The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3]

by Rob Cockerill

  In closing for one last time, reader, I hope that one day someone stumbles across a resolution to this crisis, that someone far greater than I is able to piece together a cure or solution. I hope that the world can begin to live and learn and laugh again; it certainly never lost the love. I hope that some sense of normality they we once knew before can be restored. I hope all the survivors can be allowed the freedom to mourn their losses. I hope one day the world can become a truly better place for us all – with no place for tablet-based teachings and digitally enabled existences. I hope society can embrace all of the good that has been exposed by this apocalypse and learn to take a little more time walking before running.

  I fear that none of this will happen; I fear that there will be no reset, no return. I fear that life as we once knew it is gone, for good. I fear that, one way or another, we will not even make it through another year. I live in hope, but I wake and sleep in fear of the pestilence. I survived 2016. I fear we won’t make it through 2017.

  Epilogue

  Ice, everywhere ice. A weather front so cold and extreme hung over Porthreth for three weeks without lifting; no cloud cover, no wind or rain, just extreme cold penetrating every corner of the village and leaving a blanket of crisp ice as far as the eye could see.

  Every last droplet of vapour was transformed into pockets of ice. Every puddle or pond was frozen solid. Biters were broken, their fearless domination temporarily brought to its knees. Some were bound to the ice, others rigid with a form of frostbite, as their barely tepid blooded bodies succumbed to a combination of sub-zero temperatures and prolonged starvation. A year since the pestilence had so devastatingly begun, it threatened to be their ultimate undoing.

  It was a threat carried across the county and indeed, the country. The dead began to take their natural resting place on the ground, motionless, where they should always have been. The living, those that remained, began to think they might have a chance, they begin to find the first footings of long lost confidence - they began to believe again. Prying eyes showed signs of sparkling as they saw a quiet, uncluttered street before them through the letterbox. Others raged with an optimism that never truly went away. A few didn't just see ice and hope, but an unconditional love to match. They saw new beginnings, both outside and within. Those eyes belonged to JP and Jenny.

  Staring back at them was their very own Prim, all 6lb of her, they estimated. She gazed longingly into their eyes with so much love and so much blind faith it was easy to think the world had no problems. She searched their souls with every deep stare and hung on their every move, just as they had prayed for her safety for every minute of her first few hours in the world. It could not have been a more secure birth in the age of the pestilence, bobbing on the waves of the Atlantic with not a single biter in reach. And yet they knew it would not always be that way, it would not always be so safe.

  If it were not for the icy plains that enveloped the country, JP and Jenny would not be as safe as they were back in the village church. They had returned to land with a distraught Nic just days before, desperately in search of food, clothes and essentials for their baby – and to the only place they thought possible for Jack, Tam and Riley to be.

  Yet as they huddled to keep warm and snuggle Prim in her tightly woven bundle of blankets, the absence of their beloved lost ones could not be louder. They were not at the church, nor within sight. That aspect of their pilgrimage ashore had been futile. They had no idea, no inkling as to their whereabouts. They also had no tangible supplies to keep a baby and Mother going. Breastfeeding alone would not be enough, no matter how amazing JP and Jenny thought it was. Though there was now solid land beneath their feet, the feeling of drifting was inescapable; they needed to make a move for supplies and make it soon.

  With the weather front of icy relief taking the country in its grip, that prospect was no longer as fateful as it had been for so long. Though they wouldn't know it, JP, Jenny, Primrose and Nic would be among pockets of survivors across the county rising up and daring to step foot outside again. Mother Nature’s quell of the pestilence gave them a window of opportunity to grasp an upper hand that had eluded them for so long.

  Fires big and small raged across the country, as the brave built pyres for the undead and desperately sought to destroy all trace of them, the first steps of starting anew. Car alarms rang out and even more shop windows were shattered as despairing survivors frantically foraged and looted for undiscovered treasure troves of food, water and provisions; in a potentially finite timeframe to act, personal need prevailed over illusions of a bright new world.

  For JP and Jenny, the emphasis was on picking a way through to the 4X4 vehicles they had abandoned on the outskirts of Porthreth, and finding a route beyond their once sleepy hometown to bigger hubs and superstores. The pharmaceutical goods and bulk supplies of baby-friendly foodstuffs they required could not be found in local corner shops; Nic craved for more than beans and oats too. All the while, as they drove in search of the supplies that would not only sustain them but allow them the freedom to resume unadulterated searching for Jack, Tam and Riley, the clock was ticking.

  Everyone had to act before the big thaw and the threat re-awakened. But such was the scale of the undead uprising that no amount of bonfires seemed enough to make in-roads into their huge numbers; no trip beyond the sanctity of four walls was truly safe; and no-one knew how long they had before the weather front changed, the pestilence was re-born, and they were once again running into retreat amongst the shadows.

  The Pestilence

  The Diary of the Trapped: Prim’s Journey

  By Rob Cockerill

  Copyright © 2017 Rob Cockerill

  All rights reserved

  All characters are intended to be fictional.

  Foreword: The sequel

  When I first started envisioning and writing the Diary of the Trapped, it was really just a fun project online. I soon began to live the diary rather than just write it, and it developed into a mini phenomenon all of many own that year. Ultimately, it transgressed from online blog to full-blown novel.

  I had no plans to follow that up. As a self-imposed time-limited blog by its very nature, it had served its original purpose. I actually thought that I had signed off on The Diary of the Trapped; point proven (to myself), project complete. But as it turns out, my mind was clearly still living and working through it. I wasn't done with JP, Jenny and Prim yet – or the ravenous Pestilence that had so conquered Cornwall and beyond. One month on and I realised there was still plenty to explore.

  This is my humble apocalyptic story and I'm going to finish it in the only way I know how; through the honest, harrowing and indulgent musings of JP.

  For Edie...

  Prim is such a loved little girl, and yet the affection with which she is showered in this diary doesn't even scratch the surface of how much Mum and I love you, now and always.

  It doesn't take an apocalypse to know you're our world x

  The Diary of the Trapped:

  Prim’s Journey

  1st June 2017

  I vowed not to write again, not ever. After the world went to shit and we spent a year just trying to survive, updating my online journal in the hope of some help or community soon took its toll. One or two times it almost compromised our safety.

  When our daughter was dramatically born into this taken new world, the writing had to stop. The time for blogging was over. It wasn't just three of us trying to survive anymore, we were trying to survive for her now too – and sometimes in spite of her, given her screaming episodes.

  Surviving for her was and is the single most important thing we do. There's even less time to write about the messed up state of the world when you have another mouth to feed, another body to clothe, another life to hold dear and safe. And it simply doesn’t get any easier. The Pestilence still devours all life, almost 18 months since its outbreak.

  When I last blogged, we sat safe and snug aboard the waves in a small boat moored ju
st off Porthreth harbour, tucked away behind the rocky protection of a small cove. It was about as remote and therefore protected as one could be during this apocalypse – and just about the safest place I could think of for Jenny to give birth. Yet we were losing faith, losing the hope that something better might come along. There seemed no end to the death, destruction and evil in sight. We were separated from Jenny’s father, Jack, and her siblings Tam and Riley. Her other sister, Nic, was still with us, but as a group – as a family – we were divided and lacking any inkling at all as to how or when we would be reunited.

  And then something so beautiful, so incredible and yet to so terribly frightened happened, something we were so very ill equipped for. Our beautiful daughter Primrose was born, unexpectedly and early we believe, on 28th December 2016. She was and is the most amazing thing ever to happen to us and I literally thank the Gods each day for our good fortune.

  It seems ridiculous to feel lucky during the worst period in the history of the human race; a time when the living are fiercely outnumbered and fervently hunted by the undead. I’m nowhere near a religious man, either. And yet I am so very lucky to have both of my girls in my life, to still have both of my girls in my life. One or both could easily have been taken from us right there in those moments aboard that boat. The birth was arduous, traumatic, all consuming and so very terrifying. Only the remoteness of our location shielded us from the consequences of Jenny’s ferocious screaming. There was no pain relief, no medical intervention, no assistance of any kind, just Nic and I trying to get her through it with what little knowledge we had from our respective GCSE biology lessons and the wonders of the small screen dramas of yesteryear. How Jenny did it, I will never know. I will forever be amazed.

  Yet she did. She delivered, and cradled, and nurtured the most beautiful, amazing, heart-breaking little bundle of perfection I have ever seen. She held her tight and wrapped her warm and refused to let her go, even when she was losing blood and on the verge of passing out through exhaustion herself. She was determined she wouldn’t let Prim out of her sight.

  In truth we could have lost either not just in those moments, but in the touch-and-go hours that followed that night or at anytime over the next 72 hours. Every hour felt like a torturous trade-off between absolute love and elation, and tense terror or vulnerability at what might happen next. Every hour I prayed to Gods I didn’t even believe in; I prayed for their safe passage through the next few days and weeks.

  They were days and weeks that they were blessed to survive, but during which we were forced to dock back on land again. We faced a two-fold threat. Jenny’s uncontrollable, unbearable screaming had unknowingly attracted hundreds, if not thousands of feral biters to the shoreline. Though we wouldn’t know it for two full days, they had been instinctively drawn across the craggy cliff tops (quite possibly from the former military base) and out of the wooded hillsides to the very cove that we bobbed around with the ebb and flow of the tide.

  They couldn’t get to us with intent of course, but they did begin to simply fall of the cliff in the direction of the boat. Hundreds of them just fell like lemmings, one after another, into the Atlantic Ocean. Most sank, few floated around the base of the boat, but all were a potential threat. One or two bounced off the side of the cabin and into the sea. But it only needed one to plunder forward and plummet with enough momentum and fortunate trajectory to actually land on deck and we could have had a major problem. It was truly terrifying as they fell and fizzed into the water, while others gnarled and gnashed at thin air around the boat and all the while, the water around us began to turn yellow and give off a putrid stink.

  We went from feeling impenetrable on the seas to threatened all over again, with our tiny daughter to keep safe as well. It was a very visceral, timely reminder of the insecurity of the Pestilence. We are never truly safe. That threat was compounded by a drop in temperature so severe we had little choice but to find shelter on land again; at a time when more than half of Porthreth’s thousands of marauding biters had been drawn to the shoreline by Jenny’s screaming days ago, our hand was forced, and we would need to find a way ashore. If the idiotic falling of the undead didn’t claim Jenny or Prim, then the cold snap certainly would. We literally had not time to waste.

  So with Nic’s help, I moved the boat across to the other side of the bay and we moored it as best as we could against the cliff face, negotiated the waters and rock pools until we were on the cold sands and tried to shimmy our way out of sight up a lesser known coastal path away from the beach. It was a secluded pathway that we had so often strolled along on light summer evenings, but that we now edged through on tenterhooks. After around two miles of shouldering Jenny and Prim as best as we could, picking off just two raging, blood-thirsty biters along the way, we came across an empty shack at the top of the hill overlooking the whole beach and harbour. From there, the full extent of our plight opened up before us.

  Walkers were closing in on the beach from all directions. Scores still ambled aimlessly over the edge of cliffs. Hundreds lined the walls of the harbour, hundreds more had spilled onto the beach and were heading for the boat, and thousands more back them all up, flocking from the streets and alleys of the village in the pursuit of a feasting frenzy at the beach. The tide would claim many that evening, but thousands still ashore would be claimed by the big freeze.

  By the 2nd of January, there was ice everywhere. A weather front so cold and extreme hung over Porthreth for three weeks without lifting; there was no cloud cover, no wind or rain, just extreme cold penetrating every corner of the village, for as far as the eye could see. Every last droplet of vapour was transformed into pockets of ice. Every puddle or pond was frozen solid. Biters were broken, their fearless domination temporarily brought to its knees. We literally watched from the cliff on high as they dropped to their knees. We sat there with a fire lit, blankets wrapped around Jenny and Prim, and watched out of the shack’s glass panelled front as they succumbed to the extreme cold. Some were bound to the ice, others rigid with a form of frostbite, as their barely tepid, blooded bodies gave way to a combination of sub-zero temperatures and prolonged starvation. It had been almost a year to the day since the pestilence had so devastatingly begun, and it was the first sign of real hope that we had ever seen. These things did have a weakness, they were flawed, and they could be beaten.

  We were among the living that began to think we might have a chance. We began to believe again. Wrapped in as many layers as we could scavenge, with every finger and toe as insulated from the extreme sub-zero freeze as we could managed, we trekked steadily down into the village while we could, careful not to take any motionless zombie for granted. We headed straight for the village church; it was the only place we thought Jack, Tam and Riley could be. That’s the only place they could possibly have been heading for when we were split up. We were wrong. We realised we had no idea, no inkling as to their whereabouts. We also had no tangible supplies to keep a baby and Mother going. Breastfeeding alone would not be enough, no matter how incredibly amazing I thought it was. Though there was now solid land beneath our feet, and renewed hope in the icy cold air, the feeling of drifting was inescapable.

  Those few days saw survivors emerge from their hiding to see the world around them again, to take the initiative and take the fight to the undead, building great pyres and desperately burning all trace of them. Step by step, more of the community resurfaced; people we thought were long gone, friends and neighbours we presumed dead. And yet none of them had seen our missing.

  Car alarms rang out and even more shop windows were shattered as despairing survivors – myself among them – frantically foraged and looted for undiscovered treasure troves of food, water and provisions. But resources were understandably tight and picked off, and after only a few days out in the open, the ‘Big Thaw’ as we called it began to kick in. The temperature started to pick-up, slowly at first but then really warming throughout the days. The ice melted away in huge swathes and the clock
began to tick on man’s revival.

  We could see it happening and seemed to acknowledge before many others, so we made it our mission to pick a way through to the 4X4 vehicles that we had abandoned last year on the outskirts of the village. We needed bigger hubs and superstores, we required pharmaceutical goods and bulk supplies of baby-friendly foodstuffs. We needed nutrition. Nic needed more than beans and oats. And as a family we craved more than food; we yearned to get our Jack, Tam and Riley back. There were still thousands of untouched biters littered around streets and hillsides; no amount of bonfires seemed to make in-roads into their huge numbers. Jenny and I knew we had to act before that threat was likely to re-awaken. We didn’t know how long we had.

  And so, we were on the road again, just the four of us. A full six months since I last diarised our survival online, and we are holed up in a converted Mercedes Sprinter van that we found abandoned and decided to put to good use. During the first year of the pestilence, we learned not to stay in vehicles overnight; always leave a comfortable yet not unattainable distance. The reason? We had seen and experienced a number of hostile situations involving cars and belongings. If anyone is out there and desperate for something to change their path through this nightmare, then they're going to take your car. And while they're there, they'll whatever you have that's useful too. What's more, they'll take you by surprise in the dead of the night and make it hostile.

  It's far better to leave your car unattended, looking scruffy and bereft, with any added belongings stowed away in the boot. The empty, dusty car will be mistaken as simply another one of many that's abandoned and useless. Meanwhile, you sleep safer and (hopefully) undetected a little distance away, unbeknown to any wandering survivors – or undead, come to that. And if danger should arise, you're within a short running distance to the vehicle that's parked and primed ready to go. We learned that lesson fast and it's generally served is well so far.