The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3]

by Rob Cockerill

  We salvaged more of the strewn paperwork that was laying around when we got here, and pieced together research papers into various forms of nerve gas, and even dossiers on ‘industrial accidents’ that appear to have taken place here decades ago – all with missing pages. There are doctor’s records and neurologists reports, and written complaints from former employees marked with the word ‘Dismissed’ in that classic red kind of stamp that you might associate with official documents or legal files.

  There are timelines and projections for chemicals production too – but the paper trail goes cold in the 1980s. The last meaningful documents we could find were dated 1985, many of which related to the closure of the labs and decontamination chambers.

  But something doesn’t add up. Anyone that looks around these laboratories can see that there have been activities going on here since then. The atmosphere is too sterile, too clean and well kept, the messiness aside. The paperwork is crisp and maintained, if not scattered and disorderly. And some of the equipment looks to have been used very recently, even to the untrained eye. Perhaps the biggest giveaways are the occasional health and safety/hazard warning signs that clearly aren’t a product of the 1980s.

  We would have kept interrogating the place for clues, and maybe taken a closer look at some of the spilled liquids or soil samples that adorn petri dishes, but Jenny came over quite sick and we decided to position ourselves up in the observatory for a bit. Maybe it was the fumes form some of those errant liquids.

  We’re still no nearer to really working out what happened up here, or why the place is empty. At the very least, I’m inclined to conclude that there was some heavy-duty chemical warfare research going on up here, and in this century, let’s put it that way. The extent of the former activities here just deepens with every thought we have, every re-examination of the laboratories that follows, and every new room that we manage to get access to. There’s no smoke with fire, after all.

  But I can’t believe that there’s anything more to it than that, and certainly nothing to do with the plague of hungered, blood-sucking mutants we’re up against out there. Not from a lab in sleepy Porthreth, not a chance. No, I think we just have to accept that this hunk of an old military base is only fit for keeping us safe against the evil that lies in wait beyond those fences – and we’ll take that right now.

  13th March 2016

  Our second full day of incessant rain and wind has been a testing one. Jenny was sick again, a couple of times in fact, and she’s beginning to question whether we can rally make a long-term go of it here. Further still, she’s questioning whether we really want to.

  I don’t know what’s got into her in the last couple of days, but her heart doesn’t seem to be in it like it was. That sounds like a ridiculous thing to say in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, but there’s definitely been a change in her in the last 36 hours or so. I really noticed it this morning when we got up; Jenny was awake before me and sitting in the corner thinking, and watching me sleep apparently. She wanted to talk about the morality of what might have gone on up here in the past and whether we really wanted to be building a life for ourselves in this place, however short-term.

  I can understand her doubts. It’s hardly a palace after all, and from what we can deduce there have been some pretty questionable activities undertaken in the room that we freely move between. But I’ve also got to remind us both that we’re not living in a world of ideals now. This is all about survival and, if we’re brutally honest, sheer fear. There’s little room for moral anymore, not at the moment at least. And as much as we are supposed to be the hopeful survivors, the pioneers that have made it out alive and might one day blaze a trail to salvation, we’re actually just running scared.

  We’re terrified. We’re not cut out for this shit. We’re not capable of spending any sustained period of time out on the road, just us and our wits against countless hordes of rotting, mutilated, unquenched corpses that think only of ripping us limb from limb. We’re hiding up here, we’re cowering and trying to make the best of it. We’re trying to ride it out and, frankly, this fortified building is probably the best chance we’ve got for miles around.

  It’s also been a tough day indoors practically. Food is beginning to run very low, both our own supplies that we brought with us and the little bits of leftovers and canned goods that we found waiting for us in the living quarters. The power has been a bit intermittent too. I’m confident it’s just down to the stormy weather we’ve been subjected to over the last few hours, but every time there’s a blip it pulls our intense vulnerability sharply into focus. If you take the power away too, we really are just trapped here and waiting to die. Maybe we are anyway? I can’t think like that, I’ve been listening to Jenny theorising too much this morning.

  On another sombre note, we spent hours trying to get our heads around the state-of-the-art equipment in the command centre, but to no avail. I’m just not techy enough to work it out. If this place was functioning until only a few months ago, surely the communications tower or the air surveillance radar should be working? We’re seem to be shit out of luck with it but worse still, I feel like I know we’re doing something wrong – I’m convinced there must be a way of making it work.

  Getting those capabilities online and reaching the outside world, other installations, was my biggest hope for this site. It was one of the main reasons we risked our lives trekking through the village and the miles of woodland to get here. I hacked vicious, snarling corpses to the ground to get here and am haunted by their memory each and every day. If we can’t get those facilities working, or they’re simply no longer operable, then that poses a major, Jenny-sized question of our entire reason for being here.

  I’m determined to do it, but I had to walk away from the challenge today before desperation got the better of me and I took a hammer to it all anyway. As we sit here huddled together in blankets, listening to the wind and rain lash the building’s lofty extremities, I’m having to take a dose of my own medicine and reconcile that while it might not be the solution we thought it was, this old air base is the closest thing to safety we’ve got.

  14th March 2016

  Our thoughts turned today to the apartment we left behind; our beloved home for five years and the bedrock that really got us through the crucial early days and weeks of this disaster.

  We had to leave all those weeks ago, the apartment simply wasn’t sustainable in the long-term. Unlike here, every single noise had to be kept to a minimum, such was the building’s position on the main road through the village and its lack of natural defences. These apocalyptic creatures that hunt for flesh from dawn till dusk and beyond can almost hear a pin drop, and with our apartment fronting right out onto the road, any decibel too high could easily attract scores of them. That meant we had to survive in silence; no kettle boiling, no washing machine functioning, no heavy footfall or carelessness with breakables, and often not even flushing the toilet. We were constantly on high alert, constantly on edge, and fearing the consequences of our every movement.

  But it was stable, and it was secure, once we’d finished with it anyway. We had fortified the place as best we could, and we did a bloody good job of it. We had also stocked it to the brim with food and water, and survival supplies. In our final days there, we had even added some much-needed medical capabilities. It kept us safe and warm, for the most part, and we kind of miss it.

  Jenny’s been throwing up again this morning, and that’s what got us back to thinking about the apartment in the first place; we know there’s a stack of provisions there to settle even the most angry of stomachs. It also got us thinking about the wealth of food resources down there. When we left, we had to travel nimbly, and that meant only small semblances of rations. We were lucky that there were so many stocked cupboards here at the military base when we arrived. But with each passing day we eat just a little more into our food bank and we know we’re going to have to supplement that – if not completely replenish it – somet
ime soon.

  All of which had us pondering what state our apartment might be in. Will it be as we left it? Will corpses have somehow found a way in? More to the point, will fellow survivors have found a way in? Depending upon where they’d come from, they’d be pretty happy with the secure and well-stocked place they’d gotten themselves into. It’s hard to think of anyone else in there, though. It was our home for years, after all. And we had to leave so many of our personal belongings behind; basically our whole lives are packed up in that apartment one way or another. What we have here is very much an empty shell of our existence – a few clothes, a few cherished photos, basic tools to get us through, what limited food we have and now, thanks to the nature of this bolthole, a couple of light firearms.

  That’s kind of how we feel at the moment too – empty shells. Our third day of howling wind and rain lashing the base has left us enduring a dreary, macabre kind of duvet day up in the observatory room. Slowly sipping copious cups of tea or cup-a-soups, we’ve been staring out across the site for signs of life that don’t exist. We’ve seen nothing of note, and certainly no sign of whoever it was that slayed those cadavers several days ago now. Bleaker still, there’s as yet no sign of Jenny’s family either. And as I write this, reader, there’s apparently no sign of this weather front easing up.

  15th March 2016

  The inclement conditions still refuse to give in and we have little to report today as a result.

  Having spent most of yesterday wrapped up both in duvets and thoughts of our abandoned apartment, today we found ourselves contemplating the fates of others in the village, and what might have been. The church conclave, for example, have occupied our minds a great deal today. Are they still there, quietly and pretty passively whiling the hours away? Or have they summoned up some greater aspiration and decided to move on? If so, where? We can’t help thinking that they were so blind to the horrors outside, so sheltered from the true devastation and mutilation all around us, that they would not last five minutes out in the open.

  Particular thought has been with the family of the Parish councillor, Jane. They knew little of her aims to leave the church with us in search of supplies and will likely have had to come to terms with the fact that she is not coming back. Like so many others in this brave, bloody new world, they never got to say goodbye. The only consolation is, they never had to see her die, either. We just hope they never have to come face-to-face again – not now.

  And what of the rest of the village? Who keeps ringing the bell at the school so methodically and yet, infrequently? What of the many pubs and guest houses that Porthreth once had to offer – were they still taking people in at the dawn of the apocalypse? Are there any signs of life at the surf club on the beach, surely one of the more naturally secure structures? Has anyone thought to make home in the many luxury log cabin resorts that sit beautifully in the north hillside?

  These are all just some of the questions we’ve talked out today, while hunched up in our scruffs idly surveying the perimeter fence from the relative comfort of our vantage point 30 feet away. It doesn’t make for pleasant thought, but it’s a welcome reprieve from replaying the bodies I have slain over and over in my mind. I still can’t shake those haunting faces from my consciousness.

  Amidst all of that, we have seen two very minor but notable ‘incidents’ that briefly caught our attention this morning. Firstly, there was a definite disturbance in the woodland about 50 feet in front of us. It would have been easy to overlook it with this violent wind sweeping up over the cliffs and tearing through the hillside before us, but Jenny just happened to be scanning the site with binoculars when it occurred. She described it as forceful movement through the trees and, having passed me the eyewear, I just caught the tail-end of a disturbance. What it was, however, remains a mystery.

  Secondly, and it was mere moments later, a plume of smoke rose up through the valley, far into the distance. Bellowing black smoke, it was clear to see for a good half-hour before dissipating on the wind. Where or what it came from, we have no idea – but it was powerful enough to project up over the thick woodland probably a mile away on the horizon.

  Were the two linked? Who can say? We can’t imagine so, given the short amount of time and large distance between them. All we need now is for the school bells to ring again to compound our abject wondering. We kept a keen vigil over the panorama ahead of us for hours, save for a 30-minute break while Jenny felt a little flush and unwell, but we saw nothing further this afternoon.

  All of these little moments, these little interludes in the otherwise intolerable cruelty of survival, have rattled our cages a little, I must admit. We don’t know who’s out there, alive or dead. We don’t know what anyone’s motive is. And we don’t really know how we would deal with something if it did happen. It all just adds to the uncertainty of this forlorn, fragile existence.

  17th March 2016

  Dear diary

  Jenny is pregnant, we think. I needed a couple of days to get my head around it. It's mind-blowing, on so many levels.

  We're euphoric, metaphorically speaking of course – I'm not sure anyone can be audibly euphoric during the apocalypse – and completely over the moon with happiness. This is something we had always wanted, always been heading toward at some point and deep down, probably at some juncture in 2016.

  But we didn't know that the world as we knew it would be so utterly compromised and destroyed this year. We didn't know that we would be surviving 2016. And I'm not sure whether either of us is confident we can do this and successfully see it through. It’s no world to bring a child up in. We've been struggling to flush a toilet or allow the ping of a microwave to ring out, let alone bring a whole new, helpless and innocent life into the world.

  I've always said that having a baby, raising a child that you love so endlessly and unconditionally, is something that adds a world of vulnerability to you as a person. How can it not? Everything that child does or is exposed to renders you vulnerable to emotion. From cuts and grazes to disabilities and diseases, you will need to forever be strong enough to cope with what life throws at you all. That's parenthood. It is incredible, I imagine, but it isn’t easy.

  Now, at a time when we are so vulnerable that our lives literally depend on it, we are adding that heavy layer of bittersweet fragility to our survival. We're laying ourselves even more bare than we already are right now – and we're potentially penning our own death sentences in the process. That's the gritty, maudlin, horribly realistic side of it that half of me is wrestling with. I also have so many concerns or questions. Is our baby healthy? Is our baby infected, by nature? Are we all infected on some level – is this outbreak airborne or transmitted by biting?

  The other half of me is over the moon and full of very different questions. Is it a boy or a girl in there? How will we be as parents? Will I be a good Dad? Am I ready? Is Jenny ready? What kind of future can we build for our son or daughter, protected from this intrepid, uncertain world?

  I can’t wait to be a father and yet, it terrifies me. I know Jenny feels the same. The only difference is, I think she has known or at least suspected for a few days longer and so, has had a little more time to adjust. No wonder she has been acting so emotionally-stirred over the last few days, no wonder she has been questioning our long-term survival up here – it all makes sense now. The body moves in mysterious ways.

  The sickness too, that was the giveaway apparently. I’m not sure it could ever be medically proven, but Jenny is adamant she can feel some kind of changes within her body. She can’t put her finger on it or begin to describe it; it’s something chemical, something biological or even physiological. It’s a female thing, Jenny says. She first felt it a few days ago and, what we now know to be morning sickness began to confirm it for her. We’d need a pregnancy test to be sure. What chance we have of getting one of those during a zombie apocalypse, I just don’t know.

  What I do know is, things suddenly feel different. Perspective has changed,
somehow, almost instantly. And it’s been the first day of sunshine for a week. Actual spring sunshine is radiating out across the base, across the whole valley, providing the perfect vista upon which to gaze and get lost in all kinds of thought. Considering the news we think we have been given today, it’s almost poetic.

  Or is it bittersweet? The next eight months – and beyond – will begin to answer that question. I’m still not entirely sure how to feel, but my gut instinct is one of elation.

  18th March 2016

  We’re still digesting it all, the whole glorious revelation that is Jenny’s pregnancy. It’s literally the best thing to have happened to either of us, and yet we can’t help but be troubled by the negatives right now.

  There wouldn’t even be negatives in any normal situation. But this isn’t any normal situation. This isn’t the 2016 we all thought it would be. It’s a savage, unjust and wholly petrifying new world out there, where every sound induces fear and almost every action has a bloody, fatal reaction.

  Since 17th January, 2016 has descended into a world of chaos, carnage and decay. Flesh-hungry corpses rampage, ruling without reason nor notion; they have only unquenchable appetites to satisfy. Two months on, much of the surviving world is living in the dark, oppressed by a marauding army of the undead and in stasis, permanently trapped just as we are here high atop the hillside in Porthreth. Whole countries, perhaps even continents, have been overrun.

  What kind of world is that to bring a child into and subject it to? True, it would not know any different. But we would. We know it’s shit and we know we want more for him or her. We want the very best for them, the biggest hopes and dreams, a loving, fun-filled childhood that knows no bounds. A rich experience of every sight, sound, taste and texture. But today’s existence doesn’t afford those opportunities – and we have no idea if it ever will again.