The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3]

by Rob Cockerill

  Jack was right, and I'm glad I listened. We’re both glad we left on our haunting supply run when we did. With hundreds of corpses hounding the gates and piling huge pressure on the eastern fencing as I write, we were fortunate to find our way back to the camp in time to protect the others. For now we live to survive another day. How many more of those we have depends on how long those defences can hold.

  16th May 2016

  Did I really say I was delighted to be back in the bosom of the base’s imprisonment?

  We're still waiting it out. Eating, drinking, and not at all being merry. Passing the time by idly chatting, almost. It’s as lonely and traumatising as ever – and there seems little light at the end of the tunnel just yet. It is quite literally dark; any window or opening that once allowed the life of daylight into the building has been extinguished with those blackout blinds we retrieved from Jack’s VW a few days ago. I feel for the children, who are not only ‘living’ like mushrooms, but clearly know that we trying to fill the suspense with distractive conversation.

  Amongst the idle chit-chat, we learned more about Jack's journey since the outbreak – but only as much as he wanted us to know, and only what he was prepared to bring up in front of Nic, Tam and Riley. He still hasn't told us where he led them, exactly. Well, not at all really. He just won't reveal it. He said there were three places on his list of hideouts to head for when ‘this shit got real’ back in January.

  One of those was here at the military base on Old Hill. The other was Porthreth Vean House, and the third option on that list he will not disclose. Whatever the venue or location, it must have been good – it must have had more going for it than here, at least on the face of it. To be fair, Jack said a big reason he chose that place over here were his fears that there would already be military here – and they might have received a hostile reception, or worse.

  I just can't work out where that mystery place would be, or why it didn't work out there. He said they had to keep relying on short-term supply runs and eventually ran out of luck, with the VW running out of fuel too. Hence, they ended up on the road and, ultimately, without Lucinda. I have a feeling that was around the time of her loss, actually. Wherever it was, the children very obviously don’t want to talk about it yet either – and there’s no way we want to know that badly that we actually ask them.

  Jack does speak with high regard of Porthreth Vean House, but clearly didn't think it was good enough to head there in the first place. From what I can gather and my own limited knowledge of the place, it's an imposing, substantial listed residence that actually sits just behind our old apartment.

  It was listed for sale not long before the outbreak and around the same time as Jenny and I were house hunting; that seems like a long time ago now. If I remember rightly, it’s of late Georgian construction with attached residence originally erected by the Bassett family of neighbouring village and woodlands, Tretiddy. I think it was actually a Listed Grade II building, such is its stature, as a construct of special historic Interest – or something like that. I can’t remember the exact sales spiel, but I know it was a very grand building with an illustrious history and structure, set over two acres and including a couple of basement flats. Given its standing and wealth of living options, it might be worth keeping in mind should this sanctuary of ours ever be compromised. That’s if the distinguished house isn’t overcome itself, of course. That’s always a gamble you have to take.

  What Jack still won't speak of is Lucinda. He still wouldn't open up about her, not out in the road with me or in here in the base with Jenny. The thing is, not only do you not question Jack Stephens when he says something like that, we also know that the likelihood of something unjustifiably savage and undignified happening in these macabre times is so high that often you don't want to probe further anyway. The children only cry uncontrollably at the very mention of their mother. They do at least have Alice, who seems to keep them on track and entertained, most of the time, but the close confinement and torture here only highlights the vicious ordeal they’re going through.

  17th May 2016

  This is not a world for children. It’s a menacing, unhappy, threatening place – and the kids are really not happy. I've watched them closely since they’ve been here, and especially so over the last few days while we've all been cooped up together. That inherent fearlessness of a child is quashed, walked over and destroyed, leaving them inhibited. It's not even true to say that they are ironically suited to this world with their ability to duck and dive biters at every turn through their diminutive figures and age/appropriate speed and agility – that just isn't true at all. They're too terrified and too clumsy, too unaware almost, and would easily fall prey to just one outstretched limb, one desperate claw that soon becomes a score of hungered carcasses bearing down on them.

  If they’re not in a permanent state of potential peril outside, they’re imprisoned in here with blackout blinds masking their presence and shrouded in feelings of doom and boredom. Jenny and Alice are the only one’s keeping them going at the moment. We’re all doing our bit of course, but Jack and I are constantly monitoring the building’s defences and keeping watch over the whole site from the observatory, and when we’re not doing that we’re trying to keep an eye on the surveillance system to see if the scene down in the village is any better – or if we can catch sight of that shitbag bell-ringer that almost got us killed at the school several days ago. We try to make time to spend with the kids and I’ve certainly been making a concerted effort of that myself, but I do feel like only Jenny and Alice are really getting through to them at the moment.

  And then there’s Alice. I think she needs the distraction of the Nic, Tam and Riley to keep herself distracted too. I don’t know that much of her, but I can see that she’s taken a shine to Jack and I wonder if part of that wasn’t to do with a strong sense of her own vulnerability when she was wandering alone out there all those weeks ago. There’s been a twitchy, edginess to her since the base became swamped and as someone who’s always been something of a people watcher, I can’t help thinking she’s on the verge of a meltdown. We’re all freaked out right now, haunted by the incessant yearning and piercing murmuring outside, and slaves to the constricting loneliness of the hiding. But Alice seems to be on a different plain of torment. To be fair to her, she’s doing a good job of throwing herself into the task of keeping the children on course, and she’s built up a pretty good rapport with Jenny in the process.

  Which brings us back to the kids. This world just isn’t one for children. It’s making us question our own impending parenthood, and whether we really are doing the right thing. Ultimately, there is no question in our minds about our intentions, but we agree deep down that it’s going to be a momentous struggle to carve out a happy, adventurous, sheltered childhood for our little one – the kind of childhood that we were afforded ourselves and would give anything for our son/daughter to have one day. That simply doesn’t exist anymore, another example of how things that were once basics are now absolute luxuries.

  So who is this really a world for? Not any of us. We’re all hating every single minute of 2016. As I’ve said so many times before, we’re surviving 2016 rather than living it.

  I must admit that I have started to think that maybe I was cut-out for this shit, on some level. Maybe my ability to be relatively comfortable in my own company and surroundings meant that I was somehow better able to cope with this. Perhaps this diary-keeping is all part of my in-built coping mechanisms. Maybe, I’m not actually coping at all and I’m just as scared as anyone else right now. At this present time, I’ll go with the latter. I’m terrified. But my job in these moments has to be keep those feelings buried and be strong for Jenny, first and foremost, and Jack and the children.

  18th May 2016

  Alice is dead. Gone. No more, just like that. She was taken in an instant, a stupid, reckless instance of rebellion or, one might suggest, lunacy.

  We woke up at 5am to the sound of no
ise internally, within the building. Jack had got up just a few minutes before us, disturbed by the sound of barricades being dismantled and the main door being unlocked. He just caught sight of Alice fleeing out of the door out into the open of the yard and across the runway, by which time we were all up and witnessed Alice throw herself at the fence and into the scraping clutches of ravaged corpses.

  Despite the fence between them, Alice didn’t stand a chance. She was ripped apart in all directions by a horde of hands desperately scratching and tugging at whatever morsels of flesh they could scavenge. The children watched, stunned, as fingers that once comprised healthy and handsome hands now resembled withered talons tearing at Alice’s cheeks and chest. Flesh splintered and splayed and blood erupted as excited cadavers fed off her surrendered body.

  The repast lasted for several minutes before Alice’s deceased frame slumped to the ground in a heap beside the fence, and the now frenzied undead proceeded to pull and leverage at her remains, many disfiguring their own facial features as they strained to fit their mouths through the lattice structure of the fence. It was a bloodbath, a complete bloodbath – and a bloodshed of the dawn light that Nic, Tam and Riley all watched with horror. Riley was visibly stunned, his eyes narrowing with every piece of flesh torn away before him; Tam cried uncontrollably, turning to Jenny and collapsing in her arms; Nic cried and convulsed, unable to control her early adolescent emotions and get a handle on what she was seeing. Unable to control the frenzy, a clearly distressed Jack led us back inside for the kid’s benefit – he knew there was nothing we could do but bring an end to their suffering. For Alice, the suffering was already over; it was little more than a carcass being devoured in those moments.

  The children had to lie down throughout the morning, comforted by a combination of Jenny and Jack while I attempted to quash the dying embers of the banquet and clear up what remained of Alice’s body, still trying to get my head straight myself. It was right up there with ‘Dog Penberthy’s mauling before my eyes back at the apartment; it was so sadly savage.

  Though I had suggested only yesterday that I had the impression Alice was feeling the strain of our oppressive situation over the last week, I had no idea she was in fact that close to the edge. She must have ‘checked out’ over the last few days. She was destroyed mentally, and promptly allowed herself to be destroyed physically.

  There are no more words for such harrowing experiences. It will never leave us, any of us. For the children, I fear it will not leave their thoughts for weeks, months even. And all the while, they are still mourning the loss of their mother. Today, the story of our survival turned a disturbing new page. I just hope there’s a brighter chapter lying ahead – we can’t take many more passages like that.

  20th May 2016

  Is anyone out there? Seriously, is anyone reading this? Has this all been a sick Government trial of some sadistic, intelligence nature? Will there be an end to all of this shit and suffering?

  I'm lashing out mentally. We all are, in the wake of Alice's death. Jenny and I knew her for little more than a week, but it was still too short. Worse still, the brutal manner of her passing was arguably the worst thing I have seen since this shit started nearly for months ago.

  The bloody outline of Alice’s body still stares back at us from afar, our eyes drawn to it the moment we walk into the glass fronted observatory tower and face up to the scene outside. I have scrubbed and scraped at the parcel of tarmac where she lay, dismembered. I’ve used whatever concoctions of bleaches and detergents we have available to us to scour away the bloody imprint of her demise, but still the foreboding faded red silhouette of her surrender haunts us.

  I can’t scrub anymore, I’ve got nothing more to give to the task, though Jack feels otherwise and continues to spend hours scrubbing at the scene like a madman. The hungered growling of a hundred insatiable corpses grappling and grasping at the fence besides it is enough to make you feel like a madman; I can only describe it as like when you’ve seen a TV drama try to replicate the impact of a bomb going off in close proximity to someone. It rings and reverberates in your head, with a feeling of being in another world, a deathly bubble almost. The blanket of groaning and moaning becomes an overbearing backdrop to the frantic scrubbing your bleeding hands are focused on, your peripheral vision narrowing and your view of the foreground blurring all at once.

  For the first time since mid-February, I feel like I’m not sure where we go from here. We are, to all intents and purposes, safe up here and we have for some time seen a longer-term survival here. Well, Jenny has had increasing doubts, but we have generally built our future around this former military base. It’s not so much the security of the place that’s in question; despite the hundreds upon hundreds of rotting, raging corpses that pile pressure on the base’s defences, we still can’t imagine the site being overrun. It’s holding up well so far, despite the torture of the situation.

  It’s more the question of whether our minds can hold up in the face of these mental machinations and torment. Where do we go from here, mentally? Can the children ever get over the things they have witnessed and been subjected to? Within the same four walls, imprisoned and oppressed, I’m not sure they will be able to. For Nic, it has not just been the same four wall for the last few days, but the same four corners of her bunkbed; she has barely been seen outside of the comforting hug of her bedsheets.

  What about Jenny? Thought they are all of our biggest concerns, it is not just the children that have been put through it. Jenny has seen, heard and literally faced up to things I would never, ever want her to be exposed to. Added to which, she is now quite far gone in terms of her pregnancy and – naturally – a cyclone of emotions whirls within her. How much more suffering can she take?

  All of which creates this feeling of lost, of cruel abandonment and despair. So, where do we go from here?

  22nd May 2016

  Jack is a very matter of fact man. Straight up, no shit, to your face – that’s him in a nutshell.

  When the apocalypse first began, he flew into action, ruthlessly putting all and anything aside for the sake of his family’s safety. “Nothing personal, I just gotta’ do it,” he would reason.

  As we found out in the last 48 hours, he began by foraging for family and food; he knew that if this crisis had started up country and somewhere near the Midlands, then they had a short window of time on their side. He estimated that whatever it was, whatever disease or virus or plague, there was a chance that it would be at least three hours before it managed to stretch as far as deepest, darkest Cornwall. He also believed that if the rest of the country had already been plunged into crisis, then there would be little or no food supply chain left – save for local farming produce – so it would be good to get a head start. He knew that whatever it was, it was contagious and they had to cut themselves off and not get infected.

  Hence, the VW van was filled up with as much as Jack could lay his hands on. From food and water to practical supplies like tools, logs, coal, oil, cans of petrol, old camping tents and sleeping bags of years gone by, the VW was well-stocked for mobile survival if the time came. It had never been put to such use before. He had even grabbed large bags of mixed food and dried seeds for his kids’ hamster. He told us he thought that damn hamster might just be the only thing that gives the girls some cheer. His only major regret at that time was, he spent so much time and energy focused on gathering up the essentials, that by the time the pestilence did hit it was too late to round up family too. He was already cut off from Jenny and I; he was cut-off from grandparents and other relatives. He had to reconcile with that and get on with the task in hand.

  What little he told us yesterday sums him up. As long as I have known him, Jack has always been a straightforward kind of guy, straight down the middle, to the point and simple in his outlook. What you see is what you get. He was grounded, all about his kids and his family. As long as he earned slightly more than he could spend, he was happy. It had stood him well
in life so far and probably meant he was better equipped to deal with the crisis, as he could see everything in simple terms; it was black and white and he had no time for complicating matters with more dilemmas or ifs and buts. All that mattered was his family.

  With this portrait of practicality he’s able to think calmly and clearly, and that’s why I’m telling you all of this, reader – Jack told me today that he thinks we do have a future up here, and we can make something better here. He knows there’s a long way to go; he knows we will have our work cut out to quell the tide of pressure that the undead continue to exert on our defences. But despite all of that, he believes we have a good chance here – and If he’s saying that, then that’s alright by me.

  Though questions still swirl and storm within our minds, we don’t feel as lost as we did only a couple of days ago. We have not even begun to deal with the loss of Alice. We feel bereft and bereaved. Collectively we are disoriented without her. We feel lost in our grief, but Jack’s assurance means we are at least found in our location.

  24th May 2016

  Recruitment ads used to tell us there were more than 200 roles, specialists and apprenticeships in the British Army, with similar numbers in the RAF and the Navy. How many thousands or hundreds of thousands-strong were our armed forces? Yet none of those highly trained, battle-hardened personnel seems to be here today. They didn't survive 2016, it seems. If they did, then they're certainly not here to help – and didn’t seem to be on the scene when rolling news coverage was streaming the onset of bloody mutilation and fatality across the country.