by Frank Tayell
“So where then?” Annette whined plaintively.
“Here. The train line. You see it. The grey line.” I pointed to the map. “There’s an old branch line about here.”
“Where?”
“Between here and here.” I pointed. “It’s not marked because that branch was closed years ago. But it leads to a tunnel, here. That was closed as well, but they were going to open it up again. They’d sent engineers in to assess it. That’s where we go. Then we’ll wait until They’ve passed over us, then we wait some more, and then we keep going. We’re going to get to Wales and to that beach and I’m going to get you onto that boat.” I was determined now.
“That’s thirty miles away,” Kim said.
“Then we should get moving.”
It took an hour to find the train line. It was a terrifying hour. We came across a large pack of the undead, heading in the same direction that we were. They were strung out in ones and twos a hundred yards apart, and on the road we needed to travel along. The thundering roar of the horde that was acting like a siren to this smaller pack drowned out any noise we made. They didn’t notice us until we’d cycled past. Then They snarled and dived and sometimes just fell forwards in their eagerness to get at this fresh prey that had so wittingly appeared in their midst.
Then, we reached the old train tracks, and as they curved away from the road we escaped the pack and were alone once more.
The tunnel was exactly where it should have been. The entrance was sealed with sheet metal bolted to the brickwork. In the middle stood a small door, held closed with bolts and three padlocks. We used the powder from two of the remaining cartridges to blow the locks.
Kim pulled aside the door. I don’t think I ever really knew what pitch black really meant until I stared into that dark tunnel.
“It’s empty?” Kim half said, half asked.
“Wait. Listen,” I said. We all did.
“I can’t hear anything,” Annette said after a tense thirty seconds.
“No,” I said, “and the sound of that gunpowder going off would have drawn Them here if there were any inside.”
“Still, I, I don’t know,” Kim said. “We could get back to London or...”
“It’s too late. Look,” I pointed at the grey cloud on the horizon. “The horde is getting closer. It’s this or nothing.”
“He’s right, come on,” Sholto said, stepping inside. “Pass me the bikes.”
I waited until he and Annette were inside, then handed Daisy to Kim.
“Here, take her for a moment.” Then I emptied my bag onto the ground. “And take that stuff inside, Grab some wood from out here to burn. I’ll be back in an hour.”
I ignored the questions and shouts of protest, grabbed a bike and cycled back the way we’d come.
It wasn’t anger, frustration, irritation or insanity or anything else, not this time. It was just mathematics.
I don’t know if I’d been thinking clearly when I remembered the tunnel, but I had been since we’d set out for it. It was instinct that said turning back just wasn’t going to work. Running into that horde was as good a sign as any other that our luck had run out. Another week or more roaming the countryside would only end with us trapped or dead or worse. That’s why I was sure the tunnel was the right place to be. If we could survive just a few days we’d be able to continue on to Wales in knowledge that all the undead were behind us.
Reading it back it does seem like I might be hoping for too much. But as we were cycling along the railway track I didn’t have time to think about what would happen when we left the tunnel. I was fixated on the number of days we’d have to spend there. We’d enough food for three adults one child and one baby for four days. Assuming none of the adults ate much.
I’d tried to work out how big the horde was, but there were just too many variables. All I had to go on was gut instinct based on what I’ve experienced so far and that said we needed enough food for a week. At least. Wherever that horde has been, nothing will grow. There will be nothing left intact to loot. There will be nothing but a dusty barren desert.
That I can’t do much about. Enough food for the five of us for four days is a different way of saying enough food for four people for nearly six. And six days is nearly a week and that might be nearly long enough. And if the girls make it to the beach they won’t need any more than that. We needed more food or fewer mouths.
That’s why I cycled away, simple mathematics. I had to look for more food and not return if I didn’t find it. Don’t get me wrong. I planned to get back to that tunnel. I’d spotted the farm on our way here. The sight of those trees laden with fruit had been what had started me calculating.
The farm turned out not to be a farm, but a small family home built on the edge of farmland. A huge fence separated it from the fields, belonging, I assumed to the much grander, much older building on the crest of the hill half a mile away. I took that in and discounted it as unimportant compared to the rising dust cloud approaching from the east.
I jumped off the bike and dragged back the iron gate covering the drive. Inside, on a lawn dotted with a rotting trampoline and a rusting swing set, were three apple and two wizened pear trees. Perfect. I shook one, and started gathering the fallen fruit. The bag was filled in a matter of seconds. It wasn’t a large bag. I needed another. There was only one place I’d find one. Inside.
I looked up at the sky. I couldn’t be certain but the dust cloud seemed nearer. There was no time for stealth. There was no time for thought. I crossed the lawn, reached the back door and threw it open. The door led into a utility room crammed with tumble driers and washing machines and a long oak table. On the other side of it was a zombie.
Its mouth was already snapping at me as it tried to walk through the wooden table. I’d left the pike back at the tunnel, but it wouldn’t have been much use in a room with such a low ceiling, anyway. I pulled out the hatchet with my right hand, whilst my left went to the edge of the table. I slammed it back a few inches. That was enough to push the creature back. It stumbled and was off balance just long enough for me to edge round the table, bring the axe up and then bring it down.
There was a noise behind me. Another creature stumbled through the doorway, its hands flailing in front of it. The blade came up, then it came down on the creature’s temple, splitting its head in two. The second zombie died.
I took a breath, then kicked at the body, moving it away from the doorway so I could get past. But it was a family house, and a family is made up of more than just adults.
There were two children. A boy and a girl and neither could have been much younger than Annette. Back in London, when I’d found a house like that, I’d turned and ran. But now I understand. They had been children. They weren’t any more.
It wasn’t killing, that’s what I’m telling myself. I know that it is the truth, I just find it hard to accept.
There were two other bodies in the house. A young child and an old woman. They were properly dead. The child had been laid out in a cot, perhaps dead of some natural cause. The old woman was locked in an upstairs room. After I broke down the door, and saw her body on the bed, unmoving, I didn’t investigate any further. There wasn’t time.
I found an old sports bag at the bottom of a wardrobe and threw in some of the clothes hanging above it. I went back down to the kitchen and filled the rest of the bag with every packet and half-filled jar there was left. There weren’t many. I opened the drawers until I found some green plastic bin bags. I opened one and threw in matches, toilet paper, tea-towels and anything else I saw and thought might help us through the next week. Dragging the bags behind me I went outside, pulling a couple of jackets off a hook as I went.
I filled one bin-bag with apples, then started tearing at the vegetable patch. I vaguely registered that it had been tended recently, that it can’t have been long since the people inside... I pushed that thought away as I thrust fistfuls of leaves, greens, roots and soil into the bag. I didn’t even n
otice what I was putting in. I only paused when I noticed the ground was shaking. I looked up. The dust cloud was closer. Much closer. I grabbed another handful of leaves and pulled up the world's smallest carrots.
“What the hell, Bill?”
Startled, I dropped the bag. It was Sholto.
“You followed me.”
“Of course I followed you. I came here, to England, didn’t I?”
“We need food and clothes and everything else to survive the next week, you see,” I said. It came out more manically than I intended.
“Right. Is that what’s in the sacks?”
“Apples. Mostly apples. And whatever else I could find. Carrots, see?”
“How are you going to carry it?”
“What?”
“You’ve got five sacks full.”
I hadn’t thought about that.
“Here.” He started picking up fruit. “Let’s finish filling this bag, and then we’ll go.”
There was kind desperation in his voice. He must have thought I’d lost it. If anything I was finally thinking sanely. Though, I guess that’s what an insane man would say.
When we got back to the tunnel Kim was standing grim faced outside it, the M-16 held menacingly in her hands. She didn’t even wait for me to get off the bike before she slapped me. I deserved it. Then she turned and walked inside.
She and Annette had gathered wood for a fire. By its light, after we’d secured the entrance, we took a look at my haul.
“Lot’s to eat,” Kim said, carefully. After a moment she added, “Food. Shelter. Fire.”
She was making a point. I couldn’t work out what. Annette did.
“There’s no water. Nothing to drink.”
“Here, food and water all in one biodegradable package,” I said, handing her an apple. I felt light headed. I gingerly put my arm out, searching for the ground as I sat down. “It’s dark in here. Didn’t one of those bikes have a light on it?”
“Thought we’d save that till later,” Kim said.
“Right. Sure.” It was odd, sitting around a fire inside a tunnel. I closed my eyes and rested my head on the cold, damp ground. “The problem wasn’t food. It never was. It was always water. But water needs to be carried, doesn’t it? Carried and boiled. But apples, they’re eighty five percent water, aren’t they? Or is that people? It’s one or the other.”
I don’t know if I said anything else. I fell asleep.
But not for long. I was woken when a lump of something hard fell from the roof, onto my leg. The tunnel was shaking. The undead were close. I heard sounds too, an irregular banging, not too far away.
“You alright?” Sholto asked.
“Sure. Just tired.”
“They’re outside,” Kim said, gesturing back up the tunnel. “At the door. After you passed out we went out for more firewood.”
“You brought back dog biscuits,” Annette said, holding up a packet.
“I did? I just grabbed anything that looked like food.”
“I mean, dog biscuits?” She repeated, in a tone that mixed disgust with disappointment that I’d not found anything more enticing.
“They’re not made of dog. Is there enough?”
“For you? Plenty, because I’m not eating any of them.”
“I meant food. Do we have enough?”
“For over a week,” Kim said.
“Good enough.” I closed my eyes again.
Day 135, Ludhill Tunnel, 10 miles east of Welsh border
01:00, 25th July
The incessant banging at the door stopped an hour ago. It has been replaced by an intermittent slamming thump as one after another, scores at a time, They walk into or are pushed into the doors. Each echoing, metallic reverberation signals the hordes slow progress up and around the embankment and over the hill above us.
The doors are holding.
There is nothing else to say, and nothing else to do.
04:00, 25th July
Sleep is impossible. Bang, thump, a ringing of metal, a cracking of stone, the breaking of bone, it’s the worst kind of symphony and the tunnel acts as an echo chamber.
07:00, 25th July
I think I heard a tree falling.
08:15, 25th July
Yes. Falling trees. Those must be the ones running alongside the embankment being knocked over.
15:00, 25th July
“What if those trees are blocking the entrance?” Kim asked.
It was a good point. In the dim firelight, I could just make out Sholto shrug.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said.
“How do you work that out?” she asked.
“This is a tunnel, not a cave.”
It took a moment for the meaning to register. We all turned to stare down into the darkness behind us. Suddenly it seemed ominously forbidding.
“How long is it?”
“Five hundred metres. I think,” I said.
“We should check the other end,” Kim said.
“Yes,” I agreed. None of us moved.
“If there was something down there, we’d hear it coming,” Annette said. “I mean, wouldn’t we?”
“Probably,” Kim said.
“And it would see the light from the fire?”
“Probably,” Sholto said
“And they would have stuck those metal sheets over the other end, so nothing could get in?”
“Probably,” I said. What I was thinking but wasn’t going to say was that if the builders hadn’t, if the other end of the tunnel was open to the outside and it was just luck that had kept the undead wandering up the tunnel, then there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.
“There’s no point hiding from the monsters in the dark,” Sholto said, decisively as he stood up.
“Wait,” I said. “I’ll go.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“No, I’m serious. If I’m bitten then it’s not the end of the world. If you do...”
He hesitated for a moment.
“We’ll both go,” he said.
“I can manage on my own.”
“Then I tell you what,” he said, “I’ll let you go first.”
The torchlight barely reached twenty feet ahead. It did little more than add a silver silhouette to the potholes that riddled the tunnel floor, but it was infinitely better than stumbling in the dark.
The rails had long since been removed, leaving nothing but the occasional rotten wooden sleeper. After I stepped on one that crumbled into a bloom of dust, I kept to the sounder footing of the rubble at the side of the tracks.
Step by step, inch by cautious inch, I moved slowly down the tunnel. I tried to listen, but I could hear nothing over the continuous drum roll of the undead. I told myself the sound was coming from outside but it was impossible to believe with the floor shaking, and a shower of dust and dirt raining down from above. At any minute I expected to see hundreds of ghoulish mouths snapping up and down, at the edge of the light. And I knew, if I did, that would be the last thing I’d ever see. It was the worst kind of torture.
Then I came to a door built into the side of the tunnel. It’s of the same construction as the door at the tunnel entrance, made of sheet metal held in place with padlocks and bolts.
“What is it?” Sholto muttered.
“A door.”
“I can see that.”
“I don’t remember there being a door here,” I said.
“You’ve been down here before?” he asked.
“No. I meant I didn’t remember seeing any doors on the plans. Except they weren’t really plans. They were going to re-open this tunnel. Part of an express route. Commuters, you know? There was a big press event, champagne and canapés and all that. There was a model and there were maps and that’s why I knew where the tunnel was. That and it cuts through two marginal constituencies. But the model didn’t have a door halfway along.”
“Right. Are they sealed?”
I didn’t want to check. It’s stupid I know, a Hei
senbergian fear. As long as I didn’t check the door might be closed and so I wouldn’t have to do anything about it. But if it wasn’t sealed shut... I hesitated too long, Sholto pushed past and tugged at the padlocks. The door shook with an echoing gong.
“Sealed. Let’s keep going,” he said firmly. We did. After twenty yards we passed another door. Exactly twenty yards after that there was a third. Then there was nothing but darkness and noise that lasted an eternity, but was over about twenty minutes later when the light became suddenly truncated. We’d reached the other end of the tunnel.
“We’re here.” I breathed out. And I relaxed a bit more as I played the light up and down the edge of the metal, checking that it was truly sealed.
“Turn the light off,” Sholto suggested, “See if the daylight makes it through.”
I did. It didn’t.
“Well,” he said with a deep sigh, “that’s alright then.”
I laid my hand out against the metal. It was vibrating slightly and felt warm to the touch. The freight train rumbling of the horde was louder here. I thought I could make out the crack and snap of bones over the ceaseless tramping of feet. I didn’t care. The tunnel was sealed. We were safe.
Then I really understood what I’d seen. I turned the torch back on and, slowly, methodically, played it up and down the tunnel entrance. There were three large sections of metal, two across the bottom, one at the top, each welded to the other. I ran the light along each seam, letting it fall on every inch.
“What is it?” Sholto asked.
“What do you see? Or, to put it another way, what don’t you see?” It took him a moment to realise.
“There’s no door.”
“There’s no door?” Kim asked, when we’d returned.
“So we’re trapped?” Annette asked.
