Amidst the falling dust (The Green and Pleasant Land)

by Kennedy, Oliver

  The Green and Pleasant Land

  Amidst the falling dust

  Copyright©2014 Oliver Kennedy

  All rights reserved.

  Dedication

  The ghosts and the memories

  Chapter 1, The Last Days of Summer

  The cool metal of the deck helped in no small amount to alleviate some of the nausea. You wouldn't have thought after so many months at sea that it would still be like this. Reduced to a quivering jelly, curled up in the foetal position after a bout of retching over the side. The bile and remnants of this mornings measly breakfast have splattered harmlessly down the side of the aircraft carrier and into the uncaring sea. The water had spent centuries absorbing the filth of mankind and had grown accustomed to swallowing up our many failings.

  Several of my fellows stand nearby. They have become used to the sight of my huddled form on deck. The brief respite from the nausea that the vomiting has given me has allowed the shame to flood in. They may have become used to it, but I have not, and the humiliation burns me like a red hot poker.

  I get to my knees, I stare out over the iron grey waters of the North Sea. Beneath my feet is sixty five thousand tons of steel, the man made monster that was to have been the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier. But like much in the old world that was to have been, it has not come to pass. The vessel is a shell, a hastily assembled life raft to which nearly six hundred men and women are clinging with increasing desperation.

  So as we lay here bobbing up and down, I look out at the winding coast of the green and pleasant land, and I think back over this last bleak year of my life....

  My name is Patrick Redmayne. I work, or rather I worked for a company called Pendragon Systems. We were in the defence industry, or, as we used to call it while we stood around the water cooler, the 'attack industry'. We supplied the weapons of war to any and all who were willing to wage it, to pay the toll. Business was booming, and we were too ignorant to see that we were supplying the means of our own downfall.

  The military buildup by both the USA and China had sent jitters through the Pacific rim and the world. Contracts were rolling in, tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, advanced littoral warships. The nations of the earth were watching the worlds two mightiest military powers square up to each other, and their minds turned to self preservation. Within a matter of months the tentacles of globalisation had been severed, the planet divided into paranoid armed camps, which, when they weren't busy eye-balling each other across the barbed wire, were desperately trying to combat the enemy within, the totem of our downfall, the Deathwalker virus.

  Like much of the masses I sat down, idly playing with my cereal, watching it all unfold on the news, watching the song of doom build to its inevitable crescendo. When it got there it broke every window in the world, it shattered glass, and steel, and bone.

  My home is in a town called Carlisle, in the far north of England. Sadly I was not there when it all collapsed for good. Sadly I was not with them when it all went to pot. I was ensconced in temporary housing at the Rosyth Shipyard, some portacabins huddled in the shadow of the beast.

  I remember the last phone call, the usually tired and worried voice at the other end was fearful now, hysterical. In the background I could hear breaking glass, shouts of rage and pain, my son, my son, at whom do you roar? Wendy, she told me that there were familiar faces in the crowd. Familiar yet alien, neighbours of many years with crazed faces, grey skin and outstretched arms. She begged me then, she begged me for help, she begged me to be there, to live and die with her. She begged me before the phone went dead. That is that last I heard of Wendy Redmayne or my son Gideon.

  I stared at the phone for a long time, until shouts and screams from the outside managed to penetrate the wall of grief springing up around me.

  You see until then much of what we'd seen, we'd seen through a screen. Clinics in the big cities that were pictures of chaos. Maddened patients, the first to have received the vaccination, with bloodied eyes and bloodier hands they were savaging each other, savaging the doctors and nurses around them, savaging the baton wielding police who attempted to put them down. Hospitals were like warzones in a conflict that soon spread to the streets.

  Scientists pondered, prevaricated and gesticulated. They did not provide any answers, they contradicted themselves with every other statement. There was a famous tussle at the United Nations, world leaders and foreign ministers brawling like common thugs in the grand chamber of the UN. That was while the networks were still up, but it wasn't too long after that the world went dark.

  So we were witnesses night after night to scenes of civil chaos punctuated by generic footage of military buildups in many of the worlds flashpoints and border zones. We kept on working, though I don't know why, the top brass of the UK military seemed just as content to carry on as the board of Pendragon Systems were. But there comes a point when even the stiffest of upper lips must tremble, when even the most stubborn of lions must be brought low. For the thousands of workers at the Rosyth shipyard, that day was August 19th 2014, the last day I spoke with my wife.

  I ran from the portacabin to see what all the noise was about. At the far end of the dock I could see a large crowd of people pushing at the thick iron gates, I could see soldiers pointing guns, some of them fired into the air but it did not seem to have any effect on the desperate souls straining to get in. I started to walk towards them. I wondered what fear would cause people to face down armed soldiers in such a way. Then I looked beyond the crowd, to the hills above Rosyth.

  The hills were alive with what looked like people, they did not move with the haste of prey, but with the shuffling gait of the new world predators. Down through the heather, down through the hills they come with their dark hearts and diseased hands. For the last few days the UK's major population centres had been experiencing surges in the numbers of those infected with the Deathwalker virus. And as my colleagues and I spent the morning glaring at screens and shivering despite the summer sun, it turned out that the population of Dunfermline, which had turned pretty much overnight, had descended on Rosyth and added its populous to their numbers.

  The desperate crowds at our front gate were those few who'd managed to get out, sadly they assumed that the military protected shipyard would provide some salvation for them. They were wrong, as pointed barrels and the no nonsense commands of the soldiers indicated.

  When the hill wanderers reached the rear of the crowd the screams rang out like sirens. The infection rippled through the mob in a flash of blood and flailing limbs like some sort of perverse Mexican wave.

  Then came the breaking point. The fence gave way. A nervous soldier fired a confident bullet, dozens more of it's fellows followed it, racing into bodies with the reckless abandon of hot lead. Sirens rang out as hundreds of figures raced into the shipyard, some of them were alive, some were not. It became evident that the gate guards and their rapidly diminishing amounts of ammunition were not going to be sufficient to hold back the horde, I was glad to see I was not the only one to turn and run.

  Above the din of the crowd I was aware of helicopters coming in low, I heard the rattling boom of chaingun cannons and the sounds of shredding metal, cracking concrete and tearing flesh. The carrier seemed to represent a beacon of safety and we swarmed towards it like ants. I was only a couple of metres from a boarding ramp when a form reared up in front of me and knocked me to the floor.

  This was my first up close and personal encounter with a deathwalker. Though humanoid in shape the stark absence of humanity was apparent on a number of levels. From it's mouth there poured a frothy mixture of blood and w
hite saliva, it's skin was grey except for the veins which stood out as thick black lines which criss-crossed the figure from head to toe. The eyes were dull red orbs devoid of anything but hunger and hate.

  Its head shook from side to side and it screeched a piercing scream that sounded like a long undulating 'nooooooo' sound. As the cadaver was about to descend on me a lead pipe from behind smashed right through its head covering me with splatter. As the beast fell to the side I saw Lars Eriksson smile grimly at me. He gave me a thumbs up and looked about to speak when a pair of hands encircled his head. Long fingers with sharp nails penetrated his temples and sank deep into his head behind the eyes.

  Lars screamed in pain and fell to his knees at which point the cadaver bit hungrily into the top of his skull, pulling off chunks of skin and hair in its determination to reach the brain of my friend and saviour.

  To this day I spare him a thought every now and then. But on that day there was no time for sorrow, I got up and I carried on running. The gangplank I'd been aiming before had been knocked into the churning water beside the carrier, I saw a few resourceful fellows shimmying up the long anchor chains and decided to join them.

  As I pulled myself up the chain I became aware of the vibrations emanating along it. The eight newly installed diesel turbines had been fired up and were only moments away from being engaged to propel the carrier and those clambering onto to it to safety. I finally pulled myself up the last couple of feet and grabbed hold of the deck, rolling over onto it with a brief sense of satisfaction.

  I stood and looked out over the naval yard. I was witnessing first hand the end of the world as we knew it. Thousands of cadavers now swarmed between the buildings and along the pier. When their prey reached the edge of the dock many chose to simply throw themselves into the water and take their chances in the deep.

  Grenades were hurled and sent up red plumes like flares here and there. A few lone soldiers stood firing coolly into the crowd until their ammunition was spent and they became one with the enemy.

  Around eight helicopters had landed on the deck of the vessel. Heavy weapons had been deployed around the edge of the carrier and were busy carving a path of destruction through the ranks of the cadavers which was soon filled with more of the same. Eventually the lone figure who stood at the prow of the ship gave his consent, a command was radioed through to the bridge. The engines bellowed and the chains and guide cables protested then snapped as the ship wrenched itself from its holdings, and plunged out into the waters of the North Sea.

  I watched in mute horror as we sailed from the shipyard. There were still thousands of people left, many of them lined the edges of the dock and cried as they watched salvation ploughing through the waves away from them. Men, women and children huddled in smaller and smaller numbers as the army of the dead recruited them into its ranks against their will. Smaller and smaller they got, the shuffling, shambling figures who inhabited the Rosyth shipyard. As we bobbed up and down in the open water, I felt a sickness to my core that was little to do with the sea...

  And now I am here, one year on. Wandering the metal halls of our floating home. I have stepped off the edge of the earth and this is where I landed, this is certainly not my world, and though they look like my people they are alien in their notions and their intent. I am not sure what is worse. Memories of those early days when we were filled with the dread of not knowing, or these modern times, when we are accustomed to our fate, to the long slow decline we suffer until the sea claims us.

  As I make my way up to the command centre I exchange nods with similarly dead eyed fellow prisoners. In the early days, amidst the chaos and the smoke we could conjure illusions of what might be. But the now is advanced in its ages, and has shown us the truth of our demise.

  My role in construction of the carrier was concerned with the engineering of the ships advanced weapons and communication systems. As such I had been designated some sort of impromptu 'chief technical officer'. It is for that reason that I am allowed on the command deck and am invited to take part in the weekly meetings of the ships senior officers.

  I do not say much, it seems to me that the talking is done by those who still have hope. Less and less is said each week, there will come a time I think when we will all just sit around in silence waiting to sink.

  At the start this room was a neat orderly command centre. Manned around the clock by an advanced team of communications officers who would bring in up to the minute information on the state of play in the United Kingdom and the wider world. Captain Skellen, the ranking officer on board would coordinate with his team, lending what limited assistance he could to regular forces on the ground battling against the outbreak.

  As time went by there was less and less to communicate, fewer battles, not because we were winning, but because the military had been decimated by the conflict and was waging the war with ever dwindling manpower. Then came the big one, the Battle of London. The militaries last ditch attempt to regain control of the capital. For five days we listened to the screams of the dying over the radio. Then it all went quiet, we heard nothing more from the land, satellite communications went offline, we were alone.

  Now after a year of chaos the command room is a mess. It reeks of stale sweat, cigars and liqueur. The shiny console screens are dark, the room is filled with the essence of defeat and despair. As I take my seat in the shadows I look around at the dishevelled officer core who sit and mumble to each other and to themselves.

  Just in front of the captains chair I see an open file the contents of which immediately pique my interest. The report inside is entitled 'Provisional theory's on the nature of the Morphid threat'. Morphids, a name which was whispered more and more these days. It had become evident as the conflict waged that we fought not only the dead but other equally foul foes.

  Wild ideas circulated about their origins, about the confluence of the deathwalker virus mixed with high levels of radiation. Whatever their source the presence of the Morphids was undeniable, malformed creatures, some which seemed to be hybrid of man and beast, some which seemed to have no discernible earthly origin. Their numbers had grown considerably, to the extent that the foraging missions we launched were entirely prohibited from entering the southern counties due to the extent of the infestation.

  I glanced down the document, noting a few designations for the various types of Morphids; the many armed Genglers, Devils Dogs and Vulturion. But my prying ceased when Captain Skellen entered the command centre, closing the file as he sat down. There was an air of excitement about the man, a feverish enthusiasm which had been absent for many months.

  The Captain briefed us on a new mission. A three copter squad would fly further west than we'd gone before, their objective, the Brampton Barracks. At the name my attention focused, my heart began to race. The barracks was only about thirty miles outside Carlisle, thirty miles from home, from them. As the Captain rambled on about the potential benefits to be gained from the stores at Brampton I spoke.

  “What about Carlisle?” I said interrupting. The captain was a hard eyed man, a thirty year veteran of iron discipline, he alone amongst the officer core seemed to have found the will to maintain a clean shaven look throughout the apocalypse.

  “What about it?” he barked. I licked my lips and pondered my next words carefully.

  “Pendragon Systems global headquarters at Edenpark is just outside the city” said I.

  “Not too far from your home either I believe?” interjected Lieutenant Tasker with a slight sneer.

  “Looking to go home Redmayne?” said Captain Skellen quizzically.

  “No. The coincidence is just that.”

  “Explain”

  So I told them. I told them about the underground bunker at Edenpark. I told them about the command and control centre it housed which might, just might still have an operational satellite link which could give us an idea of what was happening in the wider world, and allow us to link up the remnants of the Royal Navy in other parts of th
e globe.

  They lapped it up, the thought of not being alone any more was enough to push them over into endorsing my plan. I neglected to tell them that the chances of the building having power, let alone being able to establish a satellite link were slim to nil. Let them have their hope, and I will have mine. The Redmayne house was less than an hour from Edenpark, I would see what became of my dearest after that telephone call, and my fellow lost sailors would be none the wiser.

  The meeting started to wind down. Food was short, water was short, morale was low. There had been two more rapes which had led to two more summary executions, two more bodies to feed to the water. The fine details of the Brampton mission were hammered out and most of us made to leave. I heard one of Captain Skellens aides mention a tertiary objective.

  “A third mission?” queried Lieutenant Tasker.

  “Yes” nodded the Captain. “We have intercepted an unidentified radio signal, as we're heading to Carlisle we may as well expand the mission to investigate that as well”

  “Where is it coming from?” I ask. The Captain looks at his notes.

  “A remote location, in the Lake District National Park, at a place called Ravensburg”.

  Chapter 2, Operation Black Rabbit

  The Lynx prowled the skies ahead of us. It swooped from side to side across the land like a bird of prey. I followed behind in the Puma while to our rear was the large Chinook where the bulk of the forty person foraging squad were on board keeping eyes on every horizon. Surprisingly, despite being frequently laid low by the motion of the aircraft carrier on the waves, air travel did not phase me in the slightest.

  Sadly the same could not be said of all of our entourage. I'd heard Lieutenant Tasker referring to the Chinook as the 'puke wagon' and could well imagine there were a few green faces on board.