  I’d put all of my eggs in one basket with this plan of mine. Well, you never know until you try. I’d have to cross that metaphorical bridge when I came to it. In the meantime, I had to cross the very real bridge in front of me first.

  All I needed to do was slip on to the path that ran along the side of the road, scoot over the bridge then back into the fields and follow the tributary towards the coast, cut across the old power station grounds and make my way to the beach. From there north to the boatyard. Piece of piss.