World Down: A Zombie Novel

by Walker, Callum Bennington Goldworth

  “Sarah,” I spoke but she was long out of my reach.

  I immediately searched for our car.

  “Jess, come on, it's too late,” I said to her.

  “Linda, help Lily. You,” I pointed to the boy, Gareth. “Take Mike away, to the car!”

  We moved quickly, running across the road to the car, but as we ran a rogue truck came running us and the crowd down, ploughing through people like a bowling ball. Linda was swept off her feet, almost pulling little Lily along with her. The trucker rammed the military block and his vehicle was set afire by gunfire, dispersing the large crowds that had gathered.

  “Bloody lunatics!” I shouted, to both the driver and the soldiers, before I noticed Linda, dead or dying in the middle of the road. I looked away to the carnage, with Sarah nowhere in sight, I made a decision.

  “Lily, to the car get in the backseat go!”

  I looked back and saw my oldest daughter, gazing over the dead.

  “We must leave here!” I pulled Jess away from her dying grandmother, she was kneeling at her bloody mouth, Linda was trying to say something. I pulled and pulled with all my small might Jess to the car, she resisted all the way. When she was in her seat, I jumped in the front seat and sped off in the direction we came.

  “I told you we shouldn't have gone out!” Screamed Jess, echoing her earlier statements. I looked in the rear-view mirror and found her crying, tears falling down her cheek, while Lily sat petrified.

  I drove not knowing where to go or where we were going, I wanted to drive as far away as possible from all of this mayhem.

  The Motorway - Day 8 - Blake

  Ahead of me, behind me and to the side of me were thousands of cars lining motorways of still panic, frozen like a picture. People were scattered about like roadkill in between lorries and cars, trucks and trailers. In the brush near the barriers, the insane ate the flesh of the fallen. They were infected with Savi-17, that was what they called it on the news. I didn’t even know if they were still alive. They were cannibals eating their friends. Cannibals? No, they were not cannibals, they couldn't be. They were monsters. A new creature, born from our reckless tampering with nature. It was an evil that we only hoped to calm. More and more people were dying. Those lumbering husks weren’t even the worst part. The bodies once put down became bloated, some even exploded, passing the disease on to those nearby.

  We filtered through the dead traffic. One by one lighting our barrels up. Clearing the way for the big guns that slowly rolled behind us. I could hear them coming, clucking, cracking along the dead, for there were so many, and none wanted to go near to clear them in case they exploded. They crushed bones and smashed the agape skulls of the fallen inside their tomb like cars. The engine drowned out the slow moans and vicious daring growls of the infected, ebbing ever closer and closer. I had never seen such a sight before, such raw but now dead chaos. I would not have liked to have been here yesterday, nor the day before, nor whenever this tragic scene played out. When the motorway shutdown for good.

  There were more of them up ahead. The sounds they made. I ignored it, for us on the green fields, I had seen it before. They were feral, the screams and the calls all piercing through me at once. No planes in the sky, no cars on the roads, just ours, slipping through the cracks. I looked to my friends. Mason, James, Jake, Hussain and Thomas. We were not meant for this, we were boys. Not soldiers.

  The dead were numerous and increasing, but fortunately for us, trapped, in their cars, behind their cars, on their own bones, down the steep hills on either side of the motorway. A sports car was in the fast lane, with a woman in fine clothes clawing at the window. A tomb of modern greed for her sins. What was I saying, we all had sins, every one of us.

  We’d been out there for a good hour, clearing the way. We must have saved several dozen survivors. But we lost a part of our sanity, that we would never truly get back I feared.

  Yesterday the wall was set up around the camps near the airport. A quarantine zone for us at the train station was erected, surrounding the various car parks. It controlled the flow of small traffic on the motorway, while a tank column held it steady. I say tanks, it was one tank with a few escort vehicles, jeeps, with a few machine guns when we left them an hour ago.

  We were stopping any civilians from making it north, any potential infected. North, they said, that's where it was safe. In the opposite direction was only death and decay.

  “Maddison!” Called Thomo. “I got an elderly woman and her son, looks like she's been shot,” he said, gesturing for her to come and help.

  “Eyes forwards Blake,” James reminded me. The thought of Maddison dealing with injured and god forbid, infected people just irked me a little bit. I liked her, I wanted her safe and out of harm. If the boys knew they’d rip into me.

  “Woah! Woah! Woah!” Shouted Mason, before raising his rifle to an infected man crawling from under a coach. He then shot him to the head, blowing a steady breeze of blood speckles into the air.

  “Do you have to make it so dramatic?” I said to him. He just looked me in the eyes with a blank expression. “That’s seven now,” he simply said with a subtle smile. Seven kills, seven takedowns. More than anyone on the squad. I myself had shot zero.

  I glanced to the distance to find a small group of civilians, running away from something. They were moving fast, something, or someone, was chasing them.

  “We've got some people coming up!” I told my squad.

  “I see them!” Jake said standing atop the hood of a blue four by four. Jacob hanged back, being wary of the threat. I advanced with Hussain.

  “Stop! This road is closed!” I cried at the top of my lungs, but they did not heed my warning. They instead hurled themselves straight for me.

  “You gotta let us pass,” a green shirt wearing man from the group said coming right up to my face, all the while holding a child above his shoulder.

  “Blake, incoming! Hostile!” Hussain advised, I glanced up and saw the sight of what could only be described as unimaginable pain.

  It was a man and a woman with flesh literally melted from their bones. They'd been covered in oil and set alight, like a tanker had exploded further down the colossal motorway.

  I erased my thoughts of running like some coward and raised my gun. Holding its stock steady to my shoulder, I took a quick look down the sights. The gnawing gnashing yellow teeth snapping in my direction. Without a second thought I pulled back the trigger, with no hesitation, firing into the man's chest and head, probably three or four rounds. I couldn't think straight immediately after, as Hussain finished off the other one, the bullets still ringing in my ears.

  Alright, I thought, retaining my composure, first one down. I’d never shot anyone before, I felt like a monster, but also somewhat empowered. The rush of adrenaline was greater than anything I'd ever known, greater than scoring a goal for your football team, greater than jumping from a cliff into the sea far below, greater than stealing a kiss from your first crush.

  On their own I supposed they were easy pickings, but alas, in groups, I shuddered to think how we would deal with a few of them.

  “Good shot Blake!” James congratulated me. I acknowledged him with a nod of my head. I turned back, after seeing no more movement ahead.

  “That felt wrong,” I silently told Hussain.

  “Yeah, I know,” he spoke back quietly after a tense moment. We walked back to the safe area on the junction of the motorway, near to the shopping complexes and the train station.

  “What's your name?” I asked the man. He had a wife and a child with him.

  “Desmond, this is my wife, Lauren.”

  He was bald, no hair, with an olive complexion, while his wife had short brown hair, his daughter the same.

  “You can follow us back to camp,” I told them.

  “Blake,” Thomas called from his jeep. “Good job,” he metaphorically patted me on the back. “We're moving out from here!” He then announced to the rest of the squad. “B
ack to the camp.”

  I didn't realize the time on my digital clock. It read 19:00, and the sun moved fast over the horizon. Signs were being put up on the junction, to indicate people to come to the safe zones. We loaded up, and made the short minute drive past the makeshift checkpoints to the camp.

  When we passed the billboards for the cancelled shows at the Exhibition Centre, we found hundreds of people and many tents filled the various car parks. The station was lit up like a beacon. A soldier with a microphone boomed out instructions to the public.

  “Please do not panic, make your way in an orderly fashion to the nearest checkpoint, thank you, please do not panic,” he kept repeating a gigantic crowd of people.

  We disembarked and went to our quarters for a change of clothes. We were to be up early for tomorrow's patrol.

  But first there was to be a special announcement from the new lieutenant, or so Thomas had informed us last minute.

  “We're on ration duty boys!” Mason called out mockingly as we pulled up and arrived at the scene of another large crowd at the other side of camp. Many of the soldiers were stocking rations and supplies of all sorts, medicines and foods mainly.

  “Alright!” Shouted what I immediately knew was the new lieutenant, older, and cockier than Lieutenant Bridge. He was standing on top of one of our jeeps.

  “My name is Lieutenant Richard's, the commander of this platoon and this eastern train station quarantine zone.”

  “New lieutenant huh?” Said Jacob.

  “He looks like a dick,” Jake mused as we watched from our tents. He stepped upon a car around the crowd to make his presence known.

  “Why is this called a quarantine zone? We're not infected?” Questioned a rather large woman.

  “You don't have to worry about that anymore ma'am,” he said pointing to her all heroically.

  “You are in one of nine quarantine sites in the West Midlands. Consider yourselves lucky indeed.”

  “Can we leave?” Asked a man from the crowd.

  “Yes, but I'm afraid once you leave you aren't allowed back in, so! Do not leave this camp under any circumstances. Any attempt to subvert the powers that be; so me and my men, will be dealt with according to the codes and military conventions of the UK Government under such circumstances as we find ourselves in now.”

  “How long is it going to be like this?” Said a woman holding her teenage son close to her.

  “What about if we have family in the city?!” Another worried person screamed from the back of the crowd, near to the railings at the back of the camp.

  “I'll get on to that in a second,” he shouted back firmly.

  “What is this thing!? Where are the people from the motorway? Where did you take them!?” A third person called out in an accusatory tone.

  “Woah! Woah! One at a time people!” The new lieutenant ordered with a dashing smile.

  “What is it? What is this infection?” Asked a well-spoken man in a suit and tie at the front of the crowd.

  “We currently do not have that information sir, I'm not a scientist,” the lieutenant said.

  “My brother said the capital is gone. That there's no one left in charge?” Said a man with a bloody bandage on his head. Blood seeped from his wound.

  “Oh, I can assure you that there is, and your brother was probably exaggerating, for we have had no such report,” said Lt. Richards.

  “He said the prime minister is in hiding,” the man followed up.

  “Forgive me sir,” said the new platoon leader with a subtle sly smile. “But I'm afraid I don't keep a record of the prime minister's activities. I'm just a lowly serviceman.”

  This Lt. Richards had a certain charisma about him, I took an instant liking to him, and so too did Mason who laughed at his comments.

  “What about food, water? Will we have clean water?” Asked a woman in a tracksuit.

  “We have provisions for a day, by which time we will have a supply line running from command to here.”

  “And where is command?” They all asked in shouts of protest.

  “I cannot answer that,” he answered them.

  I knew it was at the airport, which was very close to here.

  “There will be rationing and I'm sorry to inform, but martial law will be enforced from this moment on. But I assure you, it will not be for long. Every day at noon, I will address this camp, your questions, your troubles, you can bear them all on me, let's hope I don't flatten from the pressure, and shoot you all!” He smiled. “Free apples and oranges!” He unloaded a massive basket of fruit and gave it out. I turned to the others who looked on in wonder.

  “What happened to the sergeant. Taking orders from some dumbass lieutenant?” Hussain spoke.

  “Sergeants are probably dead. And the lieutenant,” Mason butted in.

  “Don't say that,” Jake said to him. He didn't like to speak of death. Jake always had a gentle and naive soul.

  “I'll ask Richards myself,” said Thomas. He and I approached the lieutenant as he jumped off the jeep he’d had stood on to address the crowd.

  “So, what have we got here. Three squads. A broken tank line on the M1. Christ, you guys are in shit shape,” he said seeing a clipboard report from another private.

  “Sir, we…” Thomas spoke from behind him.

  Richards spun around fantastically and looked him in the eye.

  “Sorry; sorry, who are you?”

  “Corporal Thomas, sir. I'm at the head of a tired squad sir. A broken demoralised pack of otherwise hungry beasts.”

  The old veteran grew a scowl on his face. “What the hell is this? Poetry class corporal?” He asked with a devilish smile.

  “No sir,” answered Thomo.

  The lieutenant nodded his head. “Oh, I see it. You're the guys who caused a scene at the hospital?” He pointed to us.

  “We had difficulties,” Thomas informed.

  “Yeah. Well look corporal, I er, I got difficulties right now too. Best thing you can do is follow my orders and tell your team to hang in there. We got a lot of mouths to feed and a lot of empty buildings to check and clear. Unfortunately for us, most of them ain't empty. So I'd appreciate a little transparency here. Alright buddy?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I'm gonna need your squad up and pumping at 0400,” he finished.

  “Why's that sir?” Thomas asked.

  “We got an important job. We're going to HQ. Important visitor from the capital needs top security and priority.”

  “The capital, I heard London's toast,” Thomas spoke with a puzzled smile. I had no idea that was the case, he must have heard it on Jakes radio.

  “Strictly speaking, it is, but this is a VIP,” said Lt. Richards, spinning around to him again.

  “What about the camp?” Thomas said. He was clearly concerned with leaving all these people alone.

  “Our support unit can handle the bounce,” the lieutenant grabbed his arm reassuringly. But it was anything but, it was aggressive in my opinion, as if to mean, ‘I’m the boss here, you do what I say,’ sort of gesture.

  “Not those assholes,” I said, and then looked back to find James behind me, I didn't even know he was there.

  “Is there dissent in the ranks there private?” Questioned the new lieutenant.

  “No sir,” I told him respectfully. “I was just commenting on our friends over there. Those fusiliers, thinking they're better than us in their armoured tins.” I thought I sounded well, but it made me sound arrogant.

  “A company from the Royal Fusiliers Regiment,” Lt. Richards said, stepping right up to my face. “We're lucky to have them. You should lighten up pal. They might be the difference between life and death out there.”

  Doubt it, I thought silently to myself.

  “Get some sleep. You'll need it for tomorrow,” he gave us a flash of his golden tooth and then went about on his way through the camp.

  “Wow,” I looked at Thomas. He just sighed and raised his eyebrows while we walked
back to our tent in silence.

  “The new lieutenant is something else,” I said as I arrived to our station and my bickering squad mates.

  “Tell someone who cares,” Mason said as he lay on his small bed, looking at his cards.

  “What did he say?” Asked Maddison coming out from the back entrance.

  “He was just smiling, sarcastic like, I didn't know whether to be amused or pissed off,” I told her.

  “How are you anyway?” I asked her.

  “Good, I’m good,” she said, before throwing a towel she had used to wash her hands down.

  “They need me at the medic post,” she walked past me and out into the camp.

  “Be careful,” I muttered as she went by. She turned back to me.

  “I will,” she smiled and spoke elegantly.

  When my eyes fell to Mason, Jacob, even Hussain, they were all laughing and sniggering.

  “Be careful,” Mason mimicked in a girly tone.

  “I will,” Jacob quipped thinking he was funny.

  “It's up at 0400 tomorrow,” Thomas’s voice boomed over them. “We go to HQ so I suggest you sleep and relax now, there won't be much time for more rest after this.”

  “Where is HQ?” Asked Hussain as he rested down for the evening.

  “Birmingham International Airport,” Jake spoke.

  “That's about a ten-minute drive,” I told them.

  “Make it thirty in these circumstances with the number of idle cars on the road,” James said coming through the tent entrance with two apples. He threw one to Mason, before sitting down and taking a juicy bite out of the other.

  “Shouldn't you wash your hands first?” I spoke.

  “Shouldn't you bog off and do your own thing, write love letters to your girlfriend out there,” Mason answered angrily.

  “At least he has the heart to love someone, unlike you,” Jake defended me. I don't know why Mason had the attitude. Perhaps it was just the fact that it was Mason just being Mason. He was always an ass.

  “I do love someone, her name is Sarah,” he replied to Jake, while looking straight at me. “And she has the fattest arse I had ever grabbed.”