Viro [Book 1]

by Barnaby Taylor

  ‘We should,’ said Tim, ‘but we can’t run the risk of infection.’

  I scrambled over the stile. We lifted our bikes over as well. We stood at the top of the fields. They were massive. I saw lots of rugby pitches and football pitches. Two dead viros were in the back of the nearest goal. I saw two more arrows.

  ‘We ran into them on the way up here earlier,’ said Kevin. ‘They’re fine from a distance in the daylight, especially when you have one of these,’ he said as he patted his longbow.

  ‘How come you have these bows and arrows?’ asked Abe.

  ‘We’re both on the school’s archery team,’ Kevin replied. ‘Before all this happened, me and Tim and a few others used to represent the school in tournaments all over the south east.’

  He smiled.

  ‘I guess that was all good practice for what has happened now.’

  ‘Can you teach us?’ asked Abe. ‘I’d love to be able to kill a viro with one of those.’

  ‘Kill a what?’ asked Kevin.

  ‘A viro,’ said Abe. ‘That’s what we call these things.’

  Kevin laughed.

  ‘Maybe some time, I might, but for now we need to get back to the school. That car alarm has stirred up a real hornet’s nest. We’ve been spotting groups of your so-called viros everywhere.’

  Tim came alongside.

  ‘Small groups are manageable,’ he said, patting his bow. ‘The problems start when small groups get together and form bigger ones.’

  ‘We know,’ said Amber. ‘We met three soldiers back in the ornamental gardens who got separated from their unit.’

  She grimaced.

  ‘One of the them was bitten and they then got overrun by a swarm while helping us escape.’

  ‘Me and Ellis saw another two gangs,’ I said. ‘Soldiers in lorries killed them with machine guns.’

  Kevin whistled.

  ‘Wow!’ he said. ‘You’ve had some excitement and no mistake.’

  We walked but didn’t speak anymore. The fields were really muddy. The sun was shining. We walked past a small group of trees. There was a cricket pitch. It had a high fence. There was a gate in the middle of the fence. I tried to remember what it was like before all this happened. I couldn’t. It would never be like that again.

  Vinnie

  Tim and Kevin stopped. Tim unlocked the gate. Kevin kept watch. We went down concrete steps. We walked through two bicycle sheds. I saw a road going past the big building. The end was blocked with cars.

  The school was old. It had a tower block. There was another building attached to the tower block. Tim locked the gate behind us.

  Someone came running towards us. It was a tall boy with spiky, black hair. Ellis dropped her bike.

  ‘Vinnie,’ she said with tears in her eyes. ‘I missed you so much.’

  ‘Me too, Sis,’ said Vinnie as he hugged her tight. ‘I thought that you were gone forever.’

  He hugged her tighter.

  ‘Mum and Dad?’

  Ellis shook her head and began to cry harder.

  ‘Come on,’ said Tim. ‘Let’s get you lot inside.’

  Later on, we were sitting in the dining room. Baxter was licking water from a dish. A big man in a brown suit and fancy brown shoes sat next to us.

  ‘My name is Dr. Roger Thompson and I’m the Headmaster of St. Dunstan’s.’

  He was really sweaty.

  ‘Frankly, I’m amazed that you foolish children weren’t eaten a long time ago by those things. Whatever were you thinking?’

  ‘We were thinking about surviving,’ said Amber. ‘And we think we were doing very well.’

  ‘Hmmph,’ said Dr. Thompson. ‘Surviving, you say; but for how much longer?’

  ‘As long as it takes to find Jake’s mum,’ said Abe.

  Dr. Thompson looked at me.

  ‘Where is your mother?’ he asked.

  ‘At the hospital. She didn’t come home.’

  ‘Then that’s it, I’m afraid,’ said the headmaster. ‘Contact with the hospital was lost yesterday afternoon. Those creatures have most likely overrun it. There will be no-one left alive now.’

  ‘You don’t know,’ I stammered. ‘Mum is really strong. She is still alive.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I really don’t care too much about your mother at the moment,’ replied Dr. Thompson. ‘We’ve got far too much to do here without worrying about anyone anywhere else.’

  I stood up. I was going to cry. I wanted to hide. No one should see me like this. I walked away. I went up some stairs. I opened a door. I closed the door. I sat down at a desk. It was dark.

  My tears came from right inside.

  Who was that man? Why did he speak that way? He didn’t know Mum. He didn’t know how good she was at things. The man’s words made me upset. He made me feel all on my own. Without Mum I was alone. I didn’t like alone. I needed love and protection. I wasn’t meant to be alone.

  I got angry with Mum. Why did she go to work? Why did she leave me alone? I hit the desk again and again. My hands really hurt. I didn’t like me angry. I felt upset for saying it was Mum’s fault. It wasn’t her fault.

  I knew she would find me if she could. She would really try hard. She would find me. She wouldn’t ignore me.

  No way.

  Idiot

  The door opened. It was Ellis and Baxter.

  ‘He was wondering where you had gone so we thought we’d come looking for you.’

  Ellis sat down. Baxter lay down.

  ‘That headmaster is a real idiot,’ she said. ‘He’s mean and rude and doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

  ‘She’s alive,’ I said. ‘Mum is alive. I’m going to find her.’

  ‘I know you will,’ said Ellis. ‘And we’re going to help you.’

  She patted Baxter on the head.

  ‘Aren’t we, boy?’

  Ellis walked over to the window.

  ‘The world is now so weird and so crazy,’ she said, ‘that I don’t know how anyone can possibly survive out there but we have and if we can then so can other people.’

  I looked out the window. The school was on a hill. The town looked big far away. I didn’t see the hospital.

  ‘Come on,’ Ellis said. ‘I heard them talking about cooking some dinner. Let’s go and see what they’re making.’

  Amber and Abe were sitting down. They were with Vinnie and Tim. They were eating roast chicken and potatoes with gravy. It smelled nice. I was starving. Vinnie gave two covered plates to me and Ellis.

  ‘We saved you some,’ he said and smiled.

  I started eating. Ellis did the same.

  ‘Try not to worry about old Thompson,’ Vinnie said to me. ‘He isn’t really as bad as he makes out.’

  ‘He’s just worried,’ said Tim. ‘One minute he was the headmaster of a sleepy school in a tiny town and the next minute he found himself in charge of protecting it from a zombie menace. The only good thing is that this all happened during the holidays.’

  ‘We’ve been lucky so far,’ said Vinnie. ‘Apart from the occasional skirmish, we haven’t had to fight off too many of those things but Abe and Amber told us about the swarms you’ve seen.’

  Vinnie put down his knife and fork.

  ‘If one of those hits us,’ he said, ‘we probably won’t survive.’

  ‘We’re doing what we can,’ said Tim, ‘but it isn’t possible to do much more than send out the odd patrol. That’s how we found you.’

  Tim looked around.

  ‘We have three bows and a dwindling supply of arrows. We’re no real match for anything.’

  ‘It would help if we knew what had happened,’ said Vinnie.

  ‘Some soldiers told us it was a virus or a bomb,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tim. ‘We heard something similar but no one knows for sure.’

  Kevin ran into the dining room.

  ‘Trouble,’ he said. ‘A huge horde is approaching from the top of the lane.’

  Vinnie and
Tim stood up.

  ‘We’re on our way,’ said Tim.

  Vinnie looked at Ellis. He sounded concerned.

  ‘Don’t get separated,’ he said. ‘I’m not losing you again.’

  Calm

  Dr. Thompson spread a large piece of paper on the table. We all stood around him. He said it was a plan of the school.

  ‘The horde is coming from this direction,’ he said. ‘They are moving slowly and will likely take a while to get here but once they do the fences are probably not going to hold them.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked a worried-looking man wearing a tracksuit. ‘We’re no match for these things.’

  ‘Maybe we are and maybe we’re not, Mr. Smith,’ replied the headmaster, ‘but I would prefer us to stay calm all the same.’

  ‘Calm?’ replied Mr. Smith. ‘How can we stay calm? You saw what one of those things did to poor Mrs. Quinn.’

  ‘We all did,’ said the headmaster. ‘If it hadn’t been for the calm, decisive actions of Vinnie, Tim and Kevin, everything could have been a whole lot worse.’

  Dr. Thompson looked hard at Mr. Smith.

  ‘We all need to set an example here, Ivan. Now pull yourself together.’

  ‘Perhaps we should evacuate the school, Headmaster?’ Ivan said. ‘We could make a break for it while the horde is held up by the fences.’

  ‘But where would we go, Mr. Smith? At least here we have walls and fences, even if they are in danger of being breached. We might not find another place like this.’

  ‘There is an army base at Dungeness,’ Abe said. ‘The soldiers told us about it. They said we should try and get there.’

  ‘Have you any idea how far that is from here?’ Dr. Thompson said. ‘We could never get there on foot.’

  ‘I was only trying to help,’ said Abe.

  ‘Well, don’t,’ replied the headmaster. ‘We’ll handle this.’

  The man was very rude. Abe looked upset. Amber wanted to speak. Tim shook his head. Amber looked upset. An older lady coughed.

  ‘Perhaps I might be of assistance here, Headmaster?’ she said. ‘I think I have an idea.’

  Dr. Thompson looked up from the plan.

  ‘Well, let’s hear it, Mrs. Stone,’ he said. ‘We don’t have all day.’

  Mrs. Stone ignored the headmaster’s rudeness.

  ‘The movement of these hordes reminds me of the way that animals migrate.’

  Mrs. Stone paused, waiting for the headmaster to interrupt.

  ‘If we can find some way of blocking their movement we might be able to herd them in a different direction. It would be like placing a log in a stream to divert the flow.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mrs. Stone,’ replied the headmaster. ‘But where will we find a log big enough to block the flow of this particular stream?’

  Mrs. Stone smiled.

  ‘The school coach,’ she replied. ‘We can park the coach against the vulnerable part of the fence and stop the horde from breaking through.’

  The headmaster put his finger on the blueprint.

  ‘You mean right here, Mrs. Stone?’

  The Headmaster smiled.

  ‘Yes. I think that might work.’

  ‘Of course it will, Headmaster,’ replied Mrs. Stone. ‘One of us needs to go and get the coach, drive it around to the top of the playing fields, unlock the access gate and head back down towards the school. Once on the cricket pitch, all they then have to do is manoeuvre it into position and the entrance to the school will be blocked.’

  Mrs. Stone looked very happy.

  ‘Brilliant!’ cried the headmaster. ‘All we need now is someone to drive the coach.’

  He looked at Mr. Smith.

  ‘Ivan, you’ve taken school teams to away matches in the coach before. You can be the one to block the entrance.’

  ‘I’d rather not, Headmaster,’ Ivan replied. ‘I’d really rather not.’

  Gate

  We all could hear the men arguing in the kitchen.

  ‘I won’t do it, Headmaster. I simply won’t do it.’

  ‘But you will, Mr. Smith. You are the only person who can drive the coach.’

  ‘It’s pretty much like driving a car and I bet half the teenagers out there are having driving lessons.’

  ‘Don’t be so absurd, Mr. Smith,’ said the Headmaster. ‘It will have to be you, I’m afraid.’

  The two men came back. We all pretended we were busy.

  ‘That’s settled then,’ declared the headmaster. ‘We don’t have a moment to lose.’

  He looked around.

  ‘Tim, Kevin, and Vinnie, I need one of you to go with Mr. Smith and unlock the gate. The other two can act as escorts to help everyone get to the coach. Its only outside in the car park but just to be on the safe side.’

  Vinnie nodded.

  ‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘Give me the key and I can jump out to unlock the gate when we get there.’

  Tim and Kevin stood up and looked at Mr. Smith.

  ‘Ready when you are, Sir,’ said Kevin.

  Mr. Smith didn’t look up.

  ‘If we have to,’ is all he said.

  The headmaster spoke to us all.

  ‘I don’t have to tell you how dangerous the situation we find ourselves in is. You know what the world is now and what is waiting for us out there.’

  Dr. Thompson stood up straight.

  ‘This is my school and has been for the last thirty-seven years. I have spent my entire career battling councils, cuts, committees and now cadavers. I wasn’t beaten then and I won’t be beaten now.’

  ‘He’s crazy,’ whispered Abe. ‘Plum crazy.’

  ‘What do you want us to do?’ asked Amber. ‘We’re ready to help you.’

  The headmaster looked at Amber. He looked annoyed.

  ‘Not get in the way,’ he replied. ‘This isn’t a game, you know.’

  I stepped forward.

  ‘You must be nice,’ I said. ‘You must stop being rude.’

  The headmaster laughed.

  ‘Nice? Rude? You foolish, damaged child. What would you know?’

  Ellis got angry.

  ‘How dare you say Jake is foolish and damaged?’ she said. ‘How dare you? Jake is brave and kind and loyal and strong …’

  The headmaster cut across her.

  ‘I don’t have time for this,’ he said. ‘Just stay out of my way.’

  He looked at Vinnie.

  ‘I’ll be in my office. Let me know when Mr. Smith is ready.’

  Eve

  We were all upset. Mrs. Stone saw it. We all sat down next to her.

  ‘We haven’t been properly introduced,’ she said. ‘My name is Eve and I used to teach geography here.’

  She laughed.

  ‘I say ‘used to’ because obviously nobody needs any more geography lessons from me.’

  I liked Eve. She was kind and gentle.

  ‘You must be Jake,’ she said. ‘I hear that you have been very brave.’

  My blush made my cheeks sting.

  ‘He has looked after us all,’ said Ellis. ‘Jake saved our lives in the Ornamental Gardens.’

  ‘He nearly lost them as well in the caravan park,’ laughed Amber. I knew she was joking.

  ‘Seriously,’ she continued, ‘Jake has been there for us all from the start.’

  ‘We all have,’ I said. ‘I’m not special. I’m lucky to have these friends.’

  ‘He also rescued Baxter,’ said Abe. ‘Jake’s a real hero.’

  Eve held my hand.

  ‘Pay no mind to the headmaster,’ Eve said. ‘Roger is a strange and difficult man but he only wants the best for everyone, even if he finds it impossible to show it.’

  Eve’s hand felt warm. She felt a bit like Mum. A small tear arrived in my eye. I coughed.

  ‘He’s mean,’ I said. ‘Mean and nasty.’

  Eve nodded.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But if it makes you feel any better he’s mean to everyone.’

&nbs
p; ‘I guess.’

  I didn’t know.

  Eve looked at all of us.

  ‘You kids shouldn’t be suffering like this, no one should. It breaks my heart to think of you all alone out there trying to survive and witnessing such terrible things.’

  She looked upset.

  ‘Everyone is suffering, including you,’ said Amber, ‘but we all have two choices; we try or we die.’

  Amber put her arm around Ellis.

  ‘We’re going to keep trying,’ she said, ‘because we sure ain’t dying!’

  ‘No way,’ said Ellis.

  I felt really proud of everyone.

  Really.

  Proud.

  Batting

  Eve smiled again.

  ‘I guess we should be taking survival lessons from all of you,’ she said. ‘Your parents would be very proud.’

  ‘My Mum is very proud,’ I said. ‘She’s out there. I’m going to find her.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Eve. ‘I really hope so.’

  Just then Ivan Smith appeared. He was wearing cricket pads on his legs and a helmet. He had a cricket bat under his arm. Dr. Thompson came out of his office.

  ‘What the hell are you wearing, Mr. Smith?’ he asked. ‘You’ll never drive the bloody coach like that!’

  ‘I’ve got to get there first,’ replied the sports teacher. He knocked the bat against his pads.

  ‘I’ve represented both school and county, Headmaster. It will be just like opening the batting in a championship match.’

  ‘It will be like nothing of the kind, Mr. Smith,’ the headmaster retorted. ‘Nothing of the bloody kind.’

  He put his hands on his hips.

  ‘Now listen here, Ivan,’ he said. ‘We are depending on you and we have no time for any tomfoolery. You get this done and you get it done properly or don’t you come back to my school.’

  The headmaster turned to the boys.

  ‘This is the key,’ he said to Vinnie. ‘Take care and good luck.’

  Vinnie was not panicking. I wanted to be like him. I didn’t want to be like me. Ellis hugged him.

  ‘Take care,’ she said. ‘I lost you once, I’m not going to lose you again.’