“Where’s everything been stored? Where’s the rucksacks? I know you’ve got some. We’re loading the car and we’re getting to that boat tonight.”
“We can’t leave in the middle of the night, the marina will be locked up.”
“Do you think a padlock is going to let any of the boat owners get between them and their salvation when that is happening outside?” I pointed viciously at the door and Carla followed my finger in fear, as if expecting another corpse to come staggering in to her defenceless house. With timing appearing to be counterpoint to my neurotic prose, there was a thump against the thankfully-boarded patio doors. Apparently we were making too much noise.
“Get upstairs and get the rucksacks. Get together the food, the medicines and safe changes of clothes for all of us. Remember we’re not going on holiday here. Forget about weapons I’ll sort those. Remember some toiletries too, we need to be able to keep clean. Don’t pack anything you’ve already got stored on the boat. Rick? Rick pick up that hammer and get your act together. We need to make sure nothing else surprises us coming in to this house.”
Shaken from his catatonic daze, Rick did as I asked. He followed me mutely, the sheep to my German Shepherd. I looked him over and sensing my apprehension at his worthiness, he stooped to the ground and then hefted his hammer in a show of compliance. I supposed that would have to do. The mutilated body of Ass and whoever the hell had eaten him in the first place were starting to cause a stench that was nauseating, but with things the way they were there was neither sense in moving them nor the time to do so. Carla hurried up the stairs so fast it was like I was hustling her all the way with a cattle prod. Couldn’t really blame her; she did have to leap over the corpse of the stranger to get to the first few steps. I’d have been paranoid that an undead Carrie arm could have still made a grasping plunge for my ankle, pulling me towards bloodied red teeth and sentencing me to the same gruesome end as her hapless chubby neighbour. Maybe she was paranoid. No time left to pander to that though and anyone with a scrap of intelligence would have noticed the dire situation we were in before I had started my ranting, perhaps even before the cranial demolition of Ass. Ignoring corpses seeping with blackened viscous blood, Rick and I stood by the door, he with the aforementioned hammer and me with a hammer and a butcher’s knife from the kitchen. Britain might not have guns, but many of the middle-class houses probably had so many cooking utensils that they’d probably be able to make a good, a ha, stab at survival. There was another dull thud from the back of the house. The boards we’d put up at the back were sturdy. I didn’t see any reason why we should split our attentions and watch both ends of the building. With Carla safe upstairs, the front door was without a doubt our most vulnerable point.
Rick looked as nervous as I felt. Both of us were behind the door, waiting for something to come through it rather than stand in the threshold as a beacon for anything that might be walking past on the hunt for new snacks. It occurred to me then that lights in the downstairs of the house were on and could be acting as a signal to anything and everyone in the vicinity that there was something open and available here. But turning the lights off? Fighting a zombie in the dark? That prospect filled me with all sorts of heebie jeebies. The door had been broken for what, five minutes at least now? The lights had been on throughout that time so it’s not as if they hadn’t had sufficient time to realise there was an opening to a new small fast food restaurant in the neighbourhood. I mouthed to Rick.
“The lights?” He shrugged his ignorance and I rolled my eyes. Pointing at the ceiling, I mouthed again ‘the lights?’ followed by a pathetic impression of a zombie. Realisation washed over his face and after a few seconds where he no doubt contemplated, as I had, the film-scene of undead combat in the dark, he leant back and flicked off the light switches for the hallway, the movement-sensitive driveway and the landing. There was a grunt from upstairs but thankfully Carla was on the same page as us and continued to pack things away without fuss.
I’m not sure how long she took to pack, but it felt like an eternity. With the lights off and the natural light from outside now failing entirely, my ears were the only sense left with anything to do. I dismissed the thudding from upstairs and tried to listen more carefully at what was happening outside. There was a surprising amount of quiet, but in the distance I could hear car engines and sirens. That wasn’t odd; High Salvington wasn’t exactly by the town but in night the noise would carry from major routes and if the emergency services had reserved them for exclusive use then they’d be tearing up and down them like nobody’s business. But if they were the only vehicles on the routes, why on earth were they needing to use their sirens?
There were other noises too. Once or twice I heard faint screams and hoped against all hope they were movies, domestic fights or the wailing of a fox in the countryside. There was no running and no urgency. The beams of car headlights scythed across the room seven times, lighting me and Rick up like ghostly effigies before moving on to whatever nameless destination the passengers of the car had carved out for their own survival. As I started to reach inflective breaking point on my sister’s packaging, she hustled down the stairs hefting one huge rucksack.
“There’s two more. One for each of us. Why the fuck couldn’t I just throw all this in the car?”
“Because if something happens to the car, we’ll be left with absolutely nothing. That’s not a position I want to be put in right now. Go get the other bags with Rick and I’ll get the gun.”
“You come with me and get the bag, Rick’s better with the gun.”
“Not in that state he isn’t.”
“I’m better now Warren. Carla’s right. You go and get the bags. I’ll load the gun and get the keys ready to run for the car. We don’t know what’s out there at the moment.”
Accepting the choice in the realisation I wasn’t even confident on how to load the gun, I took the steps two at a time, pounding them ahead of my sister. At the landing I lost my bearings for a few seconds before stumbling through the door of the master bedroom. It looked like it had been burgled, but sat proudly on the bed were two bulging rucksacks, highlighted in the darkness of the room by the muted sulphur lights of the occasional streetlamps.
The streetlamps. Fuck. Who cared about porches when there were roadways of streetlamps to keep the dead interested and stumbling around in rural circles until the power went completely out? I went and clutched at the sill and strained my eyes in to the street. Initially I was relieved, thinking there was nothing and no one out in the mute darkness. But then something I would have mistaken for an alcoholic stumbled in to the wash of the light about six houses down. I swore inwardly as it was followed by two more figures. Not a swarm, not a mass. But dangerous enough when we were in such a small group ourselves.
Checking the heft of the two bags, I gave Carla what could sarcastically be called the lighter bag and led us back down to the hallway. Rick was waiting and about to charge out the door when I pulled him back, fingers to my lips. I tried to sign for car keys and he dangled them in front of me. I then thought how I could possibly make a sign for streetlamps and gave up before starting. I frowned, trying to silently put across my fear when I realised whispering would probably still do the trick. They hadn’t come again for us yet after all, and the other zombie probably only came to us because of that idiot Ass.
“The streetlamps are on. They are out in the street. How quickly can we do this?”
Rick looked at the key. “I can open the boot from here. It’s an ignitionless car so we don’t need to fuck about with that. Sensory lock too so I don’t need to do the central locking. We just need to run.”
“Fuck the boot, we’ll chuck the bags in and run for it. This needs to be fast. Are we all ready?”
Carla and Rick nodded. I raised my hands and counted down from three. When my fist closed, we charged out the door like an amateur swat team. Car doors were flung open and bags thrown in as we pulled doors closed as quickly as our thumping
hearts and elasticised limbs would allow. Rick was in the driver’s seat, not too sure how he managed that as Carla stole shotgun and I was left in the back. As the headlights came on I’m guessing I was actually pretty glad of that. I cringed down in the seat as half a dozen of the undead were illuminated by the headlamps of the car. Their faces were angry and lips pulled back over their teeth in predatory snarls. None looked like they had been mauled. In fact, despairingly, all of them looked pretty fresh. One made a charge for the bonnet and Rick panicked.
“Floor it! Just fucking floor it! Get us out of here before they surround the car, you tool!”
Rick did as I asked and bodies rolled away as they were buffeted by the solid bonnet of the car. At low speeds their impact wasn’t crushing and the integrity of the car body didn’t seem to suffer too much. The windscreen wasn’t damaged, which was a blessing. The car kept going, and that was the most important thing at the moment. Wheezing, Rick pulled out of the street and down the road. We saw one or two stumbling bodies as we moved but so many houses were dark, lights doused and empty of life. Or at the very least not showing their hand if they did still contain living and breathing human beings. One or two of the undead tried to give chase but if they hadn’t been Usain Bolt when they were alive they certainly weren’t experiencing any kind of second wind athleticism in death. Bennington seemed like a lonely and desolate place as we made our way to where Carla’s boat was moored. Wickham was the next town along the coast and we could reach it without dissecting any of the blocked major routes and without going near the train station or the town. If zombies were in the quaint streets of hilly High Salvington, then the town was most likely a bloodied riot that I wasn’t going to go anywhere near.
+++
Chapter Four
“A journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it” – John Steinbeck
I’d love to say I was glued to the window as we drove to Wickham, eyes wide and jaw dropping at the carnage I was seeing. Truth be told, it was boring as hell and the roads were astonishingly trouble-free. Maybe a lot of people were still trying to use or were stuck on the major routes. Maybe people weren’t leaving at all; this close to the coast, anyone with sense would have already tried to head out to sea or would be trying to ride it out in their homes. If I had been them, I’d be heading out for it. That’s what we had intended to do before fate played its cruel hand, after all.
Carla and Rick were just as mute. I think we were probably all in shock, but none of us knew how to put words to that oddly withdrawn state of being. All of our thoughts were introverted and none of us wanted to voice any of the chilling horror scenes that were rampaging around our heads. We tried the radio to see what was happening locally and the broadcasts had all reverted to pre-recorded emergency announcements alternating with disconcerting periods of static.
One thing I did try to see was signs of fighting in the town, or sight of any support coming from the major roads. Mercifully there were no gouts of flame licking the underbelly of the night sky. Worryingly, I saw no signs of the emergency services bringing us aid either. There weren’t many routes between towns in this end of the world and I had thought to see at least one or two sets of flashing lights on our tense journey. I echoed these worries out loud to see how the other two would react.
“Maybe they’re already in the town.”
“Maybe they’re going with lights off. Not as if they’ll need to get people out of the way if the roads are blocked.”
“And they don’t want to draw unnecessary attention from those things. Look at what it was like for us, and we don’t have sirens and a two-tone light strip on our car.”
I sucked my teeth and added my own fear to the mix. This landed a lot closer to the callous likelihood of the situation. “Or they’ve been told to completely ignore the smaller towns.”
There was a horrified silence as they thought about this prospect.
“Think about it. London’s so bad it’s been completely locked down. The country has been cut off from the rest of the world. The government knows this situation is critical and they don’t have the resources to tackle and protect every small town and every village across the bleeding country. They already said they were concentrating metropolitan. So what would you do?”
Rick’s voice was firm. He’d bought in to it. “I’d send them all to the cities.”
I nodded my approval. “I’d send them all to the cities.”
“But,” Carla hesitated “that would be suicide!”
“They’re under orders. I’m guessing we don’t shoot deserters any more, but how many of them will be swept away in a heroic haze thinking that they’ll be the ones to save the country? And how many others will just ignore the orders and stay at home? If we can’t save the cities then the country is lost; most of our population sits in those core areas. But how much do you want to bet that they’ve made this decision without even looking out of a fucking window and seeing the blood down on the street?”
“Like weather forecasts.” I cocked my head in query and Carla laughed bitterly. “You know, the weather forecasts. Apps, websites, you name it. Each and every one of them when they’re wrong, we say ‘stick your head out of the window and you’ll see what the fucking weather is like here’ but the thing is, whoever writes and updates that app or whatever, is nowhere near where you are. In fact, sometimes they’re in a different country. Do you think the Cabinet and the Royals are even still in the UK?”
I smiled bitterly along with her. Apocalyptic, with a chance of zombies. 80% - 95% probability of death, and light showers. “Probably not. That’d be about right. Airlifted out as soon as the shit hits the fan. The Royals I can understand, women and children first and all that, I mean even they were meant to get off the Titanic first. Not as if they do the decision-making any more. But the Cabinet? If they’ve done a fucking runner too…”
“What? You’ll write a scathing article about them Warren? No one’s going to be reading the papers for quite some time, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Well I’m making sure I survive this. So that when people do start reading papers again, I can roll one up and personally shove it up the PM’s arse.”
“We don’t know that they have gone.” Rick added. “And you need to get out of Bennington first.”
“But it makes sense, doesn’t it? That they’ve just done a runner, I mean. They’re making calm announcements – fuck, even decent announcements, by their standards. Who’s telling them what to write, because they certainly never managed it before?” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and scowled at its ebbing battery. Never mind, the networks probably wouldn’t last that long anyway. Right now, I had a few precious bars of data signal and I flicked in to Twitter.
“What are you doing?”
“Let’s see what #BritishPM gets me.”
I sifted through dozens upon dozens of vitriolic rants from Londoners that couldn’t leave the city, from gun keepers that were reeling from the loss of their weapon, and from a lot of the general public just wanting to know more than the basic earlier announcements were able to provide. I bet #BBC would have got me some great tongue in cheek comments about the repeats being aired throughout the day and how the TV License was a waste of money. Then my thumb rested over a comment that had already been retweeted over a thousand times and yet was only a couple of minutes old. “Nice to see the #BritishPM is sinking with his ship. New England is not the UK. #coward #zombies”
How trustworthy was this tweet? I checked the user - @funboi1992 – and he looked inconspicuously average. No sign of a job. Maybe he was a bagboy and had seen the PM in a hotel? Whatever the truth of the story, it was gaining momentum and might need a response. I favourited it so I could search it out later. If I could search it out later.
“Guess we might be right. Lots of chatter, but one tweet saying the PM is in the States. Must have got out early to get all the way across there.”
“Fucking ar
sehole.”
“What she said.”
“Here, what’s that?”
Carla pointed ahead to a glow in the distance. A couple of cars came speeding the other way and the glare of their headlights on a road that had been so quiet up to now stunned our sight for a couple of seconds. They were quickly followed by another four cars, one of which flashed its lights at us in full beam before fleeing.
“Is that apocalypse Morse code for ‘turn the fuck around’?”
“Probably. Carla? How far from the marina are we?”
“Not far. But I’m starting to think that it’s right where that orange glow is.”
“That flame-coloured hazy glow?”
“Yep.”
“Shit.”
Rick, passive and quiet as always, seemed to be winding up to say something. I braced myself, as if a world-changing announcement was about to be launched in to the stratosphere.
“If the marina is on fire, do we really want to go in there?”
I wilted. Even Carla sighed a little before she responded. “We don’t know that the marina is on fire. And the boat is our only chance of a clean escape. We haven’t driven all this way to turn around. And where else would we even go?”
“Should’ve thought about that before we got in the bloody car.” He muttered.
“What?” Carla snapped at him.
Great Bitten: Outbreak Page 7
