At ten to four, the van was lined up at the end of Side Valley Road, a few yards back from the junction with the main road out of the village. Sarah had been chosen to drive, with everyone else hidden behind the boxes in the body of the van. She switched off the engine, relieved to have a few minutes break. It had been a difficult couple of miles, freewheeling down the first section of road, then creeping along in third gear, barely able to see more than a few yards in front of the windscreen. Twice she had found herself on the wrong side of the road, though of course it didn't matter as there was not another single vehicle in sight. She wound down the side window and listened for the army trucks. As soon as she heard the rumble of their engines, she also saw the first glimpse of their headlights. For a second she panicked about being far enough back from the junction that the van couldn't be seen by the drivers of the army trucks. As the headlights got nearer, she realised that her position was concealed by the electricity substation and its surrounding walls.
Sarah then panicked about starting the engine. However, she needn't have worried because, being still warm, it started at the first turn of the key. The army lorries trundled slowly past the junction and turned right immediately to begin the climb up out of the village. The sharp bend in the main road meant the van was perfectly placed to slot in behind the last truck. Keeping the headlights off, she stayed in line, maintaining the same gap as the vehicles ahead. The van was narrower than the army trucks too, so it was unlikely the driver of the one it was following would see it in his mirrors. Even without her lights switched on, Sarah could still see exactly where she was going by the rear lights of the one in front. Also if anyone in the village looked up to see the progress of the convoy, they would only see the lights of the three vehicles which were supposed to be there.
With her heart thumping in her chest, Sarah turned the van onto the level road at the top of the cliff. Still following the army trucks, she switched on first the side lights, then the headlights, hoping they would go unnoticed. All went well until a mile further down the road. That was where they came up against the road junction, the roadblock and the main encampment of soldiers. Sarah fully expected the convoy to have to stop for checking of IDs at least but the trucks were simply waved through under the moveable barrier. Rather than continuing as part of the convoy, Sarah turned left at the crossroads, straight into the heart of the camp.
Chapter 12: Delivery
A surprised soldier jumped out of the way of the van as it turned into the coast road heading north. In the side glow of her headlights, Sarah saw that it was completely surrounded by tents. A few lights had been set up on poles along the first section of road but the tents themselves were all unlit, giving the impression that the whole camp was asleep. A moment later, another soldier stepped out of the darkness and used his gun to wave her to stop.
'Where d'you think you're going, young lady,' a middle aged soldier said, pointing a torch into the cab.
Sarah gave him her widest smile and, using the name Graham had overheard on the scanner said, 'Commander Douglas Hodgeson has sent me to deliver these surplus grocery supplies.'
'Funny time of night for a delivery, love.'
'He wanted me to follow the convoy going to Breathdeep as far as the camp here, so you'd know it was legit.'
'Got any orders?'
'Can't give a civilian orders, can you?' Sarah said, turning on her best smile again.
'Yes, I can see you're not in uniform, love. Civilian, eh? How come you've not been shipped off to Breathdeep?'
'I run the sandwich shop in the village. The zombies never got anywhere near it with you lads doing such a fine job. I spent the rest of the day making sandwiches for them. Then I got a few hours' sleep before your boss sent me up here with the convoy.'
The soldier walked round to the other side of the cab, opened the passenger door and peered around with his torch, looking under the seat, as if it was possible for a zombie to be crouching there. He shut the door again and went back round to Sarah's side.
'Hmm,' he said, rubbing his chin. I'd p'raps better call this in. Commander Hodgeson you say?'
Sarah nodded. 'He's in charge around here, isn't he?'
The soldier hesitated, then began to lift his radio towards his ear. Sarah slipped down from the cab and said quickly, 'You can take a look in the back if you like. It's all good stuff and if it's not eaten by the end of tomorrow, it'll have to be thrown away.'
'What you got in there, then, love?'
'Pies, pasties, sausages, bacon.' Sarah could see that the soldier's tongue was almost hanging out at the thought.
'What sort of pies?'
'Beef, chicken, Cornish pasties. Good quality. School kids should have had them.'
'They took all the poor things away.'
Sarah took a deep breath and fought to keep her voice level. 'So I heard.'
'You got kids?' he said.
'Only grown up and gone away.'
'Give over, love, you're not old enough to have grown up kids, are you?'
Sarah giggled. 'Flatterer! You just can't see the lines in the dark that's all. If my husband could hear what you're saying…'
'Yeah, course.' The soldier stared at the ground for a moment. 'Sorry love.'
'Never mind. You want to see the pies or not?'
'Go on then, let's take a look.'
Sarah turned the handle on the rear doors and opened them wide. The van appeared to be packed full with boxes. Large bold letters showed exactly the items Sarah had mentioned.
'An' it's all for us, you say?'
'Don't want to waste it.'
'Too right, love. OK, you drive straight on down the road. Five hundred yards, round that little bend, 'til you get to the mess tent. It's marked. You can't miss it.'
'Thanks. You like pies, do you?'
'Not 'arf, love! Off you go now, you're making me feel hungry already. Tell 'em Briggs sent you.'
'Briggs. OK.' Sarah smiled as she got back in the cab and shut the door. 'Thanks.'
'Don't mention it, darlin'. Nothing like a nice pie.'
As she drove off, Sarah heard the soldier muttering to himself 'Cor, bacon and sausages for breakfast, pies for lunch…'
Chapter 13: Mess
When Sarah reached the mess tent, it was all in darkness. She got out and looked around. There was apparently no-one in sight, so she opened the back of the van and started unloading boxes onto an empty pallet outside the tent.
'I suppose they'll find the stuff in the morning,' she said to herself.
After taking no more than three boxes, a figure emerged from the shadows. Sarah nearly jumped out of her skin and was about to run back to the cab and drive off with the accelerator pushed to the floor, when she heard a man's voice. He was talking loudly into a headset, clearly intending for her to hear. She also saw he was wearing camo gear and so was almost definitely not a zombie.
'OK, Briggsie, 'sright, she's just here. Yeah, I'll give her a hand.'
'Sentry on duty, miss,' the soldier said, giving her a snappy salute. 'Hope I didn't give you a fright.'
'Well, a bit, actually, coming out from behind that tree.' In the dim light she could see he was rather younger than the other one. 'What with zombies being about and all that.'
'No zombies round here, miss.'
'I'm very pleased to hear it.'
'If there was, we'd shoot 'em.' The soldier grinned, then pointed to his earpiece. 'That was…'
'Oh, yes. Briggs? He said I should mention his name.'
'Yeah, Briggsie we call him. Let me have that one,' he said, taking the box of pasties Sarah had in her arms.
They took twenty-four boxes, stacked two deep in four rows by three high, from the back of the van. Then Sarah stopped and said, 'That's it now.'
'What about the rest of it?'
'You've got all the pies and stuff. The rest is simply basics, flour, salt, that kind of thing, see?'
The soldier flashed his torch inside, look at the remain
ing wall of boxes and saw that what she said was true. It had been Alex's idea to put the more interesting food stuffs on the outside layers, in case they were stopped, with the staple items behind as a screen to hide the fugitives.
'We've got to make a living, you know,' Sarah said with a smile as she shut the doors and turned the handle. 'Enjoy your pies and sausages.'
'You needn't worry on that score, miss,' the soldier said as Sarah released the brake and pulled away.
Within half a mile she found herself shaking so badly she could hardly stay on the road. Sarah stopped and opened the cab door to look back and make certain the van wasn't being followed. Then she forced herself to go on another mile, until the lights from the camp had completely vanished behind. She staggered out of the cab, tapping lightly on the side as she went to open the back doors.
'OK, OK,' she gasped, pulling down a couple of boxes. 'We're through.'
Graham's head appeared from behind the next box as he moved it out of the way and climbed out.
'You alright?' he said, taking her in his arms.
'No, it was awful, I thought the first one was going to use his radio and they'd find us out, then…' Before she could finish, Sarah burst into tears and sat down on the floor of the van quivering uncontrollably. Graham comforted her as best he could. Meanwhile, the rest of the group reorganised the boxes to make things more comfortable.
'Good job,' Janet said.' You and Graham come and sit in the cab. The rest of you make yourselves as comfortable as possible. I want to get as far away from here as I can before they realise they've been had.'
'Ha!' Bill said. 'Someone's going to choke on his sausages in the morning!'
Maisie yawned extravagantly. 'Like, what do you mean?' she said before sitting down on a sack of potatoes.
'I mean when they find out the delivery had nothing to do with any orders from the chief and the van's disappeared.'
'Even better, for all they know, there was only one person in it,' Janet said.
'You were fantastic,' Karen said, squeezing Sarah's hand before they closed the doors. 'I could never have done it.'
Graham led Sarah to the cab and helped her in. Janet fought her instinct to roar away as fast as possible and moved off at a sedate pace. She didn't want to shake up the others in the back and there was no telling what you might run into in the middle of the night.
Chapter 14: Sweep The Valley
'There's something funny going on here, you know, Doug,' Professor Mason said, speaking on the VHF link.
'Go on.'
'The telecoms company boffins can tell when a phone logs into a tower to get a signal, so we're certain the texts all got through to the individual phones.'
'How do they know that?'
'Because they weren't out of range or anything, they were actively connected with the phone relay tower at the time the texts were sent.'
'I see.'
'What we also know is that within less than ten minutes after that, each phone was turned off.'
'Dead people can't easily do that.'
'So, we still have nine or ten live people wandering around somewhere.'
'How come nine or ten?'
'Because we've got ten missing persons but a phone registered to one of the kids hasn't been operational all day, so it's probably switched off and left at home, or the battery's run down.'
'Did they get a triangulation for the location of the phones before they were turned off?'
'No because the only tower they connected to was the Kilkorne relay.'
'So they're still in the village.'
'Looks that way.'
'Just a minute, Albert. I've got another call to deal with. Get back to you.'
'OK. Out.'
'What sausages?' Commander Hodgeson's voice rose as he heard the mess sergeant thanking him for the surprise shipment of supplies delivered in the middle of the night. 'A van? A civilian woman?'
Hodgeson paced along the quay. It was quarter to ten and the early morning mist had completely dissipated from the sea. Squawking gulls wheeled above the heads of the soldiers, ever hopeful that one would drop something edible that could be swooped on.
Without raising his voice, Douglas Hodgeson spoke in a deep, menacing tone, 'Who was on duty? Briggs? Send him to me. I want a full description of this van and its driver, then get a chopper in the air and send out scouts on motorbikes. That van has got to be found… What? No, you can not eat the sausages. We have no idea what might have been done to them. Recall the lot. I don't care if they smell fit for the Queen, if anyone's eaten them, keep them away from anyone else. Briggs? Oh, yes, I bet he was first in line. Well keep him up there, then.'
'Trouble, Doug?' Professor Mason said, detecting strain in his friend's voice.
'At least one of them's got out.'
'When?'
'About 4 a.m., followed the convoy I sent you as far as the roadblock, bluffed their way through the camp, leaving a load of suspect food, then vanished.'
'Could the others have been in the van?'
'None were seen but it's very possible.'
'They're acting way too smart for zombies.'
'Knowing to turn the phones off, not replying to the texts, getting in a van and bluffing their way through an army camp, I should say so.'
'Might still be infected, though.'
'That's what concerns me.'
'Shoot on sight?'
'Sweep the whole Kilkorne valley from the harbour to the cliff. If they don't turn up, they've escaped.'
'I'll call you in three hours, that should be enough time to be sure.'
Chapter 15: Double Blind
'Mason, I hope you've got some good news.' The Minister for Home Affairs had caught the professor in his office again, trying to catch up on paperwork.
'I've sent a cargo of UV equipment over to Kilkorne.'
'That's good news, is it?'
'There's a mixture of hand-held detectors and adapted searchlights. It means Hodgeson can finish the clean up and be sure it's effective.'
'Processing of the detainees at Breathdeep, how's that progressing?'
'I've supervised separating the zombies from the pre-symptomatic ones. Subdividing the holding facilities means I now have groups no larger than six in any one room. That should help keep the media quiet on this occasion.'
'This occasion? You're anticipating more?'
'I meant compared with the first one.'
'I see. What about the vaccine?'
'We've proceeded with giving the trial batch to the most advanced cases and everyone who volunteered out of the pre-symptomatic group has had it, too.'
'Why only volunteers? I thought you'd dispensed with medical ethics over there. Just make them all have it.'
'Actually, it's quite useful because it provides us with a control group of sorts. If it was a proper trial, we'd have a double-blind system of course, where no-one knows who's got the vaccine and who hasn't, until after the results have been analysed.'
'That's scientific method is it?'
'Internationally accepted practice. In this case, though, the vaccine is either going to work or it isn't; anyone who refuses the vaccine is going to die, going by the last time.'
'There were several hundred thousand who survived the first attack.'
'Only five who'd been exposed to the virus survived.'
'You mean...?'
'Yes, Minister, the others all managed to keep away from being infected, either by barricading themselves into somewhere they could survive until the clean-up was completed, or were in the few remote areas that weren't affected. This was fully explained in the paper I sent you.'
'Have you found a way to tell if someone is infected before they show the symptoms?'
'No, blood tests work but by the time the markers show up, the symptoms have already appeared anyway.'
'That's not very helpful.'
'I know you don't want to hear it but there's some bad news.'
'And that is?'<
br />
'A few more of the zombie subjects are unaccounted for and we have nine or ten very resourceful Kilkorne residents on the loose.'
'Are they infected?'
'That we don't know but if they are, they'll start making mistakes and we'll catch up with them, same as the others. You authorised Hodgeson's shoot on sight orders, he'll implement them, as necessary.'
Chapter 16: Supermarket
Janet drove on 'til dawn, then stopped so Graham and Sarah could swap with Alex and Steve.
An hour later, Rachel banged a fist on the wall of the van. Janet slowed and pulled over.
'Can't we stop somewhere? This van's horrible with no windows and it doesn't feel safe with one of the back doors open.'
'OK, Steve, swap with Rachel, let her have a turn in the front.
'I'm hungry,' Maisie said. 'Sarah, why'd you have to, like, give away all the best food?'
'It all needed cooking for one thing, so it wouldn't be much use right now.'
'Are there any sausages left?' Fred said. 'We could do some over a camp fire.'
'There won't be any fires, young man,' Janet said. 'Not while there are helicopters looking for us.'
'And it's what we agreed before we set off,' Alex said. 'If we got stopped I had a pretty good idea the food would take their minds off what the van was doing there.'
'Worked, too,' Bill said. 'Brilliant job all round.'
'Thanks,' Sarah said. 'If I'd just driven straight off without leaving the food, the last sentry would have been alerted immediately and they'd have come after us for sure.'
'I agree,' Graham said. 'They were so distracted by the idea of what they'd be tucking in to the next day that they didn't even question it.'
Janet looked around the pale faces in the back of the van. 'It doesn't stop us from all being hungry now, though. I'm sure we'll find something soon.'
Half an hour later they pulled up at one of those out of town supermarkets, next to a tyre shop and a carpet store. The van's paint job looked garish and completely out of place there, in front of a concrete and glass building set in an expanse of deserted tarmac which would have once been packed with cars. Three of the four shutters were down over the front display windows of the shop but the door was unlocked.
British Zombie Breakout: Part Two Page 4
