Badly scratched, both emerged on the other side.
“At least nothing can creep up on the car from this side. We can be ten miles down the road before that bloody plant lets them go.”
“Keep quiet until we know that we don’t need to make a quick get away,” Ruth answered. She was feeling exposed here. If attacked they were walled in, likely to get bitten long before they made it back through the hedge. She felt that they had done something really stupid. The lack of movement made her feel a bit absurd, and guilty for snapping at Lucy. Ahead of them was a field sloping down to a power plant. There was no sign that it was generating power any more. A flock of deer grazed between them and the plant, making it feel like an ancient artefact reclaimed by nature. Maybe someday it would be looked at in the same way as the Pyramids or Machu Pichu. The lifeblood of a dead civilization.
“Do you think we should go closer?” Ruth asked.
“What’s the point? Do you think we would find anything useful? More likely just be some infected former workers.” With that they both started to work their way back through the hedge.
On the other side the car was as they left it, but Natalie was now on the outside stretching out cramped muscles, and Paul was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Paul.”
“He said he was going to use the wonderful local toilet facilities. I was thinking to hold out until we reached a proper clean service station, but I’m starting to worry that there isn’t one between here and France any more. I might have to go native.”
“The luxuries in life may be gone for a little while. At least we still have the flash car, and the gourmet food warming up in the boot.” They avoided talking about the reality of their situation for a while, exchanging banalities. At some point Paul re-joined them and continued the conversation in the same vein. It was on all of their minds, but none mentioned the death the night before. They were on the verge of breakdown, and it would have put them over the edge.
After a while they had a breakfast of fruit and fruit juice from the perishable section of their supplies. Once they had eaten Paul asked where they should head next.
“I think we should head North” Lucy replied, “Once we get past Edinburgh and Glasgow the population is really scattered. It’s got to be safer than England.”
“We’ve got to get past there first, and I’m guessing every road will lead strait through one of those cities.”
“You got a better idea?
“If we want somewhere remote the Pennines are far closer.”
“Either way would be good in the short term. But come Winter we’d die either from the cold or lack of food. When times get desperate the locals will look after their own before a bunch of strangers. If we want to live long term we need to head South and get to my parents farm. They won’t run out of food, they’ll have guns, and they won’t turn us away.”
“Any one got any better ideas?” Paul asked. After a few moments silence he started the car and pulled away.
The Farm
With the last of the dead dispatched they looked around to assess the damage. It had been close, but they had all survived the fight. The welding they had done on the tractors had proven itself shoddy. Both cabins had been breached. John climbed down the cab, the drying blood sticking his boots to the metal with each move. He moved slowly, checking the wheels were not hiding any damaged, but still dangerous infected. He had seen them still moving and still attacking with injuries that should have been fatal. If they felt pain they didn’t show it.
The men on the ground were crowding around one of their injured colleges. He was lying on the ground, blood running from several bites, but the big problem was the hole that had been torn in his stomach. Reassuring words were being offered, but nothing practical was being done. They all knew how to staunch a wound if nothing else, but no one was willing to touch him. John shouldered his was through. It had been his decision to approach this farm. He had caused this. He knelt beside the man, removing his jumper as he moved. For three years the man had worked on the farm through all the busiest months, leaving in the winters to work with his father repairing boilers. Always reliable. Practical in all things. Now the victim of an ill-conceived raid on an adjacent farm.
As John leaned in to inspect the wound he heard a voice tell him to stop. It was Cooper. He looked up at the police officer. “I’ve got to do something about this bleeding or he’s going to die.”
“You can’t save him now.”
John was about to argue, when a voice below him said, “He’s right. I’m going to die. And when I do, I’ll become one of them.”
“It’s going to be OK. We can treat this. No One is going to die.” John tried to reassure him, but failing to hide the doubt in his own voice.
“Even if you can patch up the injuries, you can’t treat the infection. I don’t want to be like that,” he said, indicating in the rough direction of a clump of the corpses. “Just end it quickly.” The sentence was punctuated by the sound of a gun being cocked.
“Stop.” He told Cooper.
“You know this is the right thing to do.”
“Then I should be the one to do it. I led him here.”
The gun was passed to him. He succeeded in his struggle to keep his hand steady. His vision blurred, but not enough to miss the accepting nod of the man on the ground. He inhaled once, then pulled the trigger, a small hole appeared in the man’s forehead, leading to a much bigger hole in the back of his skull. John felt a hand on his shoulder. “You know you did the right thing. It was the best thing for him, and for all of us.” While he couldn’t bring himself to agree, it did prompt him back into action. He could have sat for hours looking down at what he had wrought.
“Is anyone else hurt?” he asked as he got back to his feet. All eyes turned towards a young farmhand that everyone had called Bunny for so long that his real name was lost, as was the reason for the nickname.
“It’s my arm,” he said, holding it out in front of himself. “I was bitten. Am I going to die too?”
“No,” John answered. Out of the corner of his eye he could see disagreement on Cooper’s face, but he ignored it. “Get a tourniquet around that arm. We’re going to have to amputate and stop the infection from spreading. They keep livestock here. They’ll have sterile equipment we can use.”
As they walked down towards the farmhouse Cooper spoke quietly enough that no one else would hear, “Are you sure amputating will work?”
“We’ve got to try something. I can’t just shoot him. But he’s not coming back to the farm with us today. We’ll keep him locked up unless we’re sure he is safe. There are children at the farm and I can’t put them in any more danger than they are in already.”
“Good.”
Half a dozen people were emerging from the farmhouse as they approached. A man in his mid-forties led the way, a face familiar to John all his life. The relief on the older man’s face was painfully clear. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, and probably hadn’t eaten in as long. “Thank God you came!” he said advancing on the group.
“You can thank us later.” John replied. “First, one of my men is hurt. We need to do surgery on him immediately.”
“Is it as bad as we thought out there? Is there no hospital you can take him to?”
“We’re on our own. I assume you have stuff to treat the animals that will be of use for this? His arm needs to come off.”
A small man, who could have been anywhere between forty and seventy stepped forwards. “Follow me.” He started walking towards a large barn on the far side of the house assuming they would do as he said. Over his shoulder he added, “I’m a vet. Unless you have someone better qualified among you I’ll be performing this operation. We’ve been trapped inside long enough to get a view of what this infection does. I hope rather than expect that cutting off this man’s arm will do any good.
John left three of his group to assist with the surgery, and if Bunny became a danger, to control th
e situation. Cooper was one of these. A group was set to sentry duty. A runner was sent back to their own farm to give an update on the situation. Another group went to try and round up the surviving livestock and see to their most urgent welfare. The remnants of the Goddard farm took the lead in this group, just leaving Mrs Goddard as owner of the farm to discuss logistics with John in the large farm house.
They quickly skipped through pleasantries, before John asked, “Don’t you have any guns here? Couldn’t you have shot them while they were wandering about outside your house?”
“We have plenty of guns, and enough ammunition to fight off a German invasion. Problem is, we don’t keep the two together. With kids around we always thought it would be safer if they weren’t in the same building. The guns were all locked up in the house with us, but no bullets within a hundred meters of us. My oldest tried to make a run for it when no one was looking. Thought she’d be the hero, but she ended up as one of the first of them under the wheels of your tractor… We should have all gone out when she did and made a fight of it. After that there were just more and more of them. Our people were holed up in different buildings across the farm, but one by one they fell. And more outsiders kept arriving… How did you survive it?”
He gave a brief summary of his own arrest, his Dad’s seeming paranoia, the arrival of the police and their subsequent defensive operations. He was candid about their shortages and the risks they saw facing them.
“By the sounds of it,” she said, “between us there isn’t the manpower to defend both farms, and actually farm them the old fashioned way. And as you’ve got the more viable operation you need me to strip the assets from my farm and join you.”
“I’m not sure we can survive separately. And it won’t stop here. We’ll need to reach out in all directions and either expand or secure our borders.”
“It breaks my heart to leave this place. I’ve been here all my life. But we’ve already seen that we can’t survive here alone.”
“You’ll be back here again someday. The army will regain control soon.”
“I hope you’re right, but… This place will never be the same after what I’ve seen.”
“We should get moving. There aren’t enough hours of daylight left.”
“Other than the people I don’t think there is much we should move today. You haven’t got anywhere to keep the number of animals we have, even after what we’ve lost. We can get them fed and secured here. People infected with whatever they are infected with don’t seem to have any interest in the animals. We can move them once we’ve got somewhere to keep them. Weapons and medicine we can load onto your tractors. Everything else we can start moving tomorrow.”
They did as Mrs Goddard had suggested, moving only the things she deemed essential on the first day. John would have focused more on the fuel, but as soon as she pointed out that it was not a target where it sat he saw she was right, and limited himself to filling up the two tractors that had failed in their first conversion to tanks. On the other hand he had over-ridden her when she assumed that their patient would be coming back with them and tried to find a way to allow him to travel comfortably. The idea of her home becoming a quarantine for those they didn’t feel safe around disturbed her, but she could find no way to argue that it would be better to bring a potentially infected individual into the heart of their community. The vet wanted to stay with his first human patient to monitor his welfare, but he was overruled in favour of a couple of the farm hands. The animals had had a rough time, and needed his attention. The route of the infection was out of his hands now that the arm was gone.
That night it was slightly more crowded on the Wood farm with the Goddard’s joining them, but it had been crowded beforehand, and with the numbers staying on the neighbouring farm the difference was negligible.
The days stayed busy. The attacks sporadic. The animals that had recently died were prepared, giving a plentiful food supply. The surviving livestock were well cared for. Fields were farmed, and borders extended, taking in the best and securest parts of the farms around them. At one point a group of nearly two hundred of the infected attacked them. They came across well prepared land that slowed them enough that every decent shot had time to line up and pick them off as they approached. The occasional survivor reached them, but they were becoming rarer. No one slept much, but most were starting to feel safer.
John was not like most of them. For one thing he had his father constantly preparing for the worst. While most were reassured by how easily they had repelled the largest attack that they had seen, Matthew was focused on what would come next. The population of Norwich spreading out, and not far behind them, the population of London. Hundreds could become thousands, numbers that even the armoury of their paranoid neighbours wouldn’t cope with. Not only that, he had Bunny to worry about. Most people seemed to have been able to forget he had ever existed pretty quickly, but not John. The infection had not been stopped by the amputation. Initially they had tried cutting off the arm at the elbow, then later at the shoulder. When there was no denying that the infection had taken hold Cooper wanted to end it. Bunny begged to be given a chance to live. For all the pain he was in he clung to whatever chance he had of life. In the end John had tried to compromise, taking Bunny clear of the farm and setting him loose. If he approached the farm he would be shot. He had enough morphine with him to end it comfortably. If he pulled through he was on his own. They had released him to walk away on his own. John would have preferred to shoot him and end it quickly. Even with the danger Bunny could present to others, he couldn’t bring himself to kill a man so desperate to live. He could feel Cooper’s disapproval at the decision, but met no resistance.
London
The three car convoy crept towards the outskirts of London. With their silent engines they tried for stealth rather than speed. Jed’s car was now leading and setting the pace. Jose was trying to watch all directions at once, and failing to see any of them clearly. The driver in front of him seemed to see nothing but the bumper ahead of him, trusting entirely in the car in front to lead them to safety. Two of the others in the car were already asleep, and Becky didn’t look far from joining them. The nervous fidgeting of the dog on her lap was the only thing keeping her awake. The dog at least looked as afraid as Jose felt.
For nearly an hour they drove without any of Jose’s fears being realized. On occasion they saw people, who moved hostilely towards them, but a burst of speed seemed to be enough to get clear. Jose felt himself starting to doze, for the first time glad that he hadn’t been given the wheel. He wanted a Red Bull or better, some coke to stay awake, but was starting to think that a few minutes sleep would be just as good. Dusk was just starting to fall and he was convincing himself that a bit of sleep would be a good idea as it would let him take a shift behind the wheel overnight, when a crash into the back of their car forced him awake.
The others around him were suddenly alert to the danger, but had not been awake enough to know the cause of the sudden jolting. They were still peering around in all directions as Jose climbed from the car clutching a crowbar. Jed’s car had already pulled out of sight. Jose assumed that they hadn’t noticed the incident behind them. He focused on the occupants of the car that had crashed into them. Through the broken windscreen he could see the driver awkwardly punching with his right hand at Tim who was biting chunks out of his left arm. In the back the other passenger beside Tim was starting to twitch. There was a gaping hole in his throat that was failing to keep him dead. Up front the forth occupant was trying to get out of the car without drawing attention to himself. The door was jammed by one of the collisions that the car had suffered, and he was starting to panic, making more and more noise, which would soon distract Tim from eating the driver. Jose quickly assessed that he was the only one worth saving, and that he had to act quickly.
Seeing Jose approach, the survivor started to call for help. It was the worst thing he could do. Tim stopped biting, and continued to ignore the pun
ches as he turned towards a new target. Jose ignored the cries for help, and moved to the window next to Tim, breaking it with the crow bar. It drew the attention that it intended. Hampered by his seat belt, Tim tried to crawl out of the window to get to Jose, who had plenty of time to line up his shot and sink the crow bar into the man’s skull, releasing a dark spray of blood that glistened in the early moonlight.
As he stepped back to admire his handiwork, the driver of the car clambered out of the door next to him, stumbling on his way and landing on his hands and knees. Jose considered taking the opportunity to give him a quick and non zombified death. He knew that it would be best for all concerned, but it felt too different killing a sick person rather than one already dead once. Before he had time to steel his nerve and rationalize the killing, Becky and James were on the scene trying to help the passenger get out of the twisted door. As he watched them smash the window and drag the passenger to safety the driver moved into a less vulnerable position, and started to loudly curse Tim for attacking him. Jose was nearly ready to hit him again just to keep him quiet, when a groan from a nearby building did the job for him.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he whispered, loudly enough for all of those around him to hear. They all started to move towards the lead car.
“Not you.” They all looked round at Jose to see who he was talking to. He pointed at the driver of the third car. “You’ve been bitten. You’ve got to go.”
“Look. I’m OK. It’s only a few scratches.” The man waved a bloodied arm around. The rest of them stepped back to avoid the splashes of blood that splattered about from the damaged limb.
“Walk away now, or I’ll have to kill you.”
The Farm Page 18
