The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3]

by Rob Cockerill

  Put simply, it could just be that Stalker Steph has the ability to save us all – to unknowingly save the world from this abysmal apocalypse. Right now that might be a tall order. The magnitude of that task, and how we somehow prove or achieve it, is not lost on us. But it’s also something we cannot give up on, no matter how tempting it may be to put an end to those feelings of paranoia and insecurity that so haunt us even now.

  Stalker Steph is still out there. Now we just have to work out what to do with it…

  14th June 2016

  Today we have found ourselves looking harder and deeper at the situations around us as we strive to find some hope to take forward in this increasing world of doom and gloom. That means re-examining the army of the undead that so surround and oppress us; scanning the surveillance system for any chinks in that armour of ruthlessness that the pestilence possess; re-thinking our own position and our future survival strategies; and imagining what good might come of our shocking Stalker Steph discovery.

  It is, after all, yet another poignant day for Jenny. It would have been her mum’s birthday today, but with the state of the world at large, we have no idea if she is still around to mark that occasion, or if she is one of the many foot soldiers in the undead army across the country that so imprison us. Having lived in the Cotswolds region, where this pestilence is originally reported to have originated from, the odds do not look good. I fear, we will never now know.

  And so, we dig deeper to find the positives that we so desperately need.

  With the defences of the base just about holding firm, there seem to be signs of boredom or stagnation creeping into the near thousand-strong crowd of corpses clambering at the perimeter fence. It’s been weeks since they began to hem us in, and I’m still not sure what mental damage that has done to us all as individuals. The sense of harrowing haunting is both intolerable and indescribable; I fear we will all have changes in some way as a result, and yet we may never realise how until the long-term future unfolds.

  With all of the near misses and scratches and scrapes endured along the way, we have still not been able to come up with a tangible, feasible means of alleviating that pressure. So if there is a sense of inertia seeping into the undead resistance, it would be a welcome development. Though difficult to recognise in monsters that do not generally convey human characteristics, we can just see a handful of deadpan expressions crinkling out amidst the hundreds of still raging faces staring back at us. The countenance might just be changing. We have perhaps days left to stay strong, keep it all together and maintain our silence. By then, the cadavers may have all but lost interest and moved on.

  Upon closer inspection of the surveillance cameras, there may be gradual pockets of paths through Porthreth village emerging too. By the look of it, the security lights at the school – now surely running off the building’s back-up generators – are holding the gaze of many a corpse in the grounds, while drawing an even stronger crowd of the village’s zombie inhabitants each night. As one or two bulbs persist in what is clearly a long, drawn-out death of flickering and flashing like a slow disco for the dead, that very same distraction threatens to open up one or two seemingly sound passages through the village. So we have that hope on the horizon too.

  Added to which, the mystery fifth surveillance camera that we believe occupies front of house in the grand Georgian structure that is Porthreth Vean House continues to record something of a blank canvas. We have not yet seen any sign of activity in the house, alive or otherwise. While I am keen to not draw too many conclusions from that, I know it fuels further optimism for Jenny as she continues to question our future here. Right now, I have dwindling reasons to give her to stay and today is certainly not the day to pick over those wounds. But we have seen signs of momentary positivity in the last few hours to think that some sense of new normality might soon be restored, and perhaps then we can take a deep breath and consider our limited options.

  15th June 2016

  Windmills have stopped turning on the skyline, and many streetlights have gone out along the main road in and out of Porthreth; it feels like the world is slowly shutting down around us.

  In attempting to look closer at our environment over the last couple of days, we’ve noticed these subtle and yet symbolic differences. We watched last night on the surveillance system as countless streetlights flickered and fizzled out, one by one. It was such a simple and yet strange occurrence to observe. And when we awoke this morning and gazed out from the observatory watchtower, it was striking to see that the windmills on the horizon had ceased revolving.

  Day after day, whether windy or still, those windmills that tower tall and strong in the distance have continued to twirl at some pace. Today, however, they do not. Nor does light beam out from the lighthouse off the coast of the next cove along. If you look closely enough, and we have, the lights have gone out at that particular safeguard.

  All of which leaves us wondering if the power is gradually winding down across the area. Almost five months since the beginning of the pestilence, and it seems as though the world is quite literally giving up around us. Are we expected to do the same? The feeling of loneliness and impending finale is almost inescapable. Until you’re in such a situation, it’s impossible to describe just how claustrophobic it feels. The world is visibly grinding to a halt before us all. If that has us feeling trapped and condemned, how much more terrifying is it for the children?

  It really is beginning to feel like a case of fight or flight for our group, on so many levels. The perception is that time is running out on our battle to survive 2016.

  The pressure on the defences is easing, but on an extremely minor scale and not nearly quick enough for us to breathe in the slightly fresher air and make haste on any delusions we might have of leaving the base and looking for something more. Or even some answers. Added to which, we clearly have something of a ticking time bomb within our ranks; Jenny’s increasingly evident state of pregnancy is a powerful reminder that if we are to leave our sanctuary up here, then we need to do it very soon. Jenny is already feeling less mobile by the week, and it will not be long before she feels completely vulnerable and susceptible to even the slowest and clumsiest of cadavers. We already have three children to provide safe passage for, let alone two lives entwined in one full-grown body to carry too. It’s fight or flight, and we have to decide soon.

  The decision, of course, is whether we all see a future for ourselves here atop the village and cliffs at the ex-military base that we still know so little about, or if we believe we would be better off taking our chances on another shelter somewhere nearby. The lead contender right at this moment is Porthreth Vean House, the Georgian ‘mansion’ that we are all vaguely familiar with and that sits squarely in the middle of the village below. But that option in itself is full of uncertainty. Is it occupied? Is it safe, and free from cadaver attention? Is it any more robust or sustainable than the customised – and relatively fortified – surroundings we have here? It may not be an option at all. The problem is, we would have no way of knowing until we got there.

  Jenny is keen already; she has been for some time, in truth. But even if we could confidently answer all of those questions, we could still not guarantee the safety of Jenny or the children in actually getting there. And getting anywhere without them would be futile. So is it really a huge gamble worth taking?

  The base here has served us well so far. It has been oppressive, absorbingly so. It has been harrowing and haunting in equal measure. There have been few moments or weeks without fear. But we are still alive. We are still here. The defences, however shored up, have held firm and proved more than able. Even today, despite the unrelenting pressure of nearly a thousand crazed cadavers pressed on the site’s perimeter fence for weeks, and that fence has still not been compromised. In time, we may be able to make even more of this place.

  I have long believed, and still do, that we could build a bigger, brighter and altogether more sustainable future for us all up
here. But will we allow ourselves the time to realise that opportunity? Does it even exist? And if the world is slowly winding down and succumbing to society’s collapse, then is there anything worth sticking around for here anyway?

  We have a lot of thinking to do, very little time to do it in, and even fewer obvious options.

  17th June 2016

  With so much decision-making to be done, and questions hanging over our future survival here at the old military base, I’ve spent the last day or so trying to find out more about this place and its purpose again – more specifically, we want to know what the nature of its business is in having five (or more) surveillance cameras set up throughout the village.

  Given its clearly MoD nature, there’s little out there for us to draw upon. It’s something of a web lockdown, and it’s really difficult trying to do research without the full wealth of Internet resources available to you, and no-one to seed questions to either. Oh how we really were so digitally dependent in the past.

  So Jenny and I reverted back to the disarrayed dossiers that lay waiting for us when we very first arrived here. I’m crying out for some fresh air, to run the length of the base’s runway and do lap after lap of paced jogging. But we remain imprisoned here until the crowds of cadavers disperse into the woodland ether. We don’t want to jeopardise their passing and consign ourselves to even longer torture here in the concrete crypt as we have come to know it, so we are doing what we can while we’re stuck in here. Besides which, Jenny is not too inconvenienced to be sitting down and taking it easy in her condition.

  There’s still little to be deciphered from the reams and reams of official filings and status reports, but we might just have pieced something together.

  In the depths of deepest, darkest Cornwall, it seems, the site was a subtle ‘listening post’ for counter-terrorism activities. It’s a dark theory, very dark. It implies something we would never want to believe – both that there may have consistently been terrorist links in our otherwise sleepy village community, and that there was an air of suspicion about the village on a higher, governmental level. But it’s plausible. And from the documents we’ve scrutinised for hours on end, it’s very likely.

  There’s a lot of wording to the effect of ‘counter-terrorism operation’ or ‘CTO’ as it is often referred to in apparent briefing notes; a lot of references to ‘suspect packages’ and ‘ghost traffic’ in day logs; and ostensible surveillance reports, complete with multiple screenshots, of certain days or points in time. Those too have various code words like CTO and ‘Identified Target’. All documents are littered with technical jargon, covert chitter chatter and (presumably) pseudonyms, as well as being labelled classified and date stamped. The last filing we can find appears to relate to a surveillance operation that took place on 10th January – exactly one week before the first media reports of the apocalypse. Its ominous sounding conclusion reads:

  The findings of this intermediate report conclude there is imminent palpable potential for widespread disruption at a human and infrastructural level. Findings consistent with lab analysis of specimen.

  Threat level: Severe.

  Action: Immediate follow-up required.

  Report: Further evidence to follow.

  Quite what that is all supposed to mean is anyone’s guess. It sounds to us like there were very clear and present concerns within humble little Porthreth, potentially of a terrorist nature, but what it specifically related to is so vague we have no idea. We can’t understand what the lab specimen may have been, especially since we found no obvious examples of recent work in the lab upon arriving here some months ago. It’s opened up that very gruesome can of worms regarding the base’s possible involvement – however big or small – in this pestilence; Jack is convinced there is some semblance of truth in it. And what role would a camera set-up in Porthreth Vean House have had? That one is beyond us. Was the house used as an undercover reconnaissance post? Perhaps that’s how it’s surely not inconsiderable maintenance costs have been subsidised all of these years.

  It’s all theory and conjecture, at the end of the day. We’ve learned a lot more about this place, and yet in many ways feel no further forward at all. Crucially, I don’t feel any less secure here. If anything, with the passage of another couple of days and the gradual ebb of the tide of undead at our fences, I feel more content with our encampment here. In the coming days the task ahead of us will be to re-asses the site from a physical point of view – taking into account all defences, security and sustainability.

  20th June 2016

  I saw every inch of its face, up close and very personal. Pores that had been replaced by puss-laden protrusions; eyeballs that had greyed, drained away of colour and identity, looking no different to any other pair of staid eyes amongst the undead; cold, grey, withering lips adorned with random ribbons of congealed blood, browning with every hour; and haggard hair that looked less tousled and more bedraggled, littered with crusted on flecks of rotting flesh and blood.

  The teeth beyond those malcontent lips were literally rotting and writhing before me, uncontrollably chewing and grinding in bloodlust and anticipation. Only a pane of reinforced glass divided us when I awoke this morning and took my routine glance out of the postcard-sized window of the rear exit door. Sliding the metallic window cover across to reveal the window pane, that haunting expression stared back at me, it’s eyes visibly dilating and growing wilder for the prey appearing before it.

  Somehow, this stray cadaver had found its way to the rear of the site and, against all odds, had managed to bear down on the building itself. How long it had been there, I have no idea. But it had clearly picked up the scent or sense of life lurking within these four walls. The bigger question we have to answer is, how it got there in the first place. Is there a weak spot in the site’s fences that we were not aware of? Has the fence been compromised somewhere? Or has this decaying, hungered corpse been on-site all along? The thought that it may have been laying dormant all of this time, and could have attacked us out of the blue at any moment, makes me feel sick. Meanwhile the thought that the fence has been compromised leaves us fraught with worry.

  The consensus amongst us is that the latter could not have happened; if it had, surely a whole flood of cadavers would have followed this putrid pretence of a human through the fence. But we cannot know for sure until we get out there for ourselves and assess the situation. That will not be happening just yet – Jack, Jenny and I are still not convinced that the right window of opportunity to go unnoticed has yet arrived. Another 24 hours, for example, and we believe the crowd of undead will have dispersed enough to the east side of the base to allow us to venture outside.

  What could be more worrying right now is if that corpse had been ‘hanging around’ the base all of this time. It throws up so many questions – questions that play into Jenny’s argument to leave the site in search of something better. How could it have gone undetected? How could we have gone undetected? Where, exactly, has it been hiding all of this time and what brought it to our door last night? And how many more could be skulking around within the grounds without us knowing?

  22nd June 2016

  Today was a better day, reader. Today, we inhaled fresh air, unobstructed and free of threat for the first time in weeks. We removed all barricades, slowly slid back the heavy bolts across the front door, and carefully leveraged the door open with hands that shook from a unique combination of composure and trepidation. We didn’t know for sure what lay on the other side.

  Today, we discovered that nothing lay in wait on the other side, not within the perimeter fence at least. Beyond that fence, still there are several hundred blood curdling corpses clambering for our fleshy morsels. But the swell of the undead has eased substantially, the site is secure – just about – and we have some semblance of space and serenity again within this brave bastion.

  Today, we enjoyed a few fleeting moments of clarity and respite. Jack, Nic, Tam, Riley, Jenny and I all took a collect
ive sigh of relief. Just for a few seconds there was a kind of idiotic idyllic bliss; blissful because we had not venture outside of either the building or our paranoia for weeks, and idiotic because we know deep down that there is no bliss in this world anymore and perhaps never will be again. But for just a few seconds, we grasped it and bloody well clung on it – before lowering our gaze from the clear blue sky and readjusting to the sight of those ravenous cadavers not forty feet away.

  Today, Jack and I carried out a full inspection of the site and drew solace from the conclusions that its defences had held firm. The perimeter fence, the crudely assembled hay bail ballasts, the sturdy gates, the escape tunnel, and even the ‘natural’ log defences erected put in place in the woodland; they had all survived the staunchest of tests. Better still, they all remained relatively fit for purpose. As a result, the sustainable side of the base is in bloom too. The makeshift water butts and filtration systems have been salvaging what seems to be acceptable drinking water; and the once frustrating raised beds are beginning to bear fruit. Those experimental crops have come a long way while we’ve been imprisoned in the base for the last 2-3 weeks.