Janet looked around the group of kids. 'How can you be hungry after all those pies?'
'Mum, that was hours ago.'
'Like it feels that way,' Maisie said.
'I think it's all the danger makes you hungry.'
Janet turned to her friends. None of them looked as if they were about to disagree.
'Don't worry, there's more here in the shop, shortbread and toffees, probably chocolate bars.'
'I'm dying for a coffee,' Karen said, 'What about you, Bill?' she said, squeezing her husband's arm.
He nodded. 'Me too. I can't believe how long it seems since we all met up on the quay this morning after the klaxon went off.'
'Samuel's office,' Janet said, 'if I know my partner, and I believe I do. He's got a kettle and some instant coffee up there.'
'I'll go and make a start,' Karen said.
'And when we've all had something to eat and drink, I suggest we make ourselves as comfortable as possible and settle down for an early night, OK?'
Chapter 8: Flying Zombie
The Victorian benefactor who had rebuilt the castle had shutters fitted to all the windows for no reason other than he liked the idea. They certainly weren't there originally. Old English Monuments hadn't been able to present sufficient reason to justify the expense of having them removed, so they had stayed and they were now what would prevent anyone, even someone aboard an army helicopter, from knowing the survivors were inside. As soon as the band of survivors felt secure, more candles were placed to provide light at strategic places, like the stairwell.
After each had taken a turn in the facilities available on the ground floor and chosen a fleecy top to wear for extra warmth in a size and colour appropriate to their liking, the group met in Samuel's top floor office. Karen handed round coffees to those who wanted them and a box of Turkish delight and two packets of shortbread were consumed with unreserved enthusiasm.
'Mum, I know you said about us getting an early night but I'd like to do the work on converting the torch because we might not get another chance and it would be incredibly useful to be able to detect zombie blood.'
'How long will it take?'
'Only about half an hour, with any luck.'
Maisie yawned loudly and Steve gave her a reproachful look. 'Oh sorry, I'm not like tired really, just y'know…bored.'
Alex knew if Maisie felt half of what she did, rather than boredom, it was more a sense of relief to be somewhere reasonably secure.
'All right,' Janet said to Steve, 'but be as quick as you can. Graham, would you like to keep an eye on him?'
Steve had emptied the bits and pieces from the DT room onto the desk and found that in his haste he had scooped up one of the soldering irons, which, now that the power was back on, he could plug in to convert the torch. He quickly determined by burning out three of the LEDs that the best arrangement for the voltage supplied by the battery was a series-parallel one. Graham watched with interest as Steve connected the LEDs, so that the normal white beam was activated by the main switch and the UV set was activated by the flash button.
'I can't wait to test it,' Steve said when it was completed.
'Come on then,' Janet said with a smile. She and Graham accompanied him down to the courtyard and across to the main gate where the portcullis had trapped three of the zombies when the teenagers made their perilous escape earlier. They saw that the vertical gate must have been levered up by the army and the mangled zombie carcasses had been removed. An acrid smell of decontaminant chemicals was strongly evident. They each watched as Steve depressed the flash button on the torch. For an instant a wan violet light shone over the heavy black bars of the portcullis. Immediately visible were splashes of zombie blood, fluorescing vivid green where the army personnel hadn't sprayed enough decontaminant.
'Wow, did you see that?' Steve said in an excited whisper.
'Works perfectly,' Janet said, giving Steve a squeeze. 'I can see how close it was now; you are such a hero rescuing the other kids. Come on, let's go back into the courtyard, being out here gives me the creeps.'
'Aw mum,' Steve said, not making it clear whether he was objecting to his mother's show of affection or her having the creeps.
Once safely back inside the keep, Steve put the torch away in his bag, together with the spare components.
'I wouldn't mind taking a look from the ramparts,' Alex said.
'Not for me, thanks,' Graham said.
'Well I'd like a look round before turning in,' Janet said. 'Anyone else?'
Alex wasn't surprised to see that Rachel and Maisie had no intention of going outside.
In cautious silence Janet, Sarah, Bill, Steve and Alex climbed the stone staircase onto the ramparts to see what there was to see. They were careful to keep the moon to the side of them, so that they didn't cast a shadow or form a silhouette which might be seen from below. From the castle walls, they saw that floodlights had been set up all along the quay down in the harbour and the bulky figures of armed personnel striding back and forth. Mounted on the back of an army lorry, a searchlight flicked on and beamed across the village, showing wisps of smoke escaping from the still smouldering piles of rubble which were all that remained of a number of shops and houses. Less than half a minute later it was switched off again.
'I notice the Black Lion pub's still standing next to the marketplace, there,' Bill said.
'Yes, I wonder if any pints of their best hand-pulled ale 'evaporated' this evening,' Janet said.
'I'm sure drinking on duty isn't permitted.'
'Maybe not, but not all of them will be on duty all of the time.'
The yellowish glow from the floodlights cast an eerie light over the harbour and a little way into the village. A vehicle's headlights swung into view at the top end of the cliff road and began a steady crawl down the steep hill into the village.
Janet was about to suggest they went back to the keep when a large, white shape swept overhead from behind the onlookers and glided down in a wide circle. It gave a series of piercing screeches as it swooped over the short section of Castle Mount before it became Academy Row, where it turned past the school and then on into the town half a mile further on. At the second screech, a dozen shots were fired. Alex saw flame shoot from the end of a gun and ducked in terror with the others. Bullets could be heard slamming into the castle wall somewhere below.
'That soldier's a maniac,' Bill said in a hushed voice. He had ducked down as soon as the creature flew up and surprised them.
The soldier's radio carried clearly through the darkness, which was cut in two by the beam of the searchlight playing over the castle walls. There was some indistinct shouting and a truck engine started up somewhere further off.
'Michaels, is that you?'
'Here sarge,' sounded the voice of the soldier Bill and Graham had so narrowly escaped from earlier in the evening.
'I hope you didn't hit that thing?'
'What thing sarge, the flying zombie?'
'Flying zombie my backside! That was a barn owl and it's a protected species.'
'But you said to shoot first and ask questions afterwards and it screamed just like you said.'
'Screeched. I'm patrolling the marketplace, so I heard it myself.'
'Can't have been an owl it was white and really big. Right over the top of me it was.'
'Screech owl some people call 'em. That noise they make is on the telly in all those murder-mysteries.'
'Don't watch 'em.'
'Never mind, stop firing off random rounds. Bert's coming up to relieve you in half an hour. Think you can behave yourself 'til then?'
'Yeah sarge,' The soldier replied in a weary voice.
Chapter 9: Texts
'What was all that shooting about?' Karen said, her face looking white and drawn. She reached out a trembling hand and pulled Bill in through the door to the keep.
'An owl flew over and gave us all a fright,' Janet said, 'including the soldier who likes to shoot at everything. We heard him
talking to his sergeant on the radio.'
'He told his sergeant it was a flying zombie!' Bill said. 'Real city boy, that one.'
It looked like Janet's plan for an early night was going to founder again because before she could open her mouth, Maisy's phone chimed. And before Maisie could say the word 'text', Alex's and Rita's phone each produced their chosen text melodies. There had been such a succession of events, everyone had forgotten the cell tower was operating once more.
'It's my mum, and she's OK,' Maisie said, waving her phone like a flag.
Within five minutes every phone had received at least one text and there were tears all round as they realised mums and dads and other close relatives were safe. Most were in Buntinton, Samuel had sent his text from a hotel in Colesford forty miles away, and Bill and Karen's daughter had sent a worried-sounding text from her home in the north of England.
Funny how they came through all together,' Alex said almost beside herself with joy at a text she'd received from her mother on her father's phone.
'Well,' Graham said, 'it makes me suspicious.'
'What do you mean by that?' Bill said.
'Yes,' Sarah said, 'how can it be suspicious?'
'The cell tower has been working since around the time we left the school when the rocket blew the klaxon off the clock tower.'
'Yes, so?'
'Well, everyone we know must have been worrying about us and sent texts hours ago.'
'And…'
'And so they didn't get through because the authorities didn't allow the networks to relay the messages until they knew we were all missing.'
Alex began thumbing in a reply to her mother, saying where they were but Steve leapt forward and cancelled the text just as she was about to send it.
Alex, close to the end of her tether, barely contained herself from screaming. 'Why did you do that?'
'Graham's right, isn't he?' Steve said. 'This is what they want. If we reply, it'll give away our position.'
'It's lucky there's only one cell tower in range,' Graham said, 'otherwise they might be able to work out where we are by what other towers our phones log into. As it is, they may work out we're still in Kilkorne because it's the only tower we're in contact with.'
'OK,' Janet said, 'it's probably best if we switch the phones off anyway. I don't imagine a single one of us has brought a phone charger with them.'
With reluctance, the others either mumbled or nodded their assent, and phones were switched off.
'Right, let's settle down for the night. We've had quite enough excitement in my opinion.'
'Girls up here with us?' Karen said.
'Us chaps will take the museum on the floor below, then,' Graham said.
Graham woke at around two a.m., knowing that, although he'd only managed four hours sleep, he was too wide awake to go back to it. He lay still for a while, trying to think what had roused him. Bill, Fred and Steve were still fast asleep. It wasn't just the hardness of the floorboards in the museum, mitigated to only a small extent by the few cushions they had found, something was nagging at the back of his mind. His thoughts were circling around how they might be able to get away from Kilkorne altogether. They could try and walk out but it was over a mile to the other side of the village from the school; and what would await them after that, other than getting caught? No, they needed some sort of transport. There was the grocer's delivery van but he could see them getting stopped instantly if they tried to drive out in broad daylight. That only left driving out at night. But how to get away without alerting whichever soldier was on duty halfway up Academy Row, between the school and the castle?
Chapter 10: The Plan
Graham's plan slowly came together: keep as much as possible of the goods in the van, stacking the boxes against the back doors, so as to create a space right in the middle to conceal everyone. Everyone, except for the driver. Even if the van was stopped and the rear doors opened, all that could be seen would be cartons of foodstuffs. Then there was the problem of noise; the engine couldn't be started initially because it would attract the attention of the soldier on lookout duty. The van would have to be pushed out of the school yard onto the downhill section of Academy Row that skirted the village. Once the van had freewheeled to a side road that took a circuitous route to the cliff road, they could start the engine. They needed to do it while it was still dark, though, and they needed some way of getting up the cliff road without using headlights and without raising suspicion.
Leaving the museum quietly, he went down the stairs into the shop where Karen had left the scanning radio. As he couldn't get back to sleep and couldn't think of how to complete his plan, he decided to listen in for coms traffic between the army units. He listened with his ear pressed to the speaker set at very low volume, so as not to disturb the others. For more than half an hour, there had been nothing but the occasional routine order given and a reply from a subordinate. Graham was about to switch off to conserve battery power, when he picked up a transmission from Breathdeep to the army commander at Kilkorne.
'Professor Mason?'
'Hodgeson?'
'Yes, best to make sure you're talking to the right man, under the circumstances.'
'What's happening in Kilkorne?'
'I've got sentries posted around the village. No sign of any significant movement, apart from a couple of jumpy soldiers. Few rumours, nothing we're not dealing with.'
'No sign of the missing civilians?'
'Not one. I don't believe they could have been killed, either by zombies or friendly fire. We've combed everywhere, both intact structures and anywhere that was destroyed both before and after.'
'Any idea where they should have been?'
'Well, the kids should have been in the school of course, where we scooped up all the ones we've sent over to you. The adults all had jobs around the harbour. One of them, a Mrs Reynolds, was the harbourmaster.'
'Really? So one of the missing kids is her son. Interesting.'
'Bit of a coincidence.'
'Yes, I can't imagine where but I'd say there's an exceptionally good chance the whole lot of them are all together.'
'Could they have got out of the village?'
'Impossible. There's only the one road in and out. Where it meets the coast road on its way along the cliff top, we've set up a roadblock at the crossroads. That's where our main camp is. It's pretty barren country up there. Anyone escaping in daylight would have been seen and caught.'
'Just as I thought,' Graham said to himself.
'What about night time?'
'We've got sentries with night scopes and infra-red cameras covering the whole area. No-one will get through.'
'Good, so, if they're somewhere in Kilkorne, you'll find them.'
'How are things going at Breathdeep?'
'I've had the Minister on my neck all day. I haven't told him quite how many escaped. If he had any idea it was closer to five hundred, you'd have been sent over to arrest me.'
'We go back a long way, Albert, that's not on the cards.'
'Thanks, Doug. We're not out of the woods yet. There's the ten from Kilkorne need to be found, dead or alive and there's a hundred or so zombies at large in the county. I've set up a cordon at a fifty mile radius, so sooner or later we'll get them all.'
'How about the UV for detecting zombie blood?'
'Yes, you can start using the lamps we've got over here. Special order, high power jobs, can be used in daylight. There's about sixty crates of equipment.'
'Transport?'
'Send a couple of trucks, Doug, that would do it. What time?'
'We'll dispatch three six tonners at four a.m.'
'Perfect.'
Graham turned off the scanner and sat quietly for several minutes. It looked like the second part of his plan had just fallen into place.
Chapter 11: Until 4 a.m.
It took Graham half an hour in all to wake Janet, make her a coffee and go through his plan with her.
'Honestly, I
can't see any other way out,' he said. 'Even if we walked, they'd still catch us. Like the guy said, it's all barren grassland up top, and we'd be even easier to spot at night.'
'So, you're saying we prepare the van, push it off down the lane and, assuming we're not seen, roll it down to Side Valley Road, start the engine and drive round to the bottom of the cliff road then wait for the 4 a.m. convoy?'
'That's the easy part.'
'Assuming we can pull in at the back of the convoy without drawing attention to ourselves when they go past, how do we get through the roadblock?'
'There'll only be one person in the cab playing the part of the grocer's delivery driver, whoever we decide that's going to be. They'll just have to wing it. Even if they get caught, everyone else in the back may have a chance to slip away later.'
'I wish we could get hold of an army uniform.'
'There's just no way we're going to be that lucky, we'll just have to bluff our way through.'
'Well, if we get past safely, all we'll have to do is quarantine ourselves for the maximum incubation period, then we'll be able to prove we're not infected.'
It turned out not to be that difficult to rouse everyone else and persuade them to try Graham's plan because it was just not very comfortable sleeping on the floor in the castle keep. Another half hour later, everyone was up and heading down the tunnel out into the field, creeping along past the sentry post, back through the woods and into the school yard. They all got a terrible scare when they opened the rear doors of the van to rearrange the boxes. The caretaker's cat had been trapped inside and leapt out with a hideous yowl the instant it saw a way out.
'First I think we should push the van round,' Alex said. 'so it's ready in the direction we want it to go.'
'Like why do we have to do that?'
'Because while we're organising the boxes in the back, it'll be less likely that anyone will see us with the torch lit in there.'
British Zombie Breakout: Part Two Page 3
