by Hatchett
Daniel slowed the truck, mounted the pavement and stopped in front of the shop. They were almost directly opposite the Northern wall of the Tower, so they hadn’t gone very far. Indeed, they would be able to see the odd guard on the ramparts if they bothered to look.
“What we stopped here for?” Zak asked from the back.
“Newsagent,” Isaac replied. “We’re starting small.”
Daniel, Rhys, and Isaac studied the shop front, looking out for any movement from inside. It had a single door in the centre with thick glass windows, about two metres by two metres, on either side of it. There were a couple of free-standing carousels in the left-hand window, holding a variety of overpriced tat like Tower of London keyrings, toy London taxis and buses, postcards, and Tower Bridge snow globes. ‘Snow globes!’ Daniel thought to himself, ‘as if we’re in the bloody Alps!’. Still, there were always gullible foreign visitors who couldn’t get enough of that sort of shite. Behind the right-hand window was the counter, with the usual cigarettes and booze lined up on the shelves behind it.
There were also shelves all along the walls and a double-sided shelf all the way down the centre of the shop, with aisles on either side. Between the three of them, they could see the whole shop and spotted three figures wandering around towards the back; one was an older man who looked to be of Indian descent, a middle-aged woman, and another younger man.
“Ideal,” Daniel suggested, and Rhys nodded his agreement. “The door is bound to be open, so if I park sideways on, with the passenger door next to the shop door, they will both open the same way and at the same time. There’ll be no chance for other zombies to get to us and we can then slide into the shop and take out the three zombies.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Rhys replied.
Daniel reversed and then turned in the direction they came from and moved forward. He then reversed again until the passenger door of the truck was nearly flush with the shop door. The only problem was that the sound of the truck had caught the attention of the shop’s occupants, who were now wandering up the aisles towards them.
“Isaac, slide the door open and shoot them in the head,” Daniel advised. Isaac looked back at Daniel with uncertainty.
“I’ll do it,” Rhys advised, moving to switch places with Isaac. Once he had done so, he opened the truck door which nudged into the shop door. He then applied a little more pressure with his left arm while his right arm held the pistol he had taken from the bag. As he pushed the door further, a buzzer sounded, and this attracted the attention of the zombies who started shuffling towards the door. The buzzer was an unwelcome surprise, but it had the desired effect. When the zombies were ten feet away, Rhys pulled the trigger. There was a click but nothing else happened.
“Shit!” Rhys exclaimed as he quickly pulled the truck door shut, the shop’s door automatically following suit and the buzzer going quiet once again. He ejected the magazine. “No fucking bullets!”
The others quickly ejected their own magazines and found that they were all empty.
A voice came through the earpieces. “This is Issy in Heathrow. I’ve been listening in. There were bullets in those guns when Joel and the others came to you.”
Daniel thanked God that he’d asked Nelson to give his earpiece to Rhys, otherwise he could imagine him blurting something out in front of the gang member. Thankfully, Rhys, but more importantly Isaac, had not reacted at all, although it was clear that they had heard the comments. “I bet that fucking Mamba did this to stitch us up and is probably laughing his arse off at the thought of us getting nailed!” Daniel said heatedly. He was more annoyed with himself. He calmed himself down. “It was a basic mistake,” he acknowledged, “you should always check any weapon you are given, so thanks to Mamba for the reminder.”
“So, we’ve only got the knives,” Rhys noted. “I’m not risking that, so we might as well go back.”
“I’ve got a gun….with bullets,” came the gang member’s voice from behind them.
“Pass it through then,” Rhys replied.
The automatic was passed over Isaac’s head and Rhys flicked on the safety before checking the magazine for bullets.
“Does it work?” Rhys asked.
“Of course, it fuckin’ works,” came the response.
“Do you have more bullets?”
“Why, isn’t there enough? There must be at least twenty, so you gotta be a crap shot if you need more,” came the sarcastic response.
“Just want to know where we stand,” Rhys replied.
“I’ve got more,” came the response.
“Maybe we should check the knives to make sure they’re not plastic,” Nelson suggested from the back as he took out his own knife.
“I think the knives will be fine, Nelson,” Daniel replied, surreptitiously checking that his knife was indeed made of metal.
With the lack of noise, the zombies in the shop had returned to wandering around aimlessly.
Rhys selected single shot and turned off the safety. “Isaac can you push the doors, so I can hold this properly?”
Isaac stood up and leaned over, ready to push the doors. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
Rhys checked the sight on the automatic, made slight adjustment and told Isaac that he was ready. Isaac opened the truck’s door, felt it bump onto the shop’s door then applied more pressure so that both would open. As the gap widened, the shop’s buzzer sounded again, and the zombies turned towards the door. Rhys sighted the first head and let off a round. The bullet ripped into the zombie’s head and it crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Rhys quickly sighted on the second zombie and took it out before finishing off the third.
“All down, we’re good to go,” he advised.
“Rhys, when you go in, we better check the back of the shop in case there’s any more,” Daniel suggested.
“Will do.” Rhys used his left arm to push the doors wider and hopped down into the shop. Thankfully, the annoying buzzing noise stopped once the door was fully opened. He grabbed one of the carousels and dragged it so that it held the shop door open, then moved out of the way so Isaac and Daniel could scoot across the seats and join him in the shop.
“You two stay there,” Daniel told Nelson and the gang member. “We’ll pass stuff through, so you can load it in the back.” He turned to Isaac, “Start shifting the cigarettes and drinks off the shelves while Rhys and I check the back.”
Isaac went behind the counter, grabbed a pile of plastic bags then started filling them with goods before taking and passing them to Nelson and the gang member to store in the back of the truck.
Daniel and Rhys walked to the back of the shop where there was a door which was currently shut.
“Probably goes back to a storeroom or toilets,” Daniel suggested.
“Do we want to take a risk or just fill our truck and go back?” Rhys asked.
Daniel considered the options. “I’m not sure if we should clear buildings as we come across them; you never know if we might need a safe house in the future and we might not have weapons.
“Good point, I say we go for it,” Rhys advised.
“This is Issy again. If you can do it, you should. We may need to use those premises at some point as a forward base.”
Daniel looked around to make sure it was just him and Rhys around. “Thanks, Issy. If we don’t respond, it means we can’t. We’ll try and remember to keep a running commentary, or at least keep talking to each other so you know what’s going on.”
“Guys, there’s lots of cigs and drinks here,” Isaac shouted.
“Thanks, Isaac, but I don’t really need to know that,” came Issy’s dry response.
“Let’s do it,” Daniel advised. He reached for the door handle as Rhys raised the automatic. Daniel turned the handle and pushed the door open a few inches. They could hear some shuffling and grunting, but it was not possible to work out if it belonged to one zombie or more. Daniel closed the door. “Hold on, I’ve just thoug
ht of something.” He ran up to the front of the shop, grabbed a CD player which he had seen earlier, off the counter and removed the lead. He checked the battery compartment, but it was empty, so he looked around before finding the batteries he needed and quickly unwrapped them and placed them in the device. He then checked there was a CD in the player; there was, it was a ‘Now ‘95’ album. He turned the volume low and turned the machine on to make sure it worked; the sound of Sia singing ‘The Greatest’ came through the speakers. Perfect.
Daniel rushed back to Rhys and placed the CD player to the right of the door and turned up the volume.
“What are you doing?” Rhys asked. “I think we’ve just lost the element of surprise.”
“They’re attracted by noise so when I open the door, hopefully it will go for the CD player rather than us.”
“Ok, let’s see.”
Daniel removed his knife as Rhys took a few paces back so that he was partially shielded by the row of shelves down the middle of the shop. He nodded to Daniel who flung the door open and stepped back to the left and out of the way.
For a few seconds nothing happened. Daniel was about to go back to the door when a zombie appeared, making him jump back. It looked like this could’ve been the wife of the shop owner. There was a crack and a hole appeared in the zombie’s head and it crashed to the floor. Another followed it, but as Rhys took the shot, the zombie tripped over the one on the floor and the bullet flew harmlessly high. The zombie struggled to get back up and Rhys had time to line up another shot and pull the trigger. The zombie flopped back down on top of the one under it. This one was no more than a teenager, possibly the daughter of the shop owners.
Daniel and Rhys kept their attention on the doorway, but no more zombies tried to come through it. The problem now was that the noise coming from the CD player was masking any sound which might be coming from the room behind the door.
Daniel peeled himself away from the left-hand wall and moved towards Rhys. He ducked down so that he wasn’t blocking Rhys’s line of sight, scooted past him, and then moved to the CD player and turned it off. There was silence except for Isaac clearing shelves towards the front of the shop.
Daniel cautiously moved towards the door with his knife held out in front of him. “I’m going in,” he said for the benefit of Issy. He stood in the doorway, careful not to step on the bodies below him. Rhys joined him, the barrel of the gun pushing past Daniel’s arm.
“Looks clear,” Daniel advised, “but it’s a bit dark.” He took couple of steps in and let his eyes adjust. He was in a stockroom. The only light was coming from the door he had just walked through and a couple of thin window lights near the ceiling on the back wall. There was another door on the back wall, but this was obviously just access for the shop owner to bring in more stock; it was barred and locked from the inside. The walls were made of breezeblock and the floor was concrete. It was about half the size of the shop itself and was packed to the ceiling with goods. There was also a small kitchenette, a door to a toilet and a staircase right at the back leading to an upper floor.
“This is great,” Daniel advised and told Issy what he was seeing. He then shouted down to Isaac to let him know about the find, although he knew that Isaac had already heard him when he was telling Issy.
“Let’s check upstairs,” Daniel suggested to Rhys, “but first we need a torch.” Daniel turned and walked back into the shop. He hunted around but couldn’t find anything, other than crap little keyring lights. ‘There must be a torch somewhere’ Daniel thought to himself before going back to the stockroom and hunting around in there. He finally found what he was looking for in a drawer in the kitchenette area. He switched it on and off and was pleased to see that it glowed strongly. “We’re good to go,” he advised.
Daniel moved towards the stairs and cautiously looked up. He couldn’t see much in the dim light, although there was obviously some light coming through windows upstairs and, if there had been something there, he would’ve seen a silhouette.
He turned on the torch and moved cautiously up the stairs, Rhys following. Daniel placed his feet carefully at the sides of each stair rather than the middle to decrease the chances of making a noise. Halfway up he stopped and listened but could hear nothing of interest, so he carried on going.
He reached the top and found himself at the end of a hallway which went straight towards the front of the shop. He counted four closed doors, two on each side of the hallway and one open at the far end where the light was coming from. He moved so that Rhys could join him in the hallway.
“I guess we need to clear each room,” he whispered, “starting with the one open at the end.” Rhys nodded, and they made their way to the far end of the corridor, pausing before the threshold. Daniel peaked around the doorframe and then walked into the room. It was a decent sized lounge with windows across the front, providing a fantastic view of the Tower. “This would be a perfect vantage point for a sniper,” Rhys remarked as he looked around. To the left, he noticed that the lounge merged with an open-plan kitchen, which had its own door into the hallway. There was nothing lucking behind the kitchen counter and they now only had three doors to open.
They retraced their steps back to the hallway, and ignoring the kitchen door on their right, focused on the first door on the left. They stopped and listened for any sounds, but they couldn’t hear anything. Daniel carefully opened the door then quickly threw it open, swinging the torch all around as Rhys followed the beam of light with the automatic. It was a bathroom, and although dark, it was also empty.
They moved further along the hallway, two more doors to open.
“There’s been no noise at all,” Rhys advised.
“Doesn’t necessarily mean they’re empty,” Daniel replied. “Better to be safe than sorry.” Rhys nodded agreement.
They went through the same procedure for the last two doors; they were both bedrooms and both empty. Daniel breathed a sigh of relief and realised that his heart was beating quicker than usual and he had perspiration on his brow. “Stressful,” he commented.
“You can say that again!” Rhys agreed, “not sure my heart can take much more of this.”
Now that they knew the upstairs was clear, they took a little more time searching the rooms to see if they could find anything useful, before returning to the shop to help Isaac.
“How’s it going?” Daniel asked Isaac as he came back into the shop after delivering his latest bag of goodies to the truck.
“The plastic bags were a bit shit and you couldn’t get much in them, but I found some black bags. The only problem is that if you fill them too much, they get a bit heavy.”
“Ok, keep up the good work, we’ll raid the storeroom; everything’s still in boxes so they will be easier to shift and stack. I think we’re going to need two or three trips to clear this place.”
32
Day 5 – 12:30
Tower of London, Inner Ward
The pilot and co-pilot were brought out of the White Tower by the guards and marched to where Mamba was waiting with Grace and Shauna.
“We’re goin’ for a ride,” Mamba advised. “Any heroics, you die,” he added, brandishing a pistol, and indicating that the pilot and co-pilot should board the helicopter.
Mamba opened the sliding back door and climbed onto the left-hand seat behind the pilot’s head. Grace climbed in from the other side and shifted along the seat to allow Shauna to sit next to the window, as far away from Mamba as possible.
They all put on headphones and the pilot flicked the engine starter motor switches on and turned the key. The Rolls Royce engines started up and the thirteen metre rotor blades above their head began to turn, slowly at first but gradually building up speed.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked.
“Just get us up then head East,” Mamba ordered.
Once the rotors were at the required revolutions per minute, the pilot raised the collective, which adjusted the angle of the rotor blades a
nd automatically increased the throttle, and the Lynx gradually rose off the ground. Once it was higher than the surrounding walls, the Pilot pushed the cyclic forward and the heli started to move forwards. The pilot then used his feet on the pedals to swing the heli around to the direction he wanted to go.
Mamba had never been in a helicopter before and was like a child in a sweet shop. He asked question after question as he stared in awe out of the window and directed the pilot towards the Green Park Estate.
This was exactly the sort of distraction Grace and Shauna needed; Grace lent against Mamba, straining to look past him and out of the window while Shauna took the opportunity to open the compartment beneath the seat and quickly remove the additional case of earplugs.
It didn’t take long to reach the Green Park Estate and Mamba ordered the pilot to land on the roof. Thankfully, the Judge’s tents and all the tables had been removed once the Judge had moved to the Tower.
The guards on the roof had their weapons raised but were curious and held their fire. It was only when the doors opened, and Mamba stepped out that they stood down.
Mamba was treated like a returning hero by the men, and he enjoyed bragging to them about how he had gotten himself a helicopter.
The pilot and co-pilot had left the heli and were looking over the wall at the surrounding area, describing to the Command Centre at Heathrow what they could see. “We’ve got you on one of the monitor’s,” came the response, “and you’re being recorded.”
Grace and Shauna went downstairs to spend some time with Samata and used the opportunity to tell her what was going on. She agreed that she would spread the word, but only amongst those she could trust one hundred per cent, starting with her closest family. Shauna left one of the earpieces with Samata; she would be their eyes and ears at the estate.
33
Day 5 – 15:00
Heathrow Airport, Security Briefing Room
The Leaders sat around the conference table. They had each given a brief report of what they had been doing and Tom Williams had updated them on what was happening in the outside world; effectively the virus had spread all over the UK, but it appeared that the smaller islands like the Isle of Man, Anglesey, the Isle of Wight, and several Scottish islands were still virus free as things stood. Despite some draconian moves – what remained of the Air Force and Navy had been shooting down planes and boats trying to escape the UK – the virus had still managed to cross the channel into continental Europe. Both France and Germany had declared a national emergency and closed their borders. Both countries had been put into quarantine, but it was clear that many people had already fled before the borders were closed. It was feared that the virus would just continue to spread regardless of any measures put in place.
